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of undifferentiated ego-id matrix developing from its own inborn potential in interaction with an ‘average expectable environment’, Erik Erikson (1950) offered a narrative of psycho-social development that emphasized the impact of relationships and culture on the development of the ego. Following Freud’s and Hartmann’s formulations, Edith Jacobson (1964) outlined an intimate connection between the microstructures of the internal representational world, invested with affects, and the ego and superego macrostructures. Margaret Mahler ’s contribution (Mahler, Pine and Bergman, 1975), illuminating the progressive separation- individuation ‘on the road to object constancy’, towards stable object representations, followed. Both theories were reciprocally influential. Peter Blos, Sr ., one of the foremost psychoanalytic investigators of adolescence of the era, operated within the same conceptual framework as Hartmann, Kris and Loewenstein, while adding an original developmental perspective, specific to the prominent role of regression in adolescence . Regression had already been understood as a necessary and often positive part of development by Anna Freud (1963) and as playing an important part in adaptive adult functioning by Hartmann (1939/1958) and Ernst Kris (1952). However, Blos claimed that “the adolescent progressive development is contingent on and, indeed, determined by regression, its tolerance and use for psychic restructuring.” (Blos 1971, p. 27). He (1978) later noted that perhaps Mahler’s rapprochement phase (Mahler, Pine and Bergman, 1975) was the only other phase in development in which regression was a prerequisite for progressive developmen t. Blos stressed that while regression may be a part of development at various times, during adolescence regression was absolutely necessary for progression through the phase towards psychological separation from the parents and the formation of adult character. Blos (1967, 1979) referred to the regression of adolescence, with its special characteristics, as ‘ regression in the service of development’ , echoing Kris’s (1952) ‘regression in the service of the ego’. Blos (1967) observed that: “The profoundest and most unique quality of adolescence lies in its capacity to move between regressive and progressive consciousness with an ease that has no equal at any other period in human life. This might account for the remarkable creative achievements of this particular age” (p. 178). Blos (1967) states that through drive and ego regression , the adolescent revisits earlier conflicts and traumas, but now meets them with much expanded ego capacities, but without parental ego support. For most, their ego capacities allow the deep regression while protecting against a fatal regression to the undifferentiated stage of psychosis. The necessary regression brings up early traumas and acting out of early unresolved pre-oedipal and oedipal conflicts and the narcissistic entanglements that go with them (Blos 1972). Increasing understanding of early object relations , first noted in the work of Hartmann (1939/1958) and Rene Spitz (1945, 1946), and especially understanding of the role of the mother in ego development (Mahler Pine and Bergman, 1975; Jacobson, 1964) were also consequential in the unfolding of psychoanalytic ego psychology’s issues related to adaptation. Details of the relevant ego functioning in this process were explored, spelled out and ultimately
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