Reading Hartmann’s Ego Psychology and the Problem of Adaptation: Difficulties and Surprises

ABSTRACT

Despite the richness of his ideas and their influence on subsequent schools of psychoanalysis, Hartmann’s message is obscured by difficult language. These difficulties include his use of metapsychological terms that “give the appearance of common understanding when such understanding does not exist,” as Winnicott put it, his use of assertion and certainty, as if the hypotheses he asks us to consider were already decided by fiat, and his habit of repeatedly interrupting his argument to tell us what he is not going to tell us, thus appearing to offer something and withhold it at the same time. Nonetheless, his practice of qualifying and requalifying his ideas, along with his love of paradox, ultimately conveys so complex an understanding of mental process – so far removed from the simple stereotype of a “conflict-free” sphere – that much of his monograph reads as a celebration of the role of irrationality, of fantasy, and of the imagination in adaptation.

KEYWORDS:

• Hartmann
• adaptation
• Winnicott
• paradox
• rhetorical style

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹ When quoting Hartmann, the page numbers refer to: Hartmann, H. (Hartmann, 1939a). Ego Psychology and the Problem of Adaptation. Tr. D. Rappaport, New York: International Universities Press, 1958.

² Later, Anna Freud (1965) would devote much of her work to a more qualitative assessment of normality and pathology.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Henry F. Smith

Henry F. Smith, M.D., is a former Editor of The Psychoanalytic Quarterly.