IPA Inter-Regional Encyclopedic Dictionary of Psychoanalysis

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the structural point of view. This ‘metapsychological modifications’, which elevated the use of the structural model and psychic conflict (Arlow & Brenner, 1964), led to an extended view of compromise formation (Brenner 1976, 1982a). Such developments helped open the door for new ways of thinking about the unconscious and the drives. This included transitional thinkers such as Hans Loewald (1978) and integrationists such as Otto Kernberg (1966, 1982). Loewald stressed the essential role of object relations in both psychic formation as well as the change brought about through analysis. His emphasis on the interaction in object relations breathed life into the ideas of drive fusion and neutralization, analytic neutrality and therapeutic action. Kernberg (1982) offers a modification of (second) dual instinct theory in the context of ego, self, and early development of structure formation, in his integration of Ego Psychology and Object Relations theories. IV. A. EGO PSYCHOLOGY For ego psychologists, Freud´s first drive theory was fundamental, but the main focus shifted to specifically ego functions. Heinz Hartmann (1939) elaborated on the importance of adaptation to reality and called for a clearer differentiation between normality (the healthy ego) and psychopathology (the neurotic and ‘weak’ ego). The shift of focus from drives and “depth psychology” to the facilitation of ego strengths and its functions of mastery, adaptation and autonomy was sometimes criticized as ‘educational’ more than ‘analytic’. But a major interest of the ego psychologists was in the transformation of the drives by the ego, in such processes as neutralization. The center of the new scientific interest was especially the ‘strategies of adaptation’ that were offered by the ego system and turned out to be potentially creative. As an outcome defences were no more perceived as solely pathological but rather (also) ‘adaptive’ and helpful in the inevitable conflictual struggle with the drives. IV. Aa. Heinz Hartmann, Ernst Kris, Rudolph Loewenstein and other Classical Ego Psychologists Some of Hartmann’s main contributions lie in further elaboration of the difference between the mutability of the human instinctual drives as compared to rigidity of animal instincts; elaboration of aggression as a distinct drive operating according to the pleasure principle; extension of Freud’s theorizing on neutralization and sublimation. Ego psychology was developed out of Freud’s structural theory, especially by a group of European psychoanalysts who migrated to the United States prior to the Second World War. Most influential among these were Heinz Hartmann and his collaborators, Ernst Kris and Rudolph Loewenstein . Anna Freud worked with largely similar concepts, although there were some differences in emphasis. Along with their studies of the ego, Hartmann and his collaborators developed a set of ideas about the drives and their transformations that were quite influential in North America.

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