Part 37

In my opinion, therefore, the question how far the quite justifiable distinction between sexual and self-preservative instincts is to be carried has not much importance for psycho-analysis, nor is psycho-analysis competent to deal with it. From the biological point of view there are certainly various indications that the distinction is important. For the sexual function is the only function of a living organism which extends beyond the individual and secures its connection with its species. It is undeniable that the exercise of this function does not always bring advantage to the individual, as do his other activities, but that for the sake of an exceptionally high degree of pleasure he is involved by this function in dangers which jeopardize his life and often enough exact it. Quite peculiar metabolic processes, different from all others, are probably required in order to preserve a portion of the individual’s life as a disposition for posterity. And finally, the individual organism that regards itself as first in importance and its sexuality as a means like any other to its own satisfaction is from a biological point of view only an episode in a series of generations, a short-lived appendage to a germplasm which is endowed with virtual immortality, comparable to the temporary holder of an entail that will survive his death.

We are not concerned with such far-reaching considerations, however, in the psycho-analytic elucidation of the neuroses. By means of following up the distinction between the sexual and the Ego-instincts we have gained the key to comprehension of the group of transference neuroses. We were able to trace back their origin to a fundamental situation in which the sexual instincts had come into conflict with the self-preservative instincts, or—to express it biologically, though at the same time less exactly—in which the Ego in its capacity of independent individual organism had entered into opposition with itself in its other capacity as a member of a series of generations. Such a dissociation perhaps only exists in man, so that, taken all in all, his superiority over the other animals may come down to his capacity for neurosis. The excessive development of his Libido and the rich elaboration of his mental life (perhaps directly made possible by it) seem to constitute the conditions which give rise to a conflict of this kind. It is at any rate clear that these are the conditions under which man has progressed so greatly beyond what he has in common with the animals, so that his capacity for neurosis would merely be the obverse of his capacity for cultural development. However, these again are but speculations which distract us from the task in hand.

Our work so far has been conducted on the assumption that the manifestations of the sexual and the Ego-instincts can be distinguished from one another. In the transference neuroses this is possible without any difficulty. We called the investments of energy directed by the Ego towards the object of its sexual desires ‘Libido,’ and all the other investments proceeding from the self-preservative instincts its ‘interest’; and by following up the investments with Libido, their transformations, and their final fates, we were able to acquire our first insight into the workings of the forces in mental life. The transference neuroses offered the best material for this exploration. The Ego, however,—its composition out of various organizations with their structure and mode of functioning—remained undiscovered; we were led to believe that analysis of other neurotic disturbances would be required before light could be gained on these matters.

The extension of psycho-analytic conceptions on to these other affections was begun in early days. Already in 1908 K. Abraham expressed the view after a discussion with me that the main characteristic of dementia præcox (reckoned as one of the psychoses) is that in this disease _the investment of objects with Libido is lacking_. (_The Psycho-Sexual Differences between Hysteria and Dementia Præcox_). But then the question arose: what happens to the Libido of dementia patients when it is diverted from its objects? Abraham did not hesitate to answer that it is turned back upon the Ego, and that _this reflex reversion of it is the origin of the delusions of grandeur in dementia præcox_. The delusion of grandeur is in every way comparable to the well-known overestimation of the object in a love-relationship. Thus we came for the first time to understand a feature of a psychotic affection by bringing it into relation to the normal mode of loving in life.

I will tell you at once that these early views of Abraham’s have been retained in psycho-analysis and have become the basis of our position regarding the psychoses. We became slowly accustomed to the conception that the Libido, which we find attached to certain objects and which is the expression of a desire to gain some satisfaction in these objects, can also abandon these objects and set the Ego itself in their place; and gradually this view developed itself more and more consistently. The name for this utilization of the Libido—NARCISSISM—we borrowed from a perversion described by P. Näcke, in which an adult individual lavishes upon his own body all the caresses usually expended only upon a sexual object other than himself.

Reflection then at once disclosed that if a fixation of this kind to the subject’s own body and his own person can occur it cannot be an entirely exceptional or meaningless phenomenon. On the contrary, it is probable that this _narcissism_ is the universal original condition, out of which _object-love_ develops later without thereby necessarily effecting a disappearance of the narcissism. One also had to remember the evolution of object-Libido, in which to begin with many of the sexual impulses are gratified on the child’s own body—as we say, auto-erotically—and that this capacity for auto-erotism accounts for the backwardness of sexuality in learning to conform to the reality-principle. Thus it appeared that auto-erotism was the sexual activity of the narcissistic phase of direction of the Libido.

To put it briefly, we formed an idea of the relation between the Ego-Libido and the object-Libido which I can illustrate to you by a comparison taken from zoology. Think of the simplest forms of life consisting of a little mass of only slightly differentiated protoplasmic substances. They extend protrusions which are called pseudopodia into which the protoplasm overflows. They can, however, again withdraw these extensions of themselves and reform themselves into a mass. We compare this extending of protrusions to the radiation of Libido on to the objects, while the greatest volume of Libido may yet remain within the Ego; we infer that under normal conditions Ego-Libido can transform itself into object-Libido without difficulty and that this can again subsequently be absorbed into the Ego.

With the help of these conceptions it is now possible to explain a whole series of mental states, or, to express it more modestly, to describe in terms of the Libido-theory conditions that belong to normal life; for instance, the mental attitude pertaining to the conditions of “being in love,” of organic illness, and of sleep. Of the condition of sleep we assumed that it is founded upon a withdrawal from the outer world and a concentration upon the wish to sleep. We found that the nocturnal mental activity which is expressed in dreams served the purpose of the wish to sleep, and, moreover, that it was governed exclusively by egoistic motives. In the light of the Libido-theory we may carry this further and say that sleep is a condition in which all investments of objects, the libidinal as well as the egoistic, are abandoned and withdrawn again into the Ego. Does not this shed a new light upon the recuperation afforded by sleep and upon the nature of fatigue in general? The likeness we see in the condition which the sleeper conjures up again every night to the blissful isolation of the intra-uterine existence is thus confirmed and amplified in its mental aspects. In the sleeper the primal state of the Libido-distribution is again reproduced, that of absolute narcissism, in which Libido and Ego-interests dwell together still, united and indistinguishable in the self-sufficient Self.

Two observations are in place here. First, how is the concept ‘narcissism’ distinguished from ‘egoism’? In my opinion, narcissism is the libidinal complement of egoism. When one speaks of egoism one is thinking only of the _interests_ of the person concerned, narcissism relates also to the satisfaction of his libidinal needs. It is possible to follow up the two separately for a considerable distance as practical motives in life. A man may be absolutely egoistic and yet have strong libidinal attachments to objects, in so far as libidinal satisfaction in an object is a need of his Ego: his egoism will then see to it that his desires towards the object involve no injury to his Ego. A man may be egoistic and at the same time strongly narcissistic (i.e. feel very little need for objects), and this again either in the form taken by the need for direct sexual satisfaction, or in those higher forms of feeling derived from the sexual needs which are commonly called “love,” and as such are contrasted with “sensuality.” In all these situations egoism is the self-evident, the constant element, and narcissism the variable one. The antithesis of egoism, “altruism,” is not an alternative term for the investment of an object with Libido; it is distinct from the latter in its lack of the desire for sexual satisfaction in the object. But when the condition of love is developed to its fullest intensity altruism coincides with the investment of an object with Libido. As a rule the sexual object draws to itself a portion of the Ego’s narcissism, which becomes apparent in what is called the ‘sexual overestimation’ of the object. If to this is added an altruism directed towards the object and derived from the egoism of the lover, the sexual object becomes supreme; it has entirely swallowed up the Ego.

I think you will find it a relief if, after these scientific phantasies, which are after all very dry, I submit to you a poetic description of the ‘economic’ contrast between the condition of narcissism and that of love in full intensity. I take it from a dialogue between Zuleika and her lover in Goethe’s _Westöstliche Divan_:—

ZULEIKA:

The slave, the lord of victories, The crowd, with single voice, confess In sense of personal being lies A child of earth’s true happiness. There’s not a life he need refuse If his true self he does not miss: There’s not a thing he cannot lose If he remains the man he is.

HÂTEM:

So it is held! so well may be! But down a different track I come Of all the bliss earth holds for me I in Zuleika find the sum. Does she expend her being on me, Myself grows to myself of cost; Turns she away, then instantly I to my very self am lost. And then with Hâtem all were over; Though yet I should but change my state; Swift, should she grace some happy lover, In him I were incorporate.[52]

The second observation is an amplification of the theory of dreams. The way in which a dream originates is not explicable unless we assume that what is repressed in the Unconscious has acquired a certain independence of the Ego, so that it does not subordinate itself to the wish for sleep and maintains its investments, although all the object-investments proceeding from the Ego have been withdrawn for the purpose of sleep. Only this makes it possible to understand how it is that this unconscious material can make use of the abrogation or diminution in the activities of the censorship which takes place at night, and that it knows how to mould the day’s residue so as to form a forbidden dream-wish from the material to hand in that residue. On the other hand, some of the resistance against the wish to sleep and the withdrawal of Libido thereby induced may have its origin in an association already in existence between this residue and the repressed unconscious material. This important dynamic factor must therefore now be incorporated into the conception of dream-formation which we formed in our earlier discussions.

Certain conditions—organic illness, painful accesses of stimulation, an inflammatory condition of an organ—have clearly the effect of loosening the Libido from its attachment to its objects. The Libido which has thus been withdrawn attaches itself again to the Ego in the form of a stronger investment of the diseased region of the body. Indeed, one may venture the assertion that in such conditions the withdrawal of the Libido from its objects is more striking than the withdrawal of egoistic interests from their concerns in the outer world. This seems to lead to a possibility of understanding hypochondria, in which some organ, without being perceptibly diseased, becomes in a very similar way the subject of a solicitude on the part of the Ego. I shall, however, resist the temptation to follow this up, or to discuss other situations which become explicable or capable of exposition on this assumption of a return of the object-Libido into the Ego; for I feel bound to meet two objections which I know have all your attention at the moment. First of all, you want to know why when I discuss sleep, illness, and similar conditions, I insist upon distinguishing between Libido and ‘interests,’ sexual instincts and Ego-instincts, while the observations are satisfactorily explained by assuming a single uniform energy which is freely mobile, can invest either object or Ego, and can serve the purposes of the one as well as of the other. Secondly, you will want to know how I can be so bold as to treat the detachment of the Libido from its objects as the origin of a pathological condition, if such a transformation of object-Libido into Ego-Libido—or into Ego-energy in general—is a normal mental process repeated every day and every night.

The answer is: Your first objection sounds a good one. Examination of the conditions of sleep, illness, and falling in love would probably never have led to a distinction between Ego-Libido and object-Libido, or between Libido and ‘interests.’ But in this you omit to take into account the investigations with which we started, in the light of which we now regard the mental situations under discussion. The necessity of distinguishing between Libido and ‘interests,’ between sexual and self-preservative instincts, has been forced upon us by our insight into the conflict from which the transference neuroses arise. We have to reckon with this distinction henceforward. The assumption that object-Libido can transform itself into Ego-Libido, in other words, that we shall also have to reckon with an Ego-Libido, appears to be the only one capable of solving the riddle of what are called the narcissistic neuroses, e.g. dementia præcox, or of giving any satisfactory explanation of their likeness to hysteria and obsessions and differences from them. We then apply what we have found undeniably proved in these cases to illness, sleep, and the condition of intense love. We are at liberty to apply them in any direction and see where they will take us. The single conclusion which is not directly based on analytical experience is that Libido is Libido and remains so, whether it is attached to objects or to the Ego itself, and is never transformed into egoistic ‘interests’ and vice versa. This statement, however, is another way of expressing the distinction between sexual instincts and Ego-instincts which we have already critically examined, and which we shall hold to from heuristic motives until such time as it may prove valueless.

Your second objection too raises a justifiable question, but it is directed to a false issue. The withdrawal of object-Libido into the Ego is certainly not pathogenic; it is true that it occurs every night before sleep can ensue, and that the process is reversed upon awakening. The protoplasmic animalcule draws in its protrusions and sends them out again at the next opportunity. But it is quite a different matter when a definite, very forcible process compels the withdrawal of the Libido from its objects. The Libido that has then become narcissistic can no longer find its way back to its objects, and this obstruction in the way of the free movement of the Libido certainly does prove pathogenic. It seems that an accumulation of narcissistic Libido over and above a certain level becomes intolerable. We might well imagine that it was this that first led to the investment of objects, that the Ego was obliged to send forth its Libido in order not to fall ill of an excessive accumulation of it. If it were part of our scheme to go more particularly into the disorder of dementia præcox I would show you that the process which detaches the Libido from its objects and blocks the way back to them again is closely allied to the process of repression, and is to be regarded as a counterpart of it. In any case you would recognize familiar ground under your feet when you found that the preliminary conditions giving rise to these processes are almost identical, so far as we know at present, with those of repression. The conflict seems to be the same and to be conducted between the same forces. Since the outcome is so different from that of hysteria, for instance, the reason can only lie in some difference in the disposition. The weak point in the Libido-development in these patients is found at a different phase of the development; the decisive fixation which, as you will remember, enables the process of symptom-formation to break out is at another point, probably at the stage of primary narcissism, to which dementia præcox finally returns. It is most remarkable that for all the narcissistic neuroses we have to assume fixation-points of the Libido at very much earlier phases of development than those found in hysteria or the obsessional neurosis. You have heard, however, that the concepts we have elicited from the study of the transference neuroses also suffice to show us our bearings in the narcissistic neuroses, which are in practice so much more severe. There is a very wide community between them; fundamentally they are phenomena of a single class. You may imagine how hopeless a task it is for anyone to attempt to explain these disorders (which properly belong to psychiatry) without being first equipped with the analytic knowledge of the transference neuroses.

The picture formed by the symptoms of dementia præcox, incidentally a very variable one, is not determined exclusively by the symptoms arising from the forcing of the Libido back from the objects and the accumulation of it as narcissism in the Ego. Other phenomena occupy a large part of the field, and may be traced to the efforts made by the Libido to reach its objects again, which correspond therefore to attempts at restitution and recovery. These are in fact the conspicuous, clamorous symptoms; they exhibit a marked similarity to those of hysteria, or more rarely of the obsessional neurosis; they are nevertheless different in every respect. It seems that in dementia præcox the efforts of the Libido to get back to its objects, that is, to the mental idea of its objects, do really succeed in conjuring up something of them, something that at the same time is only the shadow of them—namely, the verbal images, the words, attached to them. This is not the place to discuss this matter further, but in my opinion this reversed procedure on the part of the Libido gives us an insight into what constitutes the real difference between a conscious and an unconscious idea.

This has now brought us into the field where the next advances in analytic work are to be expected. Since the time when we resolved upon our formulation of the conception of Ego-Libido, the narcissistic neuroses have become accessible to us; the task before us was to find the dynamic factors in these disorders, and at the same time to amplify our knowledge of mental life by a comprehension of the Ego. The psychology of the Ego, at which we are aiming, cannot be founded upon data provided by our own self-perceptions; it must be based, as is that of the Libido, upon analysis of the disturbances and disintegrations of the Ego. We shall probably think very little of our present knowledge of the fate of the Libido, gained from the study of the transference neuroses, when that further, greater work has been achieved. But as yet we have not got very far towards it. The narcissistic neuroses can hardly be approached at all by the method which has availed for the transference neuroses; you shall soon hear why this is. With these patients it always happens that after one has penetrated a little way one comes up against a stone wall which cannot be surmounted. You know that in the transference neuroses, too, barriers of resistance of this kind are met with, but that it is possible bit by bit to pull them down. In the narcissistic neuroses the resistance is insuperable; at the most we can satisfy our curiosity by craning our necks for a glimpse or two at what is going on over the wall. Our technique will therefore have to be replaced by other methods; at present we do not know whether we shall succeed in finding a substitute. There is no lack of material with these patients; they bring forward a great deal, although not in answer to our questions; at present all we can do is to interpret what they say in the light of the understanding gained from the study of the transference neuroses. The agreement between the two forms of disease goes far enough to ensure us a satisfactory start with them. How much we shall be able to achieve by this method remains to be seen.

There are other difficulties, besides this, in the way of our progress. The narcissistic disorders and the psychoses related to them can only be unriddled by observers trained in the analytic study of the transference neuroses. But our psychiatrists do not study psycho-analysis and we psycho-analysts see too little of psychiatric cases. We shall have to develop a breed of psychiatrists who have gone through the training of psycho-analysis as a preparatory science. A beginning in this direction is being made in America, where several of the leading psychiatrists lecture on psycho-analytic doctrines to their students, and where medical superintendents of institutions and asylums endeavour to observe their patients in the light of this theory. But all the same it has sometimes been possible for us here to take a peep over the wall of narcissism, so I will now proceed to tell you what we think we have discovered in this way.