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The publication in The Psychoanalytic Quarterly of a symposium on “The Ego and the Id after Fifty Years”—including articles by Jacob A. Arlow, Edward D. Joseph, Robert R. Holt, and Emanuel Peterfreund1, 13, 18, 27—gives us an opportunity to review the critiques of psychoanalytic ego psychology (and metapsychology) developed over the past several years by such writers as Holt and Peterfreund along with some others, most notably George S. Klein and Roy Schafer. In this context it would also be useful to review, however briefly, some earlier critiques of ego psychology rendered by more traditional Freudian psychoanalysts and by certain radical commentators. We may then note in passing various points these different critiques hold in common as well as estimate their relative merit.
First, certain orthodox analysts have always found ego psychology problematic because of its emphasis on autonomous adaptive capacities, as opposed to the earlier principal emphasis on the preemptive force of intrapsychic conflict. Marjorie Brierly wrote, for example, that “Looking back on my days in practise, I cannot recall coming across any signs of ego autonomy; my patients' egos seemed much more subject to coercion from within and without.”2 Brierly also stated that Hartmann (along with other ego psychologists, of course) simply offered balm to the human pride so badly wounded by Freud's work. Edward Glover—referring to Hartmann as a “neo-Freudian”—declared in turn that Hartmann's concept of “secondary autonomy” was a “comforting narcissistic myth.”33* There are similar critiques of such writers as Edith Jacobson and David Rapaport.9, 38