Ego-Psychology and the Psychoses consists of Edoardo Weiss's compilation of sixteen of Paul Federn's papers on ego psychology, his primary field. Federn (1871-1950), a member of Freud's inner circle, was one of the first psychoanalysts to treat psychotics. His psychoanalytic understanding was influenced by a phenomenological focus, his definition of the ego was experiential, and his major concepts were ego feelings, ego boundaries and ego states. As he understood it, in schizophrenia the ego is too weak to sustain the dominance of advanced ego states essential for mature functioning, due to overly-strong fixations on primitive ego states. Federn saw the prodromal phase of psychosis as beginning with a loss of ego cathexis, while Freud (1911c [1910]) emphasized the withdrawal of object cathexis. Federn supported his position by the observation that psychotics may maintain object interest in the presence of feelings of estrangement....