Heinz Hartmann - Writings and Influence

Writings and Influence

1922 saw the publication of Hartmann's first article, on depersonalization, which was followed by a number of studies on psychoses, neuroses, twins, etc.

In 1939, Hartmann, in what Otto Fenichel called "a very interesting paper, tried to show that adaptation has been studied too much from the point of view of mental conflict. He points out that there is also a 'sphere without conflict'" – something that would be repeatedly emphasized in ego-psychology. In the same year, in "Psychoanalysis and the Concept of Health", he made an impressive contribution to defining normality and health in psychoanalytic terms.

The subsequent development of ego-psychology within psychoanalysis, with its shift from instinct theory to the adaptive functions of the ego has been seen as allowing psychoanalysis and psychology to move closer to each other. Ego-psychology became in fact the dominant psychoanalytic force in the States for the next half-century or so, before object relations theory began to come to the fore. It formed the basis and starting-point for the self psychology of Heinz Kohut, for example, which both ooposed and was rooted in Hartmann's theory of libido.