ABSTRACT
The quality of analytic outcome may be related to whether and to what extent a patient can allow symbols of psychic creativity to emerge and, finally, be integrated with body experience. M. Milner and A. Ehrenzweig point out various ways the ego symbolizes its shifting states of tension and harmony as it moves through different worlds of experience. The ego, for example, may represent its own self-experience and, more broadly, its sense of psychic creativity by means of androgynous god images. The ego is threatened but also exhilarated by the mounting sense of aliveness linked with an increase in personal creativity. The mind spontaneously creates ideal images which enter into varied points of tension and harmony with representations of material reality. In instances of serious personality impoverishment contact with ideal images can genuinely nourish the ego, build supplies, and restore hope, as well as stimulate and support the wish for meaningful work.
