ABSTRACT
Analysts have entertained images about the epigenesis of the ego that have, naturally, been much affected by the intellectual development of their master, Sigmund Freud. According to David Rapaport, who was in about as good a position to make such judgments as anyone:
The formative influences in Freud’s background were the Jewish tradition, an early developed interest in literature (especially a devotion to Goethe and, through him, to ancient Rome), courses with Brentano of act-psychology fame, the impact of Darwin’s theory of evolution, clinical and laboratory research in neurology and neuroanatomy (in the orbit of men from Helmholtz’s circle), clinical psychiatric work (with Meynert), clinical work with neuroses (at first with Breuer, Charcot and Bernheim), and self-observation. (1960, p. 11)
