Introductory lectures on psycho-analysis · Sigmund Freud
TWENTY-SIXTH LECTURE THE THEORY OF THE LIBIDO: NARCISSISM
We have repeatedly, and again quite recently, referred to the distinction between the sexual and the Ego-instincts. First of all, repression showed how they can oppose each other, how the sexual instincts are then apparently brought to submission, and required to procure their satisfaction by circuitous regressive paths, where in their impregnability they obtain compensation for their defeat. Then it appeared that from the outset they each have a different relation to the task-mistress Necessity, so that their developments are different and they acquire different attitudes to the reality-principle. Finally we believe we can observe that the sexual instincts are connected by much closer ties with the affective state of anxiety than are the Ego-instincts—a conclusion which in one important point only still seems incomplete. In support of it we may bring forward the further remarkable fact that want of satisfaction of hunger or thirst, the two most elemental of the self-preservative instincts, never results in conversion of them into anxiety, whereas the conversion of unsatisfied Libido into anxiety is, as we have heard, a very well-known and frequently-observed phenomenon.
Our justification for distinguishing between sexual and Ego-instincts can surely not be contested; it is indeed assumed by the existence of the sexual instinct as a special activity in the individual. The only question is what significance is to be attached to this distinction, how radical and decisive we intend to consider it. The answer to this depends upon what we can ascertain about the extent to which the sexual instincts, both in their bodily and their mental manifestations, conduct themselves differently from the other instincts which we set against them; and how important the results arising from these differences are found to be. We have of course no motive for maintaining any difference in the fundamental nature of the two groups of instincts, and, by the way, it would be difficult to apprehend any. They both present themselves to us merely as descriptions of the sources of energy in the individual, and the discussion whether fundamentally they are one, or essentially different, and if one, when they became separated from each other, cannot be carried through on the basis of these concepts alone, but must be grounded on the biological facts underlying them. At present we know too little about this, and even if we knew more it would not be relevant to the task of psycho-analysis. We should clearly also profit very little by emphasizing the primordial unity of all the instincts, as Jung has done, and describing all the energies which flow from them as ‘Libido.’ We should then be compelled to speak of sexual and asexual Libido, since the sexual function is not to be eliminated from the field of mental life by any such device. The name Libido, however, remains properly reserved for the instinctive forces of the sexual life, as we have hitherto employed it.
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_:— 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.
Ideas discussed in this chapter
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.