The notion of ego syntony plays an important part in psychoanalytic ego psychology. The implication of the term is that the ego represses only those tendencies with which it is at odds, that is, with which it is incompatible. Freud used the term only once, in the encyclopedia article "Psycho-Analysis," which first appeared in Max Marcuse's Handwörterbuch der Sexualwissenschaft (Manual of sexual sciences). "Since these impulses are not ego-syntonic," he wrote, "the ego has repressed them" (1923a, p. 246).

Obviously, compatibility between the ego and the id must vary according to the individual and also as a function of cultural and social affiliation. Sexual relations, for example, were long condemned by the Catholic Church unless their purpose was procreation. This position has gradually changed, but it is worth recalling that as recently as a hundred years ago Protestant circles subscribed to the same idea....