Editor's Introduction

Richard Sterba, writing over 60 years ago, called our attention to a critical aspect of the therapeutic action of psychoanalysis in his classic paper on The Fate of the Ego in Analytic Therapy (1934). In this paper, he described a process by which analysis promotes introspection and self-observation in the patient. This process actually requires that a part of the patient's ego (the self-observing function) be identified with the analyst, sharing in the latter's analytic understanding and participating in the therapeutic endeavor. Such an identification, Sterba observed, could be brought about through the analyst's correct understanding and interpretation of various transference-based resistances. Lawrence Josephs, the author of the first article in this issue, has noted in his summary of the literature that a successful analysis permits the patient to make better use of this observing ego; according to this idea, ultimately the patient him/ herself is able to continue the work of analysis, analyzing intrapsychic conflict and achieving adaptive resolutions without need of the analyst's ongoing assistance. Josephs, however, goes on to question the basic premise of an autonomous observing ego, arguing that the concept of a normal observing ego parallels that of a normal ego, which Freud once termed an ideal fiction. In advancing