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Yo”, a historical account of Hartmann’s contribution. He especially depicts the continuities between Freud and Hartmann, the richness of Hartmann’s encompassing opus and his purpose of building new horizons towards a more general psychology. For his part, Doria emphasized especially the importance of Hartmann´s organizational function which has a greater reach than the synthetic function. According to Doria´s view of Hartmann, the functional capacity of the ego and of the structures of the personality, depends and is self-regulated by this organizational function , whereas the synthetic function is limited to ego functions and does not reach the external reality. Doria further highlights Hartmann’s theoretical disagreement with the death instinct and his proposal of an aggressive drive rooted in an undifferentiated constitutional matrix instead. The intervention of neutralization of these aggressive drives leads to the integration of energies that nourishes the functional structures of the ego and superego. In Doria’s view, this shows something of a parallelism with the sublimation mechanism mentioned by Freud. It is with these Hartmanian ideas in mind, that Doria appeals of an urgent need for an integration of Hartmann’s Ego Psychology theory and technique with those of Object relations , benefitting especially to severe pathologies. In this spirit of integration, Edith Jacobson and Margaret Mahler would be later considered in Latin America the ‘creators of the Object Relations theory in the Ego Psychology theory’. They are viewed as contributors to the elaboration of a dialectic connection in the development of affects and drives, linked with mental representation of the self and the object world . While there is an acknowledged overlap between Ego Psychology and Object Relations theories in both of their contributions, Jacobson (Mahler’s analyst), who concentrated on the role of progressive integration of the self- and object-representations in the formation of the psychic structures, is considered closer to Ego Psychology, while Mahler’s theory of separation individuation, from symbiosis towards object constancy, essential in Latin American psychoanalytic thought and work, is considered by many somewhat closer to the Object Relations theories. III. Db. Recent Developments That Influence Latin America Salman Akhtar’s (2009), Comprehensive Dictionary of Psychoanalysis, is very much taken into account in Mexico and the northern part of Latin America. Akhtar, in his ego psychology definition makes a very clear explanation that it is a shift … “from drive to defense, from discharge to sublimation, from impulse to counter cathexis, from revelation to resistance, and from the cauldron of instincts to the executive operations of the ego.” Latin America is only gradually becoming familiar with, and acknowledging many integrative efforts of creating bridges between Ego Psychology, Kleinian theory, and Balint and Winnicottian independent British theorists, such as Sandler´s and F. Pine´s writing´s on the four psychologies of psychoanalysis (Pine 1988), referenced also by Akhtar. Akhtar’s definitions of ego, encompassing contributions of many ego psychologists and their conceptualizations of ego automatisms, ego boundaries, ego coverage, ego defects, ego defenses, ego deviation, ego distortion, ego function of metaphorization, ego functions, ego ideal, ego identity, regression in the service of the ego, ego instincts, ego integrity vs. dispair, ego libido, ego modification,
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