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Based on Case Material from Patients Treated by Isabel Harris, Hansi Kennedy, and Veronica Thompson
The need to study the processes of integration and their pathology arose in connection with our work on diagnosis. As diagnosticians we would like to know how successful or unsuccessful the ego has been in achieving integration within the personality.
Every psychological illness can be regarded as a sign that the mediating function of the ego has not succeeded in integrating the child's personality, and the resulting rift manifests itself in symptom formation, character disorder, impulsive behavior, or even childhood psychosis. As Sigmund Freud (1928) said, "For neurosis is after all only a sign that the ego has not succeeded in making a synthesis, that in attempting to do so it has forfeited its unity."
The word "integration" is used frequently among psychoanalysis. Optimal integration is a goal we are trying to achieve as a result of