The ego: an evolving construct

This paper has attempted to enlarge and elaborate the concept of the representational world as a substructure of the ego. Toward that end a variety of Freud's definitions of ego are presented at various phases of their conceptual development. Because the functional definition of the ego is the one most stressed by Freud (1923) and by post-Freudian elaborators, the definitions of the latter group (A. Freud, 1936; Waelder, 1936; Hartmann, 1939, 1950; Jacobson, 1964) are also presented. Most contemporary critiques (G. Klein, 1976; Kohut, 1977; Schafer, 1976) of the structural hypothesis centre on its mechanistic jargon and the energetic point of view. Although aspects of these critiques have validity I believe the radical paradigmatic alternatives they propose to be excessive. It is a premise of this paper than the elaboration of the concept of the representation world facilitates the understanding of clinical data reflective of intrasystemic conflict of the ego.