The ego yesterday and today, Jacqueline Amati Mehler

In this paper the author considers what can be added today to the decades of discussion and revision about the concept of ego, its organisation and functions, its relation to drive theory and development. The questions discussed regard the awareness of the more complex way of ego functioning, its relation to the rest of the psychic structure and the overall personality, as well as its implications for the criteria of analysability. Three points are examined in detail: the relationship of the ego with the objects, the relations of the ego with the drives, and the relationship of the ego with reality.