Western philosophy throughout history
Western philosophers, through out the history of Western philosophy, have been “self” oriented in their thinking. It was Descartes who made the categorical statement “I think, therefore I am” (cogito ergo sum). The existentialist philosophers assumed the “existence” of the “self,” even when they seemed to deny it. Even Sigmund Freud, who saw the personality as an energy system, used the term ego to refer to the rational part of the mind. His later followers became more interested in the ego as a reality, and changed their focus from a concern with the conflict between the id and the ego, and began to focus on what they saw as the more realistic relation between the ego and its object. Therefore, Modern Western psychotherapy is often seen as a way of strengthening the "ego." It was Alfred Adler, who was an early associate of Freud, who first pointed in that direction.