ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the concept of ego defense and then go on to develop an alternative model, which frees the ego from any derivative relationship to instinct in the Sigmund Freudian id sense of the word. One of the most memorable and useful derivatives of psychoanalytic theory is the conception of the ego as an independent agent of adaptation to reality. Psychodynamic neurology may also be laughably simple minded, but it tries, at least, to avoid the philosophical and practical pitfalls of the extant paradigms that it is designed to supplant. Psychodynamic neurology has a specific mechanism for the existence of duplicity and for deception. When a child is born with perfectly normal brain function, a long period of social learning ensues in which parental support is critical to the development of adaptive behavior. Sleep plays its silent but critical background role. Ego development is usually normal in such children.
