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IV. B. Self in Ego Psychology and Post-Freudian Structural Theory With their expanded interest in complexities of ego functioning, adaptation and early development, the ego psychologists (e.g. Hartmann 1939/1958, 1964; Freud A. 1936/1992; Spitz 1950) attempted to integrate their new clinical findings with Freud’s metapsychology. Their ego psychological/structural theories emphasized the links between ego functioning and the development of object relations and the self. Attempting to minimize the ambiguities inherent in Freud’s Ich, and its controversial Strachey’s translation as Ego, Heinz Hartmann (1939, 1950) differentiated the self as whole person, personality or organization, including psyche and soma, from the ego as a system or psychic structure: “…in using the term narcissism, two different sets of opposites often seem to be fused into one. The one refers to the self (one’s own person) in contradistinction to the object, the second to the ego (as a psychic system) in contradistinction to other substructures of personality. However, the opposite of object cathexis is not ego cathexis, but cathexis of one’s own person, that is self-cathexis; in speaking of self-cathexis, we do not imply whether this cathexis is situated in the id, ego, or in the superego. …we actually do find ‘narcissism’ in all three psychic systems; but in all of these cases there is opposition to (and reciprocity with) object cathexis. It will therefore be clarifying if we define narcissism as the libidinal cathexis not of the ego but of the self. (It might also be useful to apply the term self-representation as opposed to object representation.)” (Hartmann, 1950, p. 84f.). Within the domain of the Self, Hartman tried to distinguish between the self, self-image, and self-representation, which he contrasted in opposition and reciprocity to object representations. Drawing mainly on Freud’s paper “On Narcissism” (Freud 1914), which predated the dual drive theory of 1920, as well as the structural theory of 1923, Hartmann’s economic definition of narcissism as a libidinal investment of the self did not address aggression and the problems in the inter-related concepts of narcissism, ego and self, and their relation to the psychic apparatus, structure and function (Blum 1982). All these issues are left for exploration of the next generations of Freudian thinkers (Jacobson 1964, Blum 1982, Rangell 1982, Kernberg 1982), as well as emergence of further theories of the self (below). However, Hartmann’s incipient distinction between the self as a person and the intrapsychic representation of the person or self-representation remains an enduring contribution, which, in further globally influential elaboration of Jacobson and Mahler (below), reclaims some of the dual aspects of Freudian ‘Ich’. Erik H. Erikson (1950,1956,1959) expanded on Freud’s conflict model and placed it in a social and cultural context, in which development takes place. In contrast to Freud’s intrapsychic and psycho-sexual focus, Erikson emphasized the central role of social and environmental factors in development. He viewed development as a life-long process, which he broke down into eight stages, each organized around a pivotal psychosocial conflict (e.g. Stage One – Trust versus Mistrust). While he viewed all identifications, beginning in infancy
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