Freud - Complete Works (493 page)

On Narcissism: An Introduction

2953

   The importance and extensiveness
of the topic must be my justification for adding a few more remarks
which are somewhat loosely strung together.

   The development of the ego
consists in a departure from primary narcissism and gives rise to a
vigorous attempt to recover that state. This departure is brought
about by means of the displacement of libido on to an ego ideal
imposed from without; and satisfaction is brought about from
fulfilling this ideal.

   At the same time the ego has sent
out the libidinal object-cathexes. It becomes impoverished in
favour of these cathexes, just as it does in favour of the ego
ideal, and it enriches itself once more from its satisfactions in
respect of the object, just as it does by fulfilling its ideal.

   One part of self-regard is
primary - the residue of infantile narcissism; another part arises
out of the omnipotence which is corroborated by experience (the
fulfilment of the ego ideal), whilst a third part proceeds from the
satisfaction of object-libido.

   The ego ideal has imposed severe
conditions upon the satisfaction of libido through objects; for it
causes some of them to be rejected by means of its censor, as being
incompatible. Where no such ideal has been formed, the sexual trend
in question makes its appearance unchanged in the personality in
the form of a perversion. To be their own ideal once more, in
regard to sexual no less than other trends, as they were in
childhood - this is what people strive to attain as their
happiness.

   Being in love consists in a
flowing-over of ego-libido on to the object. It has the power to
remove repressions and re-instate perversions. It exalts the sexual
object into a sexual ideal. Since, with the object type (or
attachment type), being in love occurs in virtue of the fulfilment
of infantile conditions for loving, we may say that whatever
fulfils that condition is idealized.

On Narcissism: An Introduction

2954

   The sexual ideal may enter into
an interesting auxiliary relation to the ego ideal. It may be used
for substitutive satisfaction where narcissistic satisfaction
encounters real hindrances. In that case a person will love in
conformity with the narcissistic type of object-choice, will love
what he once was and no longer is, or else what possesses the
excellences which he never had at all (cf. (
c
)). The formula
parallel to the one there stated runs thus: what possesses the
excellence which the ego lacks for making it an ideal, is loved.
This expedient is of special importance for the neurotic, who, on
account of his excessive object-cathexes, is impoverished in his
ego and is incapable of fulfilling his ego ideal. He then seeks a
way back to narcissism from his prodigal expenditure of libido upon
objects, by choosing a sexual ideal after the narcissistic type
which possesses the excellences to which he cannot attain. This is
the cure by love, which he generally prefers to cure by analysis.
Indeed, he cannot believe in any other mechanism of cure; he
usually brings expectations of this sort with him to the treatment
and directs them towards the person of the physician. The
patient’s incapacity for love, resulting from his extensive
repressions, naturally stands in the way of a therapeutic plan of
this kind. An unintended result is often met with when, by means of
the treatment, he has been partially freed from his repressions: he
withdraws from further treatment in order to choose a love-object,
leaving his cure to be continued by a life with someone he loves.
We might be satisfied with this result, if it did not bring with it
all the dangers of a crippling dependence upon his helper in
need.

   The ego ideal opens up an
important avenue for the understanding of group psychology. In
addition to its individual side, this ideal has a social side; it
is also the common ideal of a family, a class or a nation. It binds
not only a person’s narcissistic libido, but also a
considerable amount of his homosexual libido, which is in this way
turned back into the ego. The want of satisfaction which arises
from the non-fulfilment of this ideal liberates homosexual libido,
and this is transformed into a sense of guilt (social anxiety).
Originally this sense of guilt was a fear of punishment by the
parents, or, more correctly, the fear of losing their love; later
the parents are replaced by an indefinite number of fellow-men. The
frequent causation of paranoia by an injury to the ego, by a
frustration of satisfaction within the sphere of the ego ideal, is
thus made more intelligible, as is the convergence of
ideal-formation and sublimation in the ego ideal, as well as the
involution of sublimations and the possible transformation of
ideals in paraphrenic disorders.

2955

INSTINCTS AND THEIR VICISSITUDES

(1915)

2956

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2957

INSTINCTS AND THEIR VICISSITUDES

We have often heard it maintained that
sciences should be built up on clear and sharply defined basic
concepts. In actual fact no science, not even the most exact,
begins with such definitions. The true beginning of scientific
activity consists rather in describing phenomena and then in
proceeding to group, classify and correlate them. Even at the stage
of description it is not possible to avoid applying certain
abstract ideas to the material in hand, ideas derived from
somewhere or other but certainly not from the new observations
alone. Such ideas which will later become the basic concepts of the
science are still more indispensable as the material is further
worked over. They must at first necessarily possess some degree of
indefiniteness; there can be no question of any clear delimitation
of their content. So long as they remain in this condition, we come
to an understanding about their meaning by making repeated
references to the material of observation from which they appear to
have been derived, but upon which, in fact, they have been imposed.
Thus, strictly speaking, they are in the nature of conventions -
although everything depends on their not being arbitrarily chosen
but determined by their having significant relations to the
empirical material, relations that we seem to sense before we can
clearly recognize and demonstrate them. It is only after more
thorough investigation of the field of observation that we are able
to formulate its basic scientific concepts with increased
precision, and progressively so to modify them that they become
serviceable and consistent over a wide area. Then, indeed, the time
may have come to confine them in definitions. The advance of
knowledge, however, does not tolerate any rigidity even in
definitions. Physics furnishes an excellent illustration of the way
in which even ‘basic concepts’ that have been
established in the form of definitions are constantly being altered
in their content.

   A conventional basic concept of
this kind, which at the moment is still somewhat obscure but which
is indispensable to us in psychology, is that of an ‘instinct
[
Trieb
]’ . Let us try to give a content to it by
approaching it from different angles.

Instincts And Their Vicissitudes

2958

   First, from the angle of
physiology
. This has given us the concept of a
‘stimulus’ and the pattern of the reflex arc, according
to which a stimulus applied to living tissue (nervous substance)
from
the outside is discharged by action
to
the
outside. This action is expedient in so far as it withdraws the
stimulated substance from the influence of the stimulus, removes it
out of its range of operation.

   What is the relation of
‘instinct’ to ‘stimulus’? There is nothing
to prevent our subsuming the concept of ‘instinct’
under that of ‘stimulus’ and saying that an instinct is
a stimulus applied to the mind. But we are immediately set on our
guard against
equating
instinct and mental stimulus. There
are obviously other stimuli to the mind besides those of an
instinctual kind, stimuli which behave far more like physiological
ones. For example, when a strong light falls on the eye, it is not
an instinctual stimulus; it
is
one, however, when a dryness
of the mucous membrane of the pharynx or an irritation of the
mucous membrane of the stomach makes itself felt.¹

   We have now obtained the material
necessary for distinguishing between instinctual stimuli and other
(physiological) stimuli that operate on the mind. In the first
place, an instinctual stimulus does not arise from the external
world but from within the organism itself. For this reason it
operates differently upon the mind and different actions are
necessary in order to remove it. Further, all that is essential in
a stimulus is covered if we assume that it operates with a single
impact, so that it can be disposed of by a single expedient action.
A typical instance of this is motor flight from the source of
stimulation. These impacts may, of course, be repeated and
summated, but that makes no difference to our notion of the process
and to the conditions for the removal of the stimulus. An instinct,
on the other hand, never operates as a force giving a
momentary
impact but always as a
constant
one.
Moreover, since it impinges not from without but from within the
organism, no flight can avail against it. A better term for an
instinctual stimulus is a ‘need’. What does away with a
need is ‘satisfaction’. This can be attained only by an
appropriate (‘adequate’) alteration of the internal
source of stimulation.

  
¹
Assuming, of course, that these internal
processes are the organic basis of the respective needs of thirst
and hunger.

Instincts And Their Vicissitudes

2959

   Let us imagine ourselves in the
situation of an almost entirely helpless living organism, as yet
unorientated in the world, which is receiving stimuli in its
nervous substance. This organism will very soon be in a position to
make a first distinction and a first orientation. On the one hand,
it will be aware of stimuli which can be avoided by muscular action
(flight); these it ascribes to an external world. On the other
hand, it will also be aware of stimuli against which such action is
of no avail and whose character of constant pressure persists in
spite of it; these stimuli are the signs of an internal world, the
evidence of instinctual needs. The perceptual substance of the
living organism will thus have found in the efficacy of its
muscular activity a basis for distinguishing between an
‘outside’ and an ‘inside’.

   We thus arrive at the essential
nature of instincts in the first place by considering their main
characteristics - their origin in sources of stimulation within the
organism and their appearance as a constant force - and from this
we deduce one of their further features, namely, that no actions of
flight avail against them. In the course of this discussion,
however, we cannot fail to be struck by something that obliges us
to make a further admission. In order to guide us in dealing with
the field of psychological phenomena, we do not merely apply
certain conventions to our empirical material as basic
concepts
; we also make use of a number of complicated
postulates
. We have already alluded to the most important of
these, and all we need now do is to state it expressly. This
postulate is of a biological nature, and makes use of the concept
of ‘purpose’ (or perhaps of expediency) and runs as
follows: the nervous system is an apparatus which has the function
of getting rid of the stimuli that reach it, or of reducing them to
the lowest possible level; or which, if it were feasible, would
maintain itself in an altogether unstimulated condition. Let us for
the present not take exception to the indefiniteness of this idea
and let us assign to the nervous system the task - speaking in
general terms - of
mastering stimuli
. We then see how
greatly the simple pattern of the physiological reflex is
complicated by the introduction of instincts. External stimuli
impose only the single task of withdrawing from them; this is
accomplished by muscular movements, one of which eventually
achieves that aim and thereafter, being the expedient movement,
becomes a hereditary disposition. Instinctual stimuli, which
originate from within the organism, cannot be dealt with by this
mechanism. Thus they make far higher demands on the nervous system
and cause it to undertake involved and interconnected activities by
which the external world is so changed as to afford satisfaction to
the internal source of stimulation. Above all, they oblige the
nervous system to renounce its ideal intention of keeping off
stimuli, for they maintain an incessant and unavoidable afflux of
stimulation. We may therefore well conclude that instincts and not
external stimuli are the true motive forces behind the advances
that have led the nervous system, with its unlimited capacities, to
its present high level of development. There is naturally nothing
to prevent our supposing that the instincts themselves are, at
least in part, precipitates of the effects of external stimulation,
which in the course of phylogenesis have brought about
modifications in the living substance.

Instincts And Their Vicissitudes

2960

   When we further find that the
activity of even the most highly developed mental apparatus is
subject to the pleasure principle, i. e. is automatically regulated
by feelings belonging to the pleasure-unpleasure series, we can
hardly reject the further hypothesis that these feelings reflect
the manner in which the process of mastering stimuli takes place -
certainly in the sense that unpleasurable feelings are connected
with an increase and pleasurable feelings with a decrease of
stimulus. We will, however, carefully preserve this assumption in
its present highly indefinite form, until we succeed, if that is
possible, in discovering what sort of relation exists between
pleasure and unpleasure, on the one hand, and fluctuations in the
amounts of stimulus affecting mental life, on the other. It is
certain that many very various relations of this kind, and not very
simple ones, are possible.

   If now we apply ourselves to
considering mental life from a
biological
point of view, an
‘instinct’ appears to us as a concept on the frontier
between the mental and the somatic, as the psychical representative
of the stimuli originating from within the organism and reaching
the mind, as a measure of the demand made upon the mind for work in
consequence of its connection with the body.

   We are now in a position to
discuss certain terms which are used in reference to the concept of
an instinct - for example, its ‘pressure’, its
‘aim’, its ‘object’ and its
‘source’.

   By the pressure [
Drang
] of
an instinct we understand its motor factor, the amount of force or
the measure of the demand for work which it represents. The
characteristic of exercising pressure is common to all instincts;
it is in fact their very essence. Every instinct is a piece of
activity; if we speak loosely of passive instincts, we can only
mean instincts whose
aim
is passive.

   The aim [
Ziel
] of an
instinct is in every instance satisfaction, which can only be
obtained by removing the state of stimulation at the source of the
instinct. But although the ultimate aim of each instinct remains
unchangeable, there may yet be different paths leading to the same
ultimate aim; so that an instinct may be found to have various
nearer or intermediate aims, which are combined or interchanged
with one another. Experience permits us also to speak of instincts
which are ‘inhibited in their aim’, in the case of
processes which are allowed to make some advance towards
instinctual satisfaction but are then inhibited or deflected. We
may suppose that even processes of this kind involve a partial
satisfaction.

   The object [
Objekt
] of an
instinct is the thing in regard to which or through which the
instinct is able to achieve its aim. It is what is most variable
about an instinct and is not originally connected with it, but
becomes assigned to it only in consequence of being peculiarly
fitted to make satisfaction possible. The object is not necessarily
something extraneous: it may equally well be a part of the
subject’s own body. It may be changed any number of times in
the course of the vicissitudes which the instinct undergoes during
its existence; and highly important parts are played by this
displacement of instinct. It may happen that the same object serves
for the satisfaction of several instincts simultaneously, a
phenomenon which Adler has called a ‘confluence’ of
instincts [
Triebverschränkung
]’. A particularly
close attachment of the instinct to its object is distinguished by
the term ‘fixation’. This frequently occurs at very
early periods of the development of an instinct and puts an end to
its mobility through its intense opposition to detachment.

Instincts And Their Vicissitudes

2961

   By the source [
Quelle
] of
an instinct is meant the somatic process which occurs in an organ
or part of the body and whose stimulus is represented in mental
life by an instinct. We do not know whether this process is
invariably of a chemical nature or whether it may also correspond
to the release of other, e.g. mechanical, forces. The study of the
sources of instincts lies outside the scope of psychology. Although
instincts are wholly determined by their origin in a somatic
source, in mental life we know them only by their aims. An exact
knowledge of the sources of an instinct is not invariably necessary
for purposes of psychological investigation; sometimes its source
may be inferred from its aim.

   Are we to suppose that the
different instincts which originate in the body and operate on the
mind are also distinguished by different
qualities
, and that
that is why they behave in qualitatively different ways in mental
life? This supposition does not seem to be justified; we are much
more likely to find the simpler assumption sufficient - that the
instincts are all qualitatively alike and owe the effect they make
only to the amount of excitation they carry, or perhaps, in
addition, to certain functions of that quantity. What distinguishes
from one another the mental effects produced by the various
instincts may be traced to the difference in their sources. In any
event, it is only in a later connection that we shall be able to
make plain what the problem of the quality of instincts
signifies.