Ego Instincts—A Concept Whose Time has Come

It is … possible to distinguish an indeterminate number of instincts, and in common practice this is in fact done. For us, however, the important question arises whether it may not be possible to trace all these numerous instincts back to a few basic ones.
—FREUD, (1940, p. 148)

IT HAS LONG BEEN RECOGNIZED THAT PSYCHOANALYTIC THEory needs to be revised in order to account for observational data from infancy, to do justice to the functioning of the perceptualmotor system and the role of play and mastery, and to encompass data from psychoanalytic work (particularly the analysis of narcissistic personalities and borderlines). Most of the researchers in these areas (both analysts and nonanalysts) have concluded that a dualistic instinct theory could not encompass the known data. Some of the researchers have postulated the need for a third set of instincts; others have abandoned the concept of instincts altogether. But to abandon the concept of instincts altogether would mean abandoning much of the work of the past century, work that has proven of inestimable practical value. Further, it would negate one of the great strengths of psychoanalytic