ABSTRACT
Sigmund Freud used the term ego to include the sense of self, not simply the agency that affects the realization of drives. Each human being has a sense of him- or herself as a separate and autonomous entity, a “who I am” that is maintained across time and events. Freud left this aspect of the ego relatively unexplored, concentrating his efforts on the mechanisms by which the ego regulates drive discharge. Self-psychology first appeared in the work of the American psychiatrist Harry Stack Sullivan. Sullivan believed that the experience of the self was primarily a social one (Sadock & Sadock, 2000). In part, this belief came from that fact that the only self that is observable is in interaction with others. Sullivan believed that the earliest sense of self is created by the bond between mother and infant, a bond characterized by empathy and attunement. This self-system later becomes a rich network of relationships and is used by the self to modulate anxiety. For Sullivan, the personality is the “relatively enduring pattern of interpersonal relations that characterize human life” (Sadock & Sadock, 2000, p. 633).
