When The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defence was first published in German in 1936 it was at once recognized as a major contribution to psychoanalytic psychology, and its translation into English quickly followed. More than half a century later it enjoys the status of a classic. Written by a pioneer of child analysis, and illustrated by fascinating clinical pictures drawn from childhood and adolescence, it discusses those adaptive measures by which instinctual life achieves control, as well as the ways in which painful or unwanted feeling-states are kept at bay or made more bearable.