The ego is a late product of the subject’s own projecting activity.

Evidence

Between the true object and the undisputed data of the senses, between within and without, there is a gulf which the subject must bridge at his own risk. In order to reflect the thing as it is, the subject must return to it more than he receives from it. The subject creates the world outside himself from the traces which it leaves in his senses: the unity of the thing in its manifold characteristics and states; and he therefore constitutes the `I’ retrospectively by learning to grant a synthetic unity not only to the external impressions, but to the internal impressions which gradually separate off from them. The real ego is the most recent constant product of projection. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 365

Categorization

• DEFINE: Gives the Frankfurt School’s technical sense of ‘projection’ as the constitutive mechanism of the ego, not merely a defense mechanism.
• XREF: Connects to Adorno and Horkheimer’s dialectic of enlightenment thesis that the subject’s mastery of inner and outer nature is self-defeating. — connects to: The ego is a late product of projection, not a primordial given. — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 149; The ego is itself a product of projection, not its origin — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1437; The Ego appears only when consciousness reflects on itself. (+1 more)
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: The ego is a late product of projection, not a primordial given. — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 149; The ego is itself a product of projection, not its origin — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1437; The Ego appears only when consciousness reflects on itself. (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• The ego is a late product of projection, not a primordial given. #corroborates (0.98) — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 149
• The ego is itself a product of projection, not its origin #corroborates (0.98) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1437
• The Ego is a transcendent unity of states, qualities, and acts #complicates (0.75)