The theories of the ego grouped under the rubric of "ego psychology" originated in Vienna before the Second World War and were developed in the United States by virtue of the migration of their chief proponents, namely Heinz Hartmann, Ernst Kris, and Rudolf Loewenstein. To these names must be added those of Paul Federn, of Hermann Nunberg, and of a good many other authors who helped give wide currency to conceptions of the ego that were destined to attract violent criticism, in France, from Jacques Lacan.

The substantival "das Ich" was so common in German (as was its equivalent in various other languages), that Freud, in the early part of his career, when he was actively searching for the new, paid it little mind. To begin with, Freud took the ego to be an indivisible unity, largely coextensive with the body, and therefore with consciousness. As Goethe had written, "To produce in oneself a new and better ego, thus to...