Genetic Epistemology and Psychoanalytic Ego Psychology: Clinical Support for the Study of Response to Literature.

ion and mental reflection. It is the instincts that abstraction and reflective thought attempt to deal with. Undifferentiated instincts and heightened egocentrism mark the progression from one period to another. In other words, the beginning of each period is marked by egocentrism, the same egocentrism characteristic of early infantile development where there is a general failure, on the part of the individual, to coordinate relations with other people and objects. Although each period brings new demands, demands that will, in turn, help the individual move further away from his egocentric world, it is also clear that the confusion resulting from the passage into a new period is a confusion from having to coordinate sophisticated relations on new levels of interand intra-personal interaction. Intellectualization is one way the adolescent comes to deal with these new levels of personal interaction. For the adolescent, then, abstraction and reflective thought, rather than action, are the end products of intellectualization. Piaget (1950) speaks directly about the tendency of adolescents to engage in reflective thought and intellectualization when he elaborates on the phase of transition from concrete operations to formal operations: "The reflective thought, which is characteristic of the adolescent, exists . when the subject becomes capable of reasoning in a hypothetico-deductive manner" (p. 148) . Consequently, with the onset of formal operations we add to the general picture of shared adolescent tendencies not only intellectualization but also reflection in both cognitive and ego-related activities. These characteristics, besides marking the emergency of formal operations and puberty, act as the adolescent's general defenses against an overpowering instinctual id and heightened egocentricity. Erik Erikson (1968) , when describing the adolescent's attempts to deal with the instinctual id, maintains that the development of an ego-identity is the foremost accomplishment of pubescence. According to Erikson, it is the development of an ego-identity that helps restore an equilibrium to the psyche which This content downloaded from 207.46. 13.112 on Mon, 03 Oct 2016 05:19:58 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor. org/terms 32 RESEARCH IN THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH is caught in a regressive revival of infantile sexuality. He concludes that the adaptive ego, in the form of an ego-identity, is the most important control for both instinct and superego domination tendencies. From the work of Anna Freud, Jean Piaget, and Erik Erikson, it is clear that the onset of adolescence is accompanied by relative undifferentiation a lack of equilibrium in both the cognitive intellect and the psychic ego. They see the development of various defenses, generally shared by adolescents, to counter undifferentiation and restore an equilibrium to the intellect and the ego. The development, on the cognitive level, of the ability to reason in a hypotheticodeductive manner is accompanied by the abilities to abstract, intellectualize, and reflect. Stage-specific parameters appear to be of the utmost importance, since they do set, as least partially, the limits and abilities of the individual at any given stage. A child of eight, for example, can not be expected to perform those cognitive, emotive, and ego-related processes that are developed in a later stagespecific period. What can be dealt with at any given developmental period is defined by the cognitive and ego operations of the individual in the specific stage and by the operations of the preceding stages. The extensive clinical evidence available (D£carie, 1965; Smirnoff, 1971; Model, 1968) supports this conclusion. Hence, we see the importance of understanding, even generally, developmental periods. The researcher, before attempting to understand the behavior and responses of adolescents, should be familiar with the characteristics of human developmental periods.