Description
Ego Psychology: Theory and Practice breaks new ground by demonstrating how mainstream psychoanalytic theory has evolved into a psychoanalytic developmental object relations theory. The authors summarize the contributions of the major ego psychologists from Freud to the contemporary theorists, including the new findings of the child observationalists. By integrating these several contributions, the authors are able to show that classical psychoanalysis and ego psychology combine to form a unified theory that provides a more profound understanding of the borderline and narcissistic conditions as well as of the neuroses.
From this comprehensive synthesis of theory the authors derive techniques for the treatment of the more troubled patient and expand the classical technique for the psychoanalysis of neurosis. Recognizing that there are preoedipal developmental problems even in neurotic patients and that there are oedipal issues in the borderline and narcissistic patients, the authors demonstrate the applicability of developmental object realtions theory across the diagnostic spectrum and include a new chapter on termination.
Using numerous case illustrations from their own practice, the Blancks have constructed an extraordinarily comprehensive and readable text that updates psychoanalytic theory for the nineties. (Leo Rangell, Past President, International Psychoanalytical Association )
In Ego Psychology II: Psychoanalytic Developmental Psychology, Gertrude and Rubin Blanck elaborate upon ego psychological theory, extending and broadening it into a psychoanalytic developmental psychology. They present the unifying proposal, derived from Freud’s concept of an overall ego (the Gesamt Ich), that the ego is the organizing process itself. Out of this basic proposition, a holistic conception of psychological development evolves.
Within the developmental framework established in Ego Psychology II symptom constellation is shown to be unreliable as a guide to diagnosis. A diagram of development is presented to convey that overall development rather than symptomatology provides guidelines for secure diagnosis and suggests how treatment is to be carried out. Treatment, in the form of ego-building techniques, evolves from recognition that developmental inadequacies cause pathological formations that become malformations in the structure.
Ego Psychology II is valuable for psychotherapists, psychologists, psychoanalysts and social workers: the authors’ extensive case-study material illustrates the theroy and technique of developmental psychology in vivid form. The authors show also how psychoanalytic developmental psychology updates drive theory, sheds new light on transference, redefines resistance and defense in the poorly structured personalities, clarifies the pathology of the borderline conditions of narcissism, and suggests reconsideration of the manner in which many neurotic formations are attained.
