Ego development

The ego is held to develop from the id and to this extent a child develops an identity that is progressively more coherent and independent. The ego develops as an adaptive unit which mediates the adjustment of his instincts to the demands made upon him by external reality and to the painful stimuli to which some action gives rise. In this way the ego progressively removes the child's instincts from the relatively direct contact they had with the external world in his early life. The learned separation of stimulation and response allows the interposition of more complex intellectual activities such as thinking, imagining and planning.

Suggested stages of ego development are; differential of self from nonself; exercise of will in response to impulses; opportunistic manipulation and exploitation of interpersonal relations; internalization of rules, and obedience to them, because conformity confers acceptance; individual morality given precedence over rules, and obligations assessed by inner standards; recognition of individual autonomy and inevitable mutual interdependence; integration. At this stage (which few are believed to reach, because not many realize their full potential), the person proceeds beyond coping with conflict to reconciliation of conflicting demands, renunciation of the unattainable, cherishing individual differences, and achievement of a sense of integrated identity. The major causes of ego development are held to be hereditary rational instinct, nonrational instinctual drives and the external environment (which delays gratification, restricts desired action and gives rise to behavioural habits in accordance with parental training).