A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis

REPEATEDLY in the past and more recently we have dealt with the distinction between the ego instincts and the sexual instincts. At first, suppression taught us that the two may be flatly opposed to each other, that in the struggle the sexual instincts suffer apparent defeat and are forced to obtain satisfaction by other regressive methods, and so find the compensation for defeat in their invulnerability. After that we learned that at the outset both have a different relation to the educator, Necessity, so that they do not develop in the same manner and do not enter into the same relationship with the principle of reality. We come to realize that the sexual instincts are much more closely allied to the emotional condition of fear than the ego instincts. This result appears incomplete only in one respect, which, however, is most important. For further evidence we shall mention the significant fact that non-satisfaction of hunger and thirst, the two most elementary instincts of self-preservation, never result in their reversal into anxiety, while the transformation of unsatisfied libido into fear is, as we have heard, one of the best known and most frequently observed phenomena.

No one can contest our perfect justification in separating the ego from sexual instincts. It is affirmed by the existence of sexual desire, which is a very special activity of the individual. The only question is, what significance shall we give to this distinction, how decisive is it? The answer will depend upon the results of our observations; on how far the sexual instincts, in their psychological and somatic manifestations, behave differently from the others that are opposed to them; on how important are the consequences which result from these differences. We have, of course, no motive whatever for insisting upon a certain intangible difference in the character of the two groups of instincts. Both are only designations of the sources of energy of the individual. The discussion as to whether they are fundamentally of the same or of a different character, and if the same, when it was that they separated from one another, cannot profit by the conceptions, but must deal rather with the underlying biological facts. At present we know very little about this, and even if we knew more it would not be relevant to our analytic task.

Obviously, we should gain slight profit if, following the example of Jung, we were to emphasize the original unity of all instincts, and were to call the energy expressed in all of them "libido." Since the sexual function cannot be eliminated from psychic life by any device, we are forced to speak of sexual and asexual libido. As in the past, we rightly retain the name libido for the instincts of sexual life.

I believe, therefore, that the question, how far the justifiable distinction of the instincts of sex and of self-preservation may be carried, is of little importance for psychoanalysis; and psychoanalysis is moreover not competent to deal with it. From a biological standpoint there are, to be sure, various reasons for believing that this distinction is significant. Sexuality is the only function of the living organism which extends beyond the individual and sees to his kinship with the species. It is undeniable that its practice does not always benefit the individual as do his other performances. For the price of ecstatic pleasures it involves him in dangers which threaten his life and frequently cause death. Probably peculiar metabolic processes, different from all others, are required to maintain a part of the individual life for its progeny. The individual who places himself in the foreground and regards his sexuality as a means to his gratification is, from a biological point of view, only an episode in a series of generations, a transient appendage to a germ-plasm which is virtually endowed with immortality, just as though he were the temporary partner in a corporation which continues to persist after his death.

For psychoanalytic explanation of neuroses, however, there is no need to enter upon these far-reaching implications. By separate observation of the sexual and the ego instincts, we have gained the key to the understanding of transference-neuroses. We were able to trace them back to the fundamental situation where the sexual instinct and the instinct of self-preservation had come in conflict with one another, or biologically although not so accurately, expressed where the part played by the ego, that of independent individuality, was opposed to the other, that of a link in a series of generations. Only human beings are capable of such conflict, and therefore, taken all in all, neurosis is the prerogative of man, and not of animals. The excessive development of his libido and the elaboration of a varied and complicated psychic life thus made possible, appear to have created the conditions prerequisite for conflict. It is clear that these conditions are also responsible for the great progress that man has made beyond his kinship with animals. The capacity for neurosis is really only the reverse side of his talents and gifts. But these are only speculations, which divert us from our task.

Until now we worked with the impulse that we can distinguish the ego and the sexual instincts from one another by their manifestations. We could do this without difficulty in the transference neuroses. We called the accumulation of energy which the ego directed towards the object of its sexual striving libido and all others, which proceeded from the instincts of self-preservation, interest. We were able to achieve our first insight into the workings of psychic forces by observing the accumulation of the libido, its transformations and its final destiny. The transference neuroses furnished the best material for this. But the ego, composed from various organizations, their construction and functioning, remained hidden and we were led to believe that only the analysis of other neurotic disturbances would raise the veil.

Very soon we began to extend these psychoanalytic conceptions to other conditions. As early as 1908, K. Abraham asserted, after a discussion with me, that the principal characteristic of dementia praecox (which may be considered one of the psychoses) is that there is no libidinous occupation of objects (The Psycho-sexual Differences between Hysteria and Dementia Praecox). But then the question arose, what happens to the libido of the demented, which is diverted from its objects? Abraham did not hesitate to give the answer, "It is turned back upon the ego, and this reflected turning back is the source of the megalomania in dementia praecox." This hallucination of greatness is exactly comparable to the well-known over-estimation of the objects habitual to lovers. So, for the first time, we gained an understanding of psychotic condition by comparing it with the normal course of love.

These first interpretations of Abraham's have been maintained in psychoanalysis, and have become the basis of our attitude towards the psychoses. Slowly we familiarized ourselves with the idea that the libido, which we find attached to certain objects, which expresses a striving to attain gratification from these objects, may also forsake them and put in their place the person's own ego. Gradually these ideas were developed more and more consistently. The name for this placing of the libido—narcism—was borrowed from one of the perversions described by P. Naecke. In it the grown individual lavishes upon his own body all the affection usually devoted to some foreign sex object.

We reflected that if such a fixation of libido on one's own body and person instead of on some external object exists, this cannot be an exceptional or trivial occurrence. It is much more probable that this narcism is the general and original condition, out of which the love for an object later develops, without however necessarily causing narcism to disappear. From the evolutionary history of object-libido we remembered that in the beginning many sex instincts seek auto-erotic gratification, and that this capacity for auto-eroticism forms the basis for the retardation of sexuality in its education to conformity with fact. And so, auto-eroticism was the sexual activity of the narcistic stage in the placing of the libido.

To be brief: We represented the relation of the ego-libido to the object-libido in a way which I can explain by an analogy from zoology. Think of the simplest forms of life, which consist of a little lump of protoplasmic substance which is only slightly differentiated. They stretch out protrusions, known as pseudopia, into which the protoplasm flows. But they can withdraw these protrusions and assume their original shape. Now we compare the stretching out of these processes with the radiation of libido to the objects, while the central mass of libido can remain in the ego, and we assume that under normal conditions ego-libido can be changed into object-libido, and this can again be taken up into the ego, without any trouble.

With the help of this representation we can now explain a great number of psychic conditions, or to express it more modestly, describe them, in the language of the libido theory; conditions that we must accredit to normal life, such as the psychic attitude during love, during organic sickness, during sleep. We assumed that the conditions of sleep rest upon withdrawal from the outer world and concentration upon the wish to sleep. The nocturnal psychic activity expressed in the dream we found in the service of a wish to sleep and, moreover, governed by wholly egoistic motives. Continuing in the sense of libido theory: sleep is a condition in which all occupations of objects, the libidinous as well as the egoistic, are given up, and are withdrawn into the ego. Does this not throw a new light upon recovery during sleep, and upon the nature of exhaustion in general? The picture of blissful isolation in the intra-uterine life, which the sleeper conjures up night after night, thus also completes the picture from the psychic side. In the sleeper the original condition of libido division is again restored, a condition of complete narcism in which libido and ego-interest are still united and live indistinguishably in the self-sufficient ego.

We must observe two things: First, how can the conceptions of narcism and egoism be distinguished? I believe narcism is the libidinous complement of egoism. When we speak of egoism we mean only the benefits to the individual; if we speak of narcism we also take into account his libidinous satisfaction. As practical motives the two can be followed up separately to a considerable degree. One can be absolutely egoistic, and still have strong libidinous occupation of objects, in so far as the libidinous gratification by way of the object serves the needs of the ego. Egoism will then take care that the striving for the object results in no harm to the ego. One can be egoistic and at the same time excessively narcistic, i.e., have very slight need of an object. This need may be for direct sexual satisfaction or even for those higher desires, derived from need, which we are in the habit of calling love as opposed to sensuality. In all of these aspects, egoism is the self-evident, the constant, and narcism the variable element. The antithesis of egoism, altruism, is not the same as the conception of libidinous occupation of objects. Altruism differs from it by the absence of desire for sexual satisfaction. But in the state of being completely in love, altruism and libidinous occupation with an object clash. The sex object as a rule draws upon itself a part of the narcism of the ego. This is generally called "sexual over-estimation" of the object.

The second observation is supplementary to the dream theory. We cannot explain the origin of the dream unless we assume that the suppressed unconscious has achieved a certain independence of the ego. It does not conform to the wish for sleep and retains its hold on the energies that have seized it, even when all the occupations with objects dependent upon the ego have been released for the benefit of sleep. Not until then can we understand how this unconscious can take advantage of the nocturnal discontinuance or deposition of the censor, and can seize control of fragments left over from the day to fashion a forbidden dream wish from them. On the other hand, it is to the already existing connections with these supposed elements that these fragments owe a part of the resistance directed against the withdrawal of the libido, and controlled by the wish for sleep. We also wish to supplement our conception of dream formation with this trait of dynamic importance.

Organic diseases, painful irritations, inflammation of the organs create a condition which clearly results in freeing the libido of its objects. The withdrawn libido again finds itself in the ego and occupies the diseased part of the part. We may even venture to assert that under these conditions the withdrawal of the libido from its objects is more conspicuous than the withdrawal of egoistic interest from the outside world. This seems to open the way to an understanding of hypochondria, where an organ occupies the ego in a similar way without being diseased, according to our conception. I shall resist the temptation of continuing along this line, or of discussing other situations which we can understand or represent through the assumption that the object libido travels to the ego. For I am eager to meet two objections, which I know are absorbing your attention. In the first place, you want to call me to account for my insistence upon distinguishing in sleep, in sickness and in similar situations between libido and interest, sexual instincts and ego instincts, since throughout the observations can be explained by assuming a single and uniform energy, which, freely mobile, occupies now the object, now the ego, and enters into the services of one or the other of these impulses. And, secondly, how can I venture to treat the freeing of libido from its object as the source of a pathological condition, since such transformation of object-libido into ego-libido—or more generally, ego-energy—belongs to the normal, daily and nightly repeated occurrences of psychic dynamics?

The answer is: Your first objection sounds good. The discussion of the conditions of sleep, of sickness and of being in love would in themselves probably never have led to a distinction between ego-libido and object-libido, or between libido and interest. But you do not take into account the investigations from which we have set out, in the light of which we now regard the psychic situations under discussion. The necessity of distinguishing between libido and interest, that is, between sexual instincts and those of self-preservation, is forced upon us by our insight into the conflict out of which the transference neuroses emerge. We can no longer reckon without it. The assumption that object-libido can change into the ego-libido, in other words, that we must reckon with an ego-libido, appeared to us the only possible one wherewith to solve the riddle of the so-called narcistic neuroses—for instance, dementia praecox—or to justify the similarities and differences in a comparison of hysteria and compulsion. We now apply to sickness, sleep and love that which we found undeniably affirmed elsewhere. We may proceed with such applications as far as they will go. The only assertion that is not a direct refutation of our analytic experience is that libido remains libido whether it is directed towards objects or toward the ego itself, and is never transferred into egoistic interest, and vice-versa.