Psyche. XXXIX, 1985: The Self, the Id, and the Unconscious. Rolf Fetscher. Pp. 241-275.

This article is one of a series in which the author has treated the relationships between the concept of the self and the ego and superego of the structural hypothesis. After a careful and insightful review of the development of psychoanalytic thinking concerning the concept of self and psychic structure, especially around the problem of the unity of the personality, he finds that the psychic structures represent abstractions which are helpful theoretically, but which carry within them internal contradictions concerning the unity of the personality. The concept of the self has been introduced, at least in some of its meanings, as a counter to this tendency to abstraction and is much more intuitively appropriate in dealing with the totality of the patient's conflicts. Fetscher develops a thesis concerning the id as the primary motivational basis of the human organism, and draws an important distinction between the unconscious and the structure designated as the id. The continuum between unconscious and conscious psychic phenomena and the symbolic function of the ego are discussed. Fetscher concludes that the unity of inner perceptions and the unity of psychic energy guarantee the unity of the personality.