The Ego

To return to the problem of the ego: the appearance of contradiction is due to the fact that we take abstractions too rigidly and out of a complicated state of affairs look at first one, then another side alone. The separation of the ego from the It seems justified. It is forced on us by definite conditions. But on the other hand, the ego and It are identical, the ego is only a differentiated part of the same It. If in thought we place this fragment against the whole, or if there is a true dissension between the two, the weakness of this ego is manifest. But if the ego remains bound to the It and cannot be divided from it, its strength is manifest. The relation between the ego and super-ego is similar; in many situations the two flow together; mostly we can only distinguish between them when there is tension, a conflict, between them. For the case of repression this fact will be decisive, that the ego is an organization, the It is not. The ego is the organized part of the It. It would be quite unjustified if one should imagine that the ego and It are two unlike camps of warriors; in repression the ego seeks to repress a fragment of the It. but the remainder of the It comes to the rescue and measures its strength with that of the ego. This may often happen although it is certainly not the initial situation of repression; as a rule the instinct to be repressed is isolated. If the act of repression has shown us the strength of the ego, it bears witness of its weakness and for the fact that the individual instincts of the It cannot be influenced. For the process which has become a symptom through repression maintains its existence outside of the ego organization and independently of it. And not only this alone but all of its offshoots enjoy the same right, one may say the extraterritoriality. And where it comes together associatively with the portions of the ego organization, it may be asked whether these did not draw it to themselves and gain ground with this addition at the expense of the ego. A comparison long a favorite with us regards the symptom as a foreign body which ceaselessly maintains phenomena of irritation and reaction in the tissues in which it has embedded itself. It does indeed happen that the defensive battle against the unpleasant instinct is shut off through the symptom formation; as far as we can see this is possible in hysterical conversion, but usually the course is different---after the first act of repression there follows a tedious or never ending after-play; the fight against the instinct finds its continuation in the fight against the symptom.

This secondary defensive fight shows us two faces with contradictory expressions. On one hand the ego is notified through its nature to undertake something which we must estimate as an attempt at restoration or expiation. The ego is an organization, it rests upon free intercourse and the possibility of reciprocally influencing among all of its components. Its desexualized energy announces its origin in the effort towards union and unification and this urge to synthesis always increases with the strength which the ego develops. It therefore becomes intelligible that the ego also tries to abolish the strangeness and isolation of the symptom, using for this purpose all possibilities to bind it to itself and by such bands to incorporate it into its organization. We know that such an effort already influences the act to symptom formation. A classical example thereof is furnished by those hysterical symptoms which become transparent to us as a compromise between the requirement for gratification and the requirement for punishment. As fulfillment of a demand of the super-ego such symptoms have from the first a part in the ego while on the other hand they indicate positions of the repressed and breaches in the ego organization; they are, so to speak, border stations with mixed investments. Whether all primary hysterical symptoms are so constructed demands careful investigation. In further course the ego so behaves as if conducted by deliberation. The symptom is once there and cannot be removed. It must make friends with the situation and draw the greatest amount of benefit from it. An adaptation takes place with the ego-foreign fragment of the inner world which is represented through the symptom, as otherwise normally the ego brings to pass in the real outer world. There is never a lack of occasions. The existence of symptoms may bring with itself a certain inhibition of function with which one may soothe a demand of the super-ego or refuse a claim of the external world. The symptom is gradually entrusted with the representation of more important interests, it receives a value for self assertion, adheres more intimately to the ego and becomes more indispensable to it. Only in quite rare cases can the process be likened to the presence of a foreign body after a wound has healed. One may also exaggerate the importance of this secondary adaptation to the symptom in saying that the ego has created the symptom in order to derive benefit from it. This is just as true or false as when one presents the opinion that war-injured soldiers have allowed their legs to be shot off in order to live without work on their invalid pensions.

Other symptom formations, such as compulsion neurosis and paranoia, gain a high value for the ego, not because they are of advantage to it but because they bring a narcistic gratification which is indispensable. The system formations of the compulsive neurotic flatter his self love through the delusion that he is specially pure and conscientious and is better than other human beings. The delusional formations of paranoia open to the acumen and phantasy of these patients a field of activity which is not readily replaced. From all of these mentioned relations there results what is known as the (secondary) disease gain of the neurosis. There ensues the effort of the ego to incorporate the symptom into itself and strengthen the fixation of the latter. If we then make the attempt to furnish aid of analysis to the ego in its fight against the symptom, we find that these placable connections between the ego and symptom efficacious on the part of the resistance. It is not made easy for us to solve these. Both procedures which the ego applies against the symptom stand actually in opposition to each other.

The other procedure has a less friendly aspect and continues the direction of the repression. It seems, however, that we should not burden the ego with the reproach of futility. The ego is ready to be peaceable and would like to incorporate the symptom and take it into its ensemble. The disturbance proceeds from the symptom, which is the proper substitute and derivative of the repressed prompting. The latter rôle is played further, in that the urge for gratification is constantly renewed and so prompts the ego to again give the pain signal and come to its defense. The secondary defensive fight against the symptom is many sided and plays itself on different stages, serving itself with manifold means. We will state little if we do not take the individual cases of symptom formation as an object of investigation. By so doing we shall find occasion to go into the problem of anxiety which we have long spied lurking in the background. It would seem desirable to start out with the symptoms created by the hysterical neuroses, for we are not yet prepared for the presuppositions of symptom formation in the compulsive neuroses, paranoia, and other neuroses.