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contents (Paniagua 2001), as well as those who argued that he went too far (Phillips 2006) in that he overemphasized the role of aggression in mental life, privileged ego resistance over id resistance, and, while his method was suitable for analyzing repression, it was not applicable to other forms of defense like splitting, dissociation or denial. Criticism notwithstanding, Gray’s ‘microstructural model’ of the use of the method of free association to capture and analyze ego’s defensive processes remains an enduring contribution. III. Bbb. Examples of Integrative Models As object relations became a more central interest, there were original efforts to integrate ego psychology and objects relations’ theories with implications for the theory of technique. Self-identified as Ego Psychologist, Hans Loewald (1960, 1962, 1978) developed an Ego Psychology that put instinctual theory together with object relations, emerging from the centerpiece of a child’s inchoate ego developing within the mutuality of the mother-child enfoldment. He presents not only ego, but also id as an organization related to reality and objects. In this view, drives are inherently related to and organized within object relations, organizing reality and vice versa; the new object found in analysis is also an instinctual, infantile object. Addressing the analogy between therapeutic process and mother-infant interaction, Loewald uses the metaphor of a higher organization (the analyst) in interaction with a lower organization (the patient) to characterize the therapeutic process, with a “tension” between them across which the patient reaches. He further develops the notion of disorganization and reorganization in analysis, leading to integration at a higher level, originating with Kris’ concept of regression in the service of the ego , along with a two-sided approach to interpretation: into the original depth via regression and deconstruction, and into a higher level via interpretation and reconstruction. Loewald regarded the transference as the intrapsychic corollary of the interpersonal, which recaptures lost depths, making it possible to change ‘ghosts’ (unconscious complexes) into ancestors (well-integrated psychic structure) via a transitional ‘demon’ (or regressive transference) stage. In his view, transference is viewed also as crucial to health, not merely as pathological. Finally, the “integrative experience longed for” is formulated, an inherent developmental and clinical tendency toward higher integration. Organizing activity of internalization , as a developmental clinical tendency is central in Loewald’s work. Within this frame, he recontextualizes many drive-psychological terms as organizing activities. Loewald reaffirms the centrality of the Oedipal complex for all clinical work, essentially by redefining the oedipal stage with an emphasis on the emergence of the capacity for self-reflection, personal responsibility, and individuality—the capacity to be an individual. Object, object relations and self, in the analytic, intrapsychic sense, do not exist until the oedipal stage. Further, by a sophisticated discussion of parricide and incest, he brings the narcissistic and preoedipal directly into the Oedipal core. There are resonances with Melanie Klein’s depressive position in the stress on guilt and reparation, and with Kohut and Winnicott in the symbiotic and transitional character of Oedipal experience as defined by Loewald.
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