ABSTRACT
It would be a mistake to infer from the title of this symposium that the subject is one of purely theoretical interest. Actually the issues bear closely on the development of 'clinical' psycho-analysis. Indeed the attempt to combine psychiatric diagnosis with psycho-analytical standards is responsible for a considerable variation in the criteria used by analysts in their consulting work. This brings to the third and apparently most promising factor in assessment, viz. the structure of the ego. Actually, the title of this symposium is misleading: it should have been called 'Psychic Strength and Psychic Weakness'. The ego is after all only a part or aspect of the total Psyche, and, as we have seen, the problem of strength or weakness cannot be divorced from dynamic concepts of instinctual and affective energy. This is the original draft of a contribution to a symposium on 'Ego Strength and Ego Weakness' held during the Fifteenth International Psycho-Analytical Congress, Paris, 1938.
