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mainly by European émigré analysts who were fleeing Nazi Germany and the impending Holocaust. The complicated reception of Ego Psychology in Europe and Latin America was influenced by a number of factors, including the divergences in translations, conceptualizations of the ego, reflective of different frames of reference (Ego of the Topographic theory versus Structural theory; narrow or wide definition of Ego Psychology), different levels of discourse (levels of abstraction, theory, technique), in addition to different socio-cultural heritage proliferating into psychoanalytic culture and geography. Some of them are outlined below and further specified in sections of North American, European and Latin American contributions and developments. Freudian Ich For Freud, ‘das Ich’ (translated by Strachey as ‘the ego’ rather than ‘the I’) refers to both a mental agency as well as a subjective experience. While in German original this dual aspect of ‘Ich’ seems to indicate an important ‘Ich’ characteristic, Strachey’s English translation and terminological shift from ‘I’ to ‘the ego’ prompted the need to distinguish more clearly the propensities of the ego as a mental structure and psychic agency from the phenomenological experiential self. Heinz Hartmann’s (1950) progressive conceptual separation of ego from self, and self from self-representations, while instrumental in further conceptual developments, at the same time may have complicated conceptualizing the relations between the abstract impersonal ego functions on the one hand and subjectivity on another. This trend was strongly opposed by the French psychoanalysts (Laplanche and Pontalis 1973, p. 131), but also, by some subsequent Ego Psychologists/Post Freudian North American authors who strove to maintain and elaborate the dual character of Ich (‘I’/ ‘Ego’) (Jacobson 1964, Mahler 1979, Kernberg 1982). On the other side of the controversy is Latin American author Leon Grinberg, who credits Hartmann for laying a groundwork towards addressing the problems of the Freudian ‘Ich’ and “making the distinction between ‘Ego’ as a psychic system and ‘Self’ as a concept referring to ‘oneself’” (Grinberg et al.1966, p. 239). He also mentions an important antecedent in a previous contribution by Paul Federn (1928), who studied the Ego as a subject of ego functions and also as an object of internal experiences. According to Grinberg, Hartmann’s contribution lies in opening the door for Edith Jacobson’s articulation of self-representation, an important element of Grinberg’s own theoretical system. Conceptual differences and similarities consequent to the divergent translations: Ich-I-Ego-Le Moi-Yo-Eu While the French translation of Freud’s opus “Oeuvres Complètes de Freud/Psychanalyse – OCF/P” (Laplanche et al. 1989-2015) retains the ambiguity of Ich/I, it
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