ABSTRACT
Dr. D. C. Levin makes a most important contribution: it is his forthright emphasis on the theoretical and technical significance of the self. Dr. Levin supported his view that the self was one of the agencies of the mind on clinical as well as on theoretical grounds. Dr. Levin's outlook on therapeutic technique is beyond reproach when he stresses the fallacy of structural interpretations vis-a-vis the problems of the self. To be sure, it is instructive to examine the psychic stresses that trigger the fragmentation of an insecurely established nuclear self. The developmental vignette refers to the birth of the self out of the fragments of autoerotic experience with the support of the "mirroring function" of the mother. The most striking illustration of the influence exerted by the ego upon the self can occasionally be obtained at the beginning of schizophrenia.
