Ego Development Through Self-Traumatization

Among the dominant trends in psychoanalysis during the past decade, the focus of interest on the preoedipal period has undoubtedly been most fruitful, particularly the work of Klein, Greenacre, Lewin, Bergler, Federn and Sullivan. The gradual acquisition of analytic insight into early childhood has broadened the base of our science and initiated more refined methods of treatment. It has proven influential in developing new approaches toward such practical problems of child rearing ass self-demand breast feeding (1), habit training, natural birth and lying-in practices.

The useful application of new concepts in many areas of child care encourages us to follow certain theoretical and technical lines of inquiry deriving from our deepened insight. It becomes necessary to determine more precisely what significance infantile fantasies have for post-oedipal psychic development; how critical a role they play in perpetuating psychic trauma, and how they cooperate with, or militate against, the integrative possibilities of the individual.

The therapeutic obstacles arising from inadequate verbal symbolization during the first years of life have been generally recognized. The patient's inability to recapture, via language, his earliest experiences, necessarily focusses attention on analytic reconstruction, rather than recall. [An experimental approach to the question of equivalence of reconstruction and recall is now feasible through special hypnotic ablation techniques developed by H. Spiegel, J. Shor and S. Fishman (10).]

Consistent with this emphasis on reconstruction is the need for increased clinical attention to the phenomena of “working through” the various defensive shifts and transformations of primary conflicts, particularly as they emerge in the numerous traumatic life experiences provoked by patients in outside “secondary transferences” (8) or in the analytic situation itself. If we can indicate the close relationship between these currently provoked traumas and trauma