Psychoanalytic ego psychology. A European perspective

The best way to reconstruct the history of psychoanalytic ideas is to begin not from the study of theories but of the various authors and their contexts. Important contributions to the study of the ego came in Europe already from Ferenczi and Fenichel, well before than Hartmann founded ego psychology that became mainstream in North America. In Europe, before World War Two, significant contributions to what here is called "psychoanalytic ego psychology" (contrasted to Hartmann's "Ego Psyhcology") came from Anna Freud, Paul Federn and Gustav Bally, and after World War Two from Alexander Mitscherlich, Paul Parin and Johannes Cremerius in the German speaking community, and from Joseph Sandler in England. We should talk of "ego psychologies", then, in the same way as we talk of the various object relations theories. Psychoanalytic ego psychology - as it was described in the guiding principles Fenichel wrote about in the 1930s - still informs the clinical work of many psychoanalysts even if they are not fully aware of it, especially in Germany. For example, it represents the basic ingredient of the empirically verifiable "psychoanalytic therapy" detailed by Helmut Thoma and Horst Kachele.