tendencies, as in measures of the spontaneous self-concept, they tend to
give evidence of stability in personality .
At this point the astute reader will have noticed that the issue has
not really been resolved. We admitted that self-reports might not ade -
quately assess the functioning of the ego and then suggested that we ex -
amine projective methods. But our assessment of projective techniques
hardly leaves us with confidence in any testimony they might offer. Is itnot possible, you may ask, that there really are profound changes in thefundamental structure of personality but that projective tests, with alltheir limitations, are simply inadequate to the task of finding and docu -
menting them? And if we cannot trust self-reports or projective tests, is
there another way to explore the deeper levels of personality? Is there away to sample the ego at work without letting the ego do the sampling?Is there a way to look for age-related differences in the organization ofbehavior independent of the trait conceptions embedded in our mea-sures? Perhaps an objective and trained observer, sensitized to issues ofpersonality organization and allowed to collect whatever informationseemed relevant, could accomplish the task. Perhaps what we need is anintensive clinical interview. Many people have thought so, and some ofthe most important theorizing on adult development has been gener-ated by this method. We examine it next.Ego Psychologies and Projective Methods 163