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III. Bd. Classifications And Further Study Of Ego Operations Today, mental operations listed under the rubric of ‘ego’ include basic mental functions (autonomous ego), control and delay capacities (ego strength), and defenses. All of these mechanisms usually work outside of conscious awareness, either ‘dynamically unconscious’ (Shulman & Reiser, 2004), or descriptively/latently unconscious/ ‘preconscious’ (Kubie, 1974). Like breathing, however, at times the (unconscious) automaticity of these operations can be overridden by conscious effort and vice-versa, they can participate in, and be influenced by dynamic unconscious conflictual configurations. Ego operations usually function unconsciously, except in emergencies, in situations of acute need or when a vital interest is at stake: Conscious enhancement of reality testing, intellect, and self-preservation (ego functions) can be exemplified by all-night studying for a test, conscious impulse control (ego strength) in alcoholics’ abstinence, or conscious suppression of thought (defense) in a grieving surgeon who must perform a surgical procedure. Additionally, during psychoanalytic treatment, ‘mentalization’ understood as a conscious efflorescence of the psychoanalytic mind (Busch, 2013), may be critical to a successful outcome. III. Bda. Autonomous Ego Functions First identified by Freud ((1911a, 1917), Hartmann (1964) and others, later classified into categories of 12 and described in terms of intactness or deficit, by Bellak, Hurvich and Gediman. (1973), one of the recent lists of 26 autonomous ego functions , clustered and summarized for diagnostic purposes (above) to identify deficits and/or inhibitions by Jerome Blackman (2003, 2010) includes, but is not limited to: • Reality testing (Freud, 1985, 1911a), sense of reality of the world and of the self as “relationship to reality” (Frosch, 1966]); and related ego functioning; • Sleep-wake cycle, consciousness, & sensorium; • Perception (5 senses) & Memory (Freud 1900, 1911a; Hartmann 1939/1958) • Integration/synthesis/organization (Freud, 1911a; Nunberg 1931; Hartmann, 1939/1958; Rose/1991); • Primary process thinking characterized by symbolization, condensation & displacement (Freud, 1900; Arlow & Brenner, 1964); • Secondary process thinking (logic & time sense [Freud, 1900]); • Psychomotor control (Mahler, Pine and Bergman 1975); • Intelligence (Hartmann, 1939/1958; Piaget, 1952) & speech, language, symbolizing function (Blum 1978, Leavy 1983);
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