The Mutual Influences in the Development of Ego and Id

I cannot say that I feel too much at ease in introducing this symposium on The Mutual Influences in the Development of Ego and Id. There is in analysis hardly a topic that is more comprehensive. Whatever I could tell you would hardly add up to an integrated picture. The time allotted would not even suffice for a catalogue of the problems involved. But I do hope that this very difficulty, of which you are no doubt as well aware as I am, will prevent you from accusing me of any sins of omission; and that you will extend to me the privilege of a personal approach: the right to accentuate freely and, above all, to select for my presentation only certain aspects of our problem, while discarding many others, though they may be of equal importance for an integrated psychoanalytic theory of development.

I shall submit to you for discussion some possible avenues of approach, trying to place the problem, as it were; make a few suggestions for clarifying, evolving and integrating some of its aspects; and will start, as is customary, with some historical remarks, which, however, I shall try to limit to a minimum.

The concept of an ego you find already in Freud's (1950) physiological psychology of 1895 and in some clinical papers dating from the same period. These first formulations were followed by years of great discoveries: the psychological foundation of analysis in The Interpretation of Dreams; the libido theory; the insight into the etiology of neurosis; the genetic turn—that is, the discovery of the decisive relevance of early life history; and the development of psychoanalytic technique. During these years the role of the ego is little emphasized and at times even completely submerged under the impact of the theory of instincts. Only in the twenties was ego psychology explicitly defined as a legitimate chapter of analysis. The ego evolves as one system of personality, clearly set apart from the functions of the id and of the superego. This renaissance of the ego