ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on one aspect of the clinical material, namely the ego aspect. While the affect aspect is often more prominent, the ego regulation is less striking. The level of functioning of ego is inbuilt in way in which the patient speaks, thinks or relates to the therapist. This must be “searched” for by studying the shape and configuration of the material. In the therapy sessions, qualities of the transference are what all inform the therapist of how differentiated the patient’s ego is functioning. As a contribution to systematization, the chapter introduces two levels of transference: conflict transference and deficit transference. The main idea is that the organizing of tension in the form of intrapsychic conflict structures may only happen after a certain ego development has taken place. A paranoid transference may be understood as an ego regression. The distinction between the self and the object has been effaced.
