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The literature of psychoanalysis contains many attempts to describe or explain the building of psychic structure and content. Freud (1923) spoke of the ego being built on the residue of previous identifications. Much has been written about identification, incorporation, introjection, and internalization. Nunberg (1955) proposed the synthetic function of the ego. Kernberg (1968) spoke of the metabolizing of parental images, Kohut (1971) of transmuting internalization. H. Hartmann, Jacobson, and Schafer should not be omitted from any list of authors who have written in this area. Common to all these formulations is the idea that experience with reality, including