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of continued interaction of three links of integration, namely the spatial, temporal and social links” (Grinberg and Grinberg, 1974, p. 506) . Another author who explored the relation between the ego and the self , informed by ‘American Ego Psychology’ was Argentinian Salomón Resnik. In his “El yo, el self y la relación de objeto narcisista” (The Ego, the Self and the narcissistic object relationship), Resnik (1971-1972) reviews the different meanings of the notions of ego and self, including their theoretical and etymological roots, in German, English, and Spanish, in psychoanalysis, academic psychology and philosophy. Weaving together and exploring William James’ “Principles of Psychology” (1890), Freud’s description of the Ego as a structure with functions (thinking, coordination, synthetic and integrative functioning, defense mechanisms), and Hartmann’s and Jacobson’s formulations, he focuses on the ‘ambiguity and specificity of Self’: “the Selbst remained as an ambiguous idea, to which Anglo-Saxon psychoanalysts have given specific meaning in clinical experience” (Resnik, 1971-1972, p 267). In Mijolla’s dictionary (2002), influential in Latin America, Agnes Oppenheimer describes the emergence of Self Psychology from an Ego Psychology perspective , depicting how the ego structure endowed with functions differs from self-representations, which are narcissistically invested. The self will then become a structure per se of the psychic apparatus. As a central and fundamental concept in Self Psychology , empathy is considered a core concept to understand self and self-object relations. Kohut, defined it as “the capacity to think and feel oneself into the inner life of another person. It is our lifelong ability to experience what another person experience” (Kohut 1984); it is directed to understanding a two-person interactive process. It also relates more to narcissistic pathology. Regarding the economic aspects, there is need for differentiation between the cathexis of the ego and that of the self, the latter being mainly reserved for narcissism. In Ego Psychology , based on Freud’s structural (second topography) theory and the psychic apparatus of ego, id and super-ego, the ego is ‘who one is’; the ego negotiates between one’s basic needs and the demands of the environment, part consciously and part unconsciously aiming towards adaptation and reducing anxiety, as different from the self and self-objects. In the Classical Ego Psychology perspective (Hartmann 1939/1958, 1950; Hartmann, Kris and Loewenstein, 1946), ego is present from the moment of birth and is represented by functions that are not immersed in the conflict of internal and external reality. Many of these functions are relatively autonomous and correspond to an area relatively free of conflict. In this model, not all of the energy of the ego comes from the libido and the drives. Ego is an organization; it has a structure as well as other complex sub-structures involved in hierarchical functions. Some of these functions are free from the effects of conflict, what Hartmann called primary autonomous functions, while others only become secondarily autonomous after the resolution of conflicts. In this process, all aspects are mediated by relationships as identifications become the major ego function for facilitating this ‘neutralization’ of energy. Contributor to the early integrational thought , Argentinian Roberto Doria (1997), in his “Divergencias en la Unidad ” (Divergencies and Unity), includes a chapter “Psicología del
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