The Collected Works of Sigmund Freud. Sigmund Freud

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. If the altruistic transformation from egoism to the sex object is added, the sex object becomes all powerful; it has virtually sucked up the ego.

      I think you will find it a pleasant change if after the dry phantasy of science I present to you a poetic representation of the economic contrast between narcism and being in love. I take it from the Westostliche Divans of Goethe:

      SULEIKA:

       Conqueror and serf and nation;

       They proclaim it joyously;

       Mankind’s loftiest elation,

       Shines in personality.

       Life’s enchantment lures and lingers,

       Of yourself is not afar,

       All may slip through passive fingers,

       If you tarry as you are.

      HATEM:

       Never could I be thus ravished,

       Other thoughts are in my mind,

       All the gladness earth has lavished

       In Suleika’s charms I find.

       When I cherish her, then only

       Dearer to myself I grow,

       If she turned to leave me lonely

       I should lose the self I know.

       Hatem’s happiness were over —

       But his changeling soul would glide

       Into any favored lover

       Whom she fondles at her side.

      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. But this assertion is of equal weight with the distinction of sex and ego instincts which we have already critically appraised, and which we will maintain from methodological motives until it may possibly be disproved.

      Your second objection, too, raises a justified question, but it points in a wrong direction. To be sure the retreat of object-libido into the ego is not purely pathogenic; we see that it occurs each time before going to sleep, only to be released again upon awaking. The little protoplasmic animal draws in its protrusions, only to send them out again on a later occasion. But it is quite another matter when a specific, very energetic process compels the withdrawal of libido from the object. The libido has become narcistic and cannot find its way back to the object, and this hindrance to the mobility of the libido certainly becomes pathogenic. It appears that an accumulation of narcistic libido cannot be borne beyond a certain point. We can imagine that the reason for occupation with the object is that the ego found it necessary to send out its libido in order not to become diseased because it was pent up. If it were our plan to go further into the subject of dementia praecox, I would show you that this process which frees the libido from the objects and bars the way back to them, is closely related to the process of suppression, and must be considered as its counterpart. But above all you would recognize familiar ground, for the conditions of these processes are practically identical, as far as we can now see, with those of suppression. The conflict appears to be the same, and to take place between the same forces. The reason for a result as different as, for instance, the result in hysteria, can be found only in a difference of dispositions. The vulnerable point in the libido development of these patients lies in another phase; the controlling fixation, which, as you will remember, permits the breach resulting in the formation of symptoms, is in another place probably in the stage of primitive narcism, to which dementia praecox returns in its final stage. It is noteworthy that for all the narcistic neuroses, we must assume fixation points of the libido which reach back into far earlier phases of development than in cases of hysteria or compulsion neuroses. But you have heard that the conceptions obtained in our study of transference neuroses are sufficient to orient us in the narcistic neuroses, which present far greater practical difficulties. The similarities are considerable; it is fundamentally the same field of observation. But you can easily imagine how hopeless the explanations of these conditions, which belong to psychiatry, appear to him who is not equipped for this task with an analytic knowledge of transference neuroses.

      The picture given by the symptoms of dementia praecox, which, moreover, is highly variable, is not exclusively determined by the symptoms. These result from forcing the libido away from the objects and accumulating it in the ego in the form of narcistic libido. A large space is occupied by other phenomena, which result from the impulses of the libido to regain the objects, and so show an attempt toward restitution and healing. These symptoms are in fact the more conspicuous,