Freud - Complete Works (574 page)
Introductory Lectures On Psycho-Analysis
3462
With the help of these ideas we
are now able to explain a whole number of mental states or, to
express it more modestly, to describe them in terms of the libido
theory - states which we must reckon as belonging to normal life,
such as the psychical behaviour of a person in love, during an
organic illness or when asleep. As regards the state of sleep, we
assumed that it was based on turning-away from the external world
and adopting a wish to sleep. The mental activity during the night
which is manifested in dreams takes place, we found, in obedience
to a wish to sleep and is moreover dominated by purely egoistic
motives. We may now add, on the lines of the libido theory, that
sleep is a state in which all object-cathexes, libidinal as well as
egoistic, are given up and withdrawn into the ego. May not this
throw a fresh light on the recuperating effect of sleep and on the
nature of fatigue in general? The picture of the blissful isolation
of intra-uterine life which a sleeper conjures up once more before
us every night is in this way completed on its psychical side as
well. In a sleeper the primal state of distribution of the libido
is restored - total narcissism, in which libido and ego-interest,
still united and indistinguishable, dwell in the self-sufficing
ego.
This is the place for two
remarks. First, how do we differentiate between the concepts of
narcissism and egoism? Well, narcissism, I believe, is the
libidinal complement to egoism. When we speak of egoism, we have in
view only the individual’s
advantage
; when we talk of
narcissism we are also taking his libidinal satisfaction into
account. As practical motives the two can be traced separately for
quite a distance. It is possible to be absolutely egoistic and yet
maintain powerful object-cathexes, in so far as libidinal
satisfaction in relation to the object forms part of the
ego’s needs. In that case, egoism will see to it that
striving for the object involves no damage to the ego. It is
possible to be egoistic and at the same time to be excessively
narcissistic - that is to say, to have very little need for an
object, whether, once more, for the purpose of direct sexual
satisfaction, or in connection with the higher aspirations, derived
from sexual need, which we are occasionally in the habit of
contrasting with ‘sensuality’ under the name of
‘love’. In all these connections egoism is what is
self-evident and constant, while narcissism is the variable
element. The opposite to egoism,
altruism
, does not, as a
concept, coincide with libidinal object-cathexis, but is
distinguished from it by the absence of longings for sexual
satisfaction. When someone is completely in love, however, altruism
converges with libidinal object cathexis. As a rule the sexual
object attracts a portion of the ego’s narcissism to itself,
and this becomes noticeable as what is known as the ‘sexual
overvaluation’ of the object. If in addition there is an
altruistic transposition of egoism on to the sexual object, the
object becomes supremely powerful; it has, as it were, absorbed the
ego.
Introductory Lectures On Psycho-Analysis
3463
You will find it refreshing, I
believe, if, after what is the essentially dry imagery of science,
I present you with a poetic representation of the economic contrast
between narcissism and being in love. Here is a quotation from
Goethe’s
Westöstlicher Diwan
:
ZULEIKA
The slave, the lord of victories,
The crowd,
when’er you ask, confess
In sense of personal being lies
A child of
earth’s chief happiness.
There’s not a life we need refuse
If our true
self we do not miss,
There’s not a thing we may not lose
If one remain
the man one is.
HATEM
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.
That day with Hatem all were over;
And yet I
should but change my state;
Swift, should she grace some happy lover,
In him I were
incorporate.
Introductory Lectures On Psycho-Analysis
3464
My second remark is a supplement
to the theory of dreams. We cannot explain the origin of dreams
unless we adopt the hypothesis that the repressed unconscious has
achieved some degree of independence of the ego, so that it does
not acquiesce in the wish to sleep and retains its cathexes even
when all the object-cathexes depending on the ego have been
withdrawn in order to encourage sleep. Only if that is so can we
understand how the unconscious can make use of the lifting or
reduction of the censorship which occurs at night, and can succeed
in obtaining control over the day’s residues so as to
construct a forbidden dream-wish out of their material. On the
other hand, it may be that these day’s residues have to thank
an already existing connection with the repressed unconscious for
some of their resistance to the withdrawal of libido commanded by
the wish to sleep. We will, then, insert this dynamically important
feature into our view of the formation of dreams by way of
supplement.
Organic illness, painful
stimulation or inflammation of an organ, creates a condition which
clearly results in a detachment of the libido from its objects. The
libido which is withdrawn is found in the ego once more, as an
increased cathexis of the diseased part of the body. One may
venture to assert, indeed, that the withdrawal of the libido from
its objects in these circumstances is more striking than the
diversion of egoistic interest from the external world. This seems
to offer us a path to an understanding of hypochondria, in which an
organ excites the ego’s attention in the same way, without
being ill so far as we can perceive.
Introductory Lectures On Psycho-Analysis
3465
But I shall resist the temptation
of going further here or of discussing other situations which can
be understood or pictured if we adopt the hypothesis that the
object-libido may withdraw into the ego - for I am obliged to meet
two objections which, as I know, are now attracting your attention.
In the first place you want to call me to account because in
talking of sleep, illness and similar situations I invariably try
to separate libido from interest, sexual from ego-instincts, where
observations can be fully satisfied by the hypothesis of a single
and uniform energy which, being freely mobile, cathects now the
object and now the ego, in obedience to one or the other instinct.
And in the second place you want to know how I can venture to treat
the detaching of the libido from the object as the source of a
pathological state, when a transposition of this kind of
object-libido into ego-libido (or, more generally, into ego-energy)
is among the normal processes of mental dynamics which are repeated
daily and every night.
Here is my reply. Your first
objection sounds well enough. Consideration of the states of sleep,
of illness and of being in love in themselves would probably never
have led us to distinguish an ego-libido from an object-libido or
libido from interest. But there you are neglecting the
investigations from which we started and in the light of which we
now look at the mental situations under discussion. The
differentiation between libido and interest - that is to say,
between the sexual and the self-preservative instincts - was forced
upon us by our discovery of the conflict out of which the
transference neuroses arise. Since then we cannot give it up. The
hypothesis that object-libido can be transformed into ego-libido,
that we must therefore take an ego-libido into account, seems to us
the only one which is able to resolve the enigma of what are termed
the narcissistic neuroses - dementia praecox, for instance - and to
account for the resemblances and dissimilarities between them and
hysteria or obsessions. We are now applying to illness, sleep and
being in love what we have elsewhere found inescapably established.
We should proceed further with applications of this kind and see
where they will take us to. The only thesis which is not an
immediate precipitate of our analytic experience is to the effect
that libido remains libido, whether it is directed to objects or to
one’s own ego, and never turns into egoistic interest, and
the converse is also true. This thesis, however, is equivalent to
the separation between the sexual and ego-instincts which we have
already considered critically and to which we shall continue to
hold for heuristic reasons until its possible collapse.
Introductory Lectures On Psycho-Analysis
3466
Your second observation, too,
raises a justifiable question, but it is aimed in the wrong
direction. It is true that a withdrawal of the object-libido into
the ego is not directly pathogenic; it takes place, indeed, as we
know, every time before we go to sleep, only to be reversed when we
wake up. The amoeba withdraws its protrusions only to send them out
again at the first opportunity. But it is quite a different thing
when a particular, very energetic process forces a withdrawal of
libido from objects. Here the libido that has become narcissistic
cannot find its way back to objects, and this interference with the
libido’s mobility certainly becomes pathogenic. It seems that
an accumulation of narcissistic libido beyond a certain amount is
not tolerated. We may even imagine that it was for that very reason
that object-cathexes originally came about, that the ego was
obliged to send out its libido so as not to fall ill as a result of
its being dammed up. If it lay within our plan to go more deeply
into dementia praecox, I would show you that the process which
detaches the libido from objects and cuts off its return to them is
closely related to the process of repression and is to be looked at
as its counterpart. But you would, first and foremost, find
yourselves on familiar ground when you learnt that the determinants
of this process are almost identical - so far as we know at present
- with those of repression. The conflict seems to be the same and
to be carried on between the same forces. If the outcome is so
different from, for instance, that in hysteria, the reason can only
depend on a difference in innate disposition. The weak spot in the
libidinal development of these patients lies in a different phase;
the determining fixation, which, as you will recollect, permits the
irruption that leads to the formation of symptoms, lies elsewhere,
probably in the stage of primitive narcissism to which dementia
praecox returns in its final outcome. It is very remarkable that in
the case of all the narcissistic neuroses we have to assume
fixation points for the libido going back to far earlier phases of
development than in hysteria or obsessional neurosis. As you heard,
however, the concepts which we arrived at during our study of the
transference neuroses are adequate in helping us to find our way
about in the narcissistic neuroses which are so much more severe in
practice. The conformities go very far; at bottom the field of
phenomena is the same. And you can imagine how small a prospect
anyone has of explaining these disorders (which belong within the
sphere of psychiatry) who is not forearmed for his task with an
analytic knowledge of the transference neuroses.
The clinical picture of dementia
praecox (which, incidentally, is very changeable) is not determined
exclusively by the symptoms arising from the forcing away of the
libido on objects and its accumulation in the ego as narcissistic
libido. A large part, rather, is played by other phenomena, which
are derived from efforts of the libido to attain objects once more
and which thus correspond to an attempt at restitution or recovery.
These latter symptoms are indeed the more striking and noisy; they
exhibit an undeniable resemblance to those of hysteria or, less
frequently, of obsessional neurosis, but nevertheless differ from
them in every respect. It seems as though in dementia praecox the
libido, in its efforts once more to reach objects (that is, the
presentations of objects), does in fact snatch hold something of
them, but, as it were, only their shadows - I mean the
word-presentations belonging to them. I cannot say more about this
now, but I believe that this behaviour of the libido as it strives
to find its way back has enabled us to obtain an insight into what
really constitutes the difference between a conscious and an
unconscious idea.