The new ego

This work which advances the following propositions about recent psychoanalytic writing: 1) The central term identification has been used in so many and in such indefinite senses that it is now best to replace it with less slippery terms; 2) the word identity adds nothing whatever to the descriptive power of statements about the self, and it would be well to renounce its use entirely; 3) the promotion of the ego to an elevated position in psychoanalysis, a steady trend since 1940, has added little that common sense was unaware of to our understanding of real events. More generally, this book addresses a problem central in social science: the nature of the psychic bonds that tie the individual to his society. It is a comprehensive examination of the way in which psychoanalysis, with its promise of enlarging understanding of the forces and mechanisms through which the self forms links with the other, has been fulfilling this promise.