Ego vicissitudes in response to replacement or loss of body parts. Certain analogies to events during psychoanalytic treatment.

A comparison is made between the analytic experience and two distinct kinds of surgery, i.e., organ transplant operations and more traditional surgical procedures. Basically, the first add new parts, while the latter remove old parts. This fundamental difference influences patients' response to the surgical intervention. Similarly, in analysis one can identify phases when the patient is troubled over the possibility of acquiring new parts of the self, and other phases, usually later in treatment, when he mourns the loss of old and familiar parts. These generalizations bear on the problem of resistance to change during analysis and patients' fears about permitting themselves to be influenced by analytic treatment.