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Some of the complex issues involved in such a shift may have additionally included the following: 1. The overemphasis on the Oedipus complex as a procrustean bed (Blum, 2010; Balsam, 2015); 2. There was never an agreed upon method based on ego psychological principles. The approach to resistance analysis, central to ego psychology, was most often practiced by confronting defenses rather than analyzing them (Busch, 1999). 3. As practiced, ego psychology was most often based upon deep (experience-distant) interpretations (Busch, 1999). 4. Analysis was often carried out in a strict, impersonal fashion. 5. Even with the growing body of developmental literature, trauma seemed not to be taken into consideration. 6. Hartmann was important to study but difficult to read. Many courses may have been taught in a way that made it difficult to appreciate his contributions except in an idealized fashion. ‘Hartmann era’ (Bergmann, 2000) Ego Psychology was, for the most part, not widely accepted outside the United States. Reasons for this may have been complex, as can be gleaned from André Greene’s statement “…we can argue that the wide success of Hartmann was linked to …the Americans being convinced of their superiority” (Greene 2000, p. 106). Even some recent international authors (Sapisochin, 2015) echo historical resentment of Hartmann’s supposed view that he alone carried the mantle from Freud. According to Nancy Chodorow (2004), the British Object Relational, French and North American academic critics’ claim that North American Ego psychologists no longer believed in the unconscious or the drives, “(mis) read Hartmann’s (1939/1958) ‘Ego Psychology and the Problem of Adaptation’ as advocating a person’s adjustment to a sick society rather than as an attempt to rethink ‘On the Two Principles of Mental Functioning’ through the structural theory…” (Chodorow 2004, p. 214). III. Bb. Post-Hartmann Developments: Rise of Modern Conflict Theory, Contemporary Ego Psychology and the beginning of Integrative Models While Anna Freud, Hartmann and collaborators were prominent in the elaboration of ego psychology, further development of how ego functions relate to id and superego considerations constituted a major interest for North American analytic theorists for decades (Bergmann, 2000). Focus later turned to intrapsychic conflict with the components of drive, anxiety signal, defense, and compromise, developed by Arlow and Brenner (1964), who emphasized the advantages of explanations based on the structural theory over those based on topographic theory. In view of some (Busch, 1995), the work of Arlow and Brenner involved a significant
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