ABSTRACT
This chapter explores whether the concepts of the ego and the self have anything to contribute to their endeavours. Both the ego and the self as theoretical entities define ways in which distinguishable psychic structures and functions are subjected to regulation, and this occasion provides an opportunity to review some tentative formulations of their interaction. The concept of the ego is related not only to consciousness and so to perception, but also to the organization of psychic contents. Both C. G. Jung and Melanie Klein stressed the operation of inner mental processes as decisive. While Klein could be more specific, Jung could be more individual: the person was healthy who was living according to his real nature, which expresses itself through imagery and the inner sense of what is right for him. Any concept of mental health must include the consideration of variables and emergent possibilities in a periodically unstable system.
