Ego States: Theory and Therapy

The chapter begins by stating the authors' position plainly: many personality theories pile abstraction upon abstraction, offering no concrete case material or new ideas about treatment; ego-state theory was developed from the ideas of earlier thinkers and so must show its debt openly. John and Helen Watkins list the roots of the theory: Janet described dissociation before Freud and his «unconscious personality» concept closely resembles the ego state; Jung said «the complex does not belong to the person, the person belongs to the complex» and advanced the plurality of personality; Federn gave the concepts of psychic energy and ego cathexis.

The authors say that dissociation was long regarded as «abnormal» because it was studied only in hysteria and psychopathological patients, whereas most of their own material comes from normal problems (overweight, laziness, smoking addiction) and neurotic conditions. They mention Hilgard's «neo-dissociation» theory and the «hidden observer» phenomenon, and propose the term «influence» in place of «interference». Although ego-state therapy is an analytic method it differs from psychoanalysis at many points: they have combined Federn's ideas with Weiss's and changed the energy theory with clinical and experimental information.

The section «Energies and the function of personality» is built on two dualities. The first is «conscious–unconscious»: they ask what we mean by «being conscious of something». A person whose hand moves up and down after hypnosis is aware of the movement but does not say «I am doing this»; cases of sleepwalkers or of one of several personalities speaking while another is unaware show that consciousness is not single and that one or more segments of the personality may be conscious. There is a legal consequence too: at what point is an action conscious and when should a person be held responsible?

The second duality is «subject–object»: conscious–unconscious alone is not enough to describe human existence. The subject is experience «inside me, arising from my own essence», the object comes from outside. The same experience can be both: reading the sentence «the girl was running down the street» the image comes from the word (objective), the details (blonde, dark) from an inner stimulus (subjective). The authors explain it with dream examples: in a dream you see a man beating a child — you do not know either, you are not upset; if you pity the child, «affective identification» has begun; if the man looks like you, the object is still an object. The chapter is in dry academic style; useful to a systematic reader, heavy for a casual one.

• Each chapter explains the theoretical frame with clinical examples
• The authors openly show their sources and their own differing positions
• The concepts of personality, energy and dissociation are built step by step
• The language is academic and loaded with terms