The maintenance of the ego: implications of sensory deprivation research for psychoanalytic ego psychology

Relationship between perceptual deprivation tolerance and adequacy of defenses as measured by the Rorschach.

“…There was some support for this idea in the literature at that time (Christy & Rasmussen, 1963;Nardini, Herrman, & Rasmussen, 1962). In a more recent article (Kracke, 1967), Erika Fromm is quoted as stating that the isolation situation created in some of the experiments is one that is as close as an experimental situation can get to the intrauterine situation. Why, she asks, is it not sheer bliss?…”