ABSTRACT
The ego, Melanie Klein explains, responds to the fear of being destroyed by the death instinct by performing the functions of projection and introjection. Klein posits that the move from id to ego occurs through the introjection of “part objects”. Klein, truly a scholar of Freudian thinking, relied on Freud’s fundamental framework while reading him in a way that makes room for her additions within that framework. Jacques Lacan was dissatisfied with the formulations of ego and id. He did not seek to contradict Freud, and always said he wanted to restore him. The ego is the result of a negotiation between perception and phantasy, and between representation and perception, ideal ego and external reality. Lacan said of the idea of the whole self precipitated by the baby’s encounter with its specular image.
