You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Laforgue, one of the leaders of the psychoanalytic movement in France, has in this little book shown the development and composition of what is known as Intellect (Ego) and from his findings he has drawn interesting conclusions.
In the course of one's development, he says, an individual meets with a great many psychic difficulties, psychic conflicts arising from opposition between the different instances within the psychic apparatus. To these conflicts one reacts with anxiety. To ensure adaptive healthy conduct the individual must succeed in directing and surmounting both the cause and the ensuing anxiety. Many circumstances, such as neurotic parents, loss of one or both parents, discord between parents, observation of parental intercourse, mother's subsequent pregnancies, etc., tend to prevent this, however, and give to the conflicts a pathological character. Thus ensues repression (Laforgue calls it scotomization when accomplished in pathological sense) and the development of symptoms.
The healthy means of defense against anxiety is by the complex synthesizing work of the Ego. This synthesis of perceptions, external and internal, synthesis which permits an individual to place himself in time and space with the impression of being conscious and knowing how to act voluntarily in relation to them and to his needs is often called Intellect. It is a very complex activity and consists not only in elaborating the present perceptions but past impressions still participating in the form of experience and knowledge. It can be weak and infantile or strong and adult depending upon the collective mentality which it reflects. But it does not depend alone on development of collective mentality but also on the development of the individual Ego. This synthesizing function of the Ego acts as if it were endowed with libido and it is with libido that it enters into contact with the elements of the exterior and interior world. Thus, the Ego creates with these realized libido-world relat