THE CONCEPTION AND THE GENETIC THEORY OF LIBIDO

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CHAPTER II - THE CONCEPTION AND THE GENETIC THEORY OF LIBIDO

The chief source of the history of the analytic conception of libido is Freud’s “Three Contributions to the Sexual Theory.” There the term libido is conceived by him in the original narrow sense of sexual impulse, sexual need. Experience forces us to the assumption of a capacity for displacement of the libido, because functions or localizations of non-sexual force are undoubtedly capable of taking up a certain amount of libidinous sexual impetus, a libidinous afflux. Functions or objects could, therefore, obtain sexual value, which under normal circumstances really have nothing to do with sexuality. From this fact results the Freudian comparison of the libido with a stream, which is divisible, which can be dammed up, which overflows into branches, and so on. Freud’s original conception does not interpret “everything sexual,” although this has been asserted by critics, but recognizes the existence of certain forces, the nature of which are not well known; to which Freud, however, compelled by the notorious facts which are evident to any layman, grants the capacity to receive “affluxes of libido.” The hypothetical idea at the basis is the symbol of the “Triebbündel” (bundle of impulses), wherein the sexual impulse figures as a partial impulse of the whole 140system, and its encroachment into the other realms of impulse is a fact of experience. The theory of Freud, branching off from this interpretation, according to which the motor forces of a neurotic system correspond precisely to their libidinous additions to other (non-sexual) functional impulses, has been sufficiently proven as correct, it seems to me, by the work of Freud and his school. Since the appearance of the “Three Contributions,” in 1905, a change has taken place in the libido conception; its field of application has been widened. An extremely clear example of this amplification is this present work. However, I must state that Freud, as well as myself, saw the need of widening the conception of libido. It was paranoia, so closely related to dementia præcox, which seemed to compel Freud to enlarge the earlier limits of the conception. The passage in question, which I will quote here, word for word, reads:

“A third consideration which presents itself, in regard to the views developed here, starts the query as to whether we should accept as sufficiently effectual the universal receding of the libido from the outer world, in order to interpret from that, the end of the world: or whether in this case, the firmly rooted possession of the ‘I’ must not suffice to uphold the rapport with the outer world. Then one must either let that which we call possession of the libido (interest from erotic sources) coincide with interest in general, or else take into consideration the possibility that great disturbance in the disposition of the libido can also induce a corresponding disturbance in the possession of the ‘I.’ Now, these are the problems, which we are still absolutely helpless and unfitted to answer. Things would be different could we proceed from a safe fund of knowledge of instinct. But the truth is, we have nothing of that kind at our disposal. We understand instinct as the resultant of the reaction of the somatic and the psychic. 141We see in it the psychical representation of organic forces and take the popular distinction between the ‘I’ impulse and the sexual impulse, which appears to us to be in accord with the biological double rôle of the individual being who aspires to his own preservation as well as to the preservation of the species. But anything beyond this is a structure, which we set up, and also willingly let fall again in order to orient ourselves in the confusion of the dark processes of the soul; we expect particularly, from the psychoanalytic investigations into diseased soul processes, to have certain decisions forced upon us in regard to questions of the theory of instinct. This expectation has not yet been fulfilled on account of the still immature and limited investigations in these fields. At present the possibility of the reaction of libido disturbance upon the possession of the ‘I’ can be shown as little as the reverse; the secondary or induced disturbances of the libido processes through abnormal changes in the ‘I.’ It is probable that processes of this sort form the distinctive character of the psychoses. The conclusions arising from this, in relation to paranoia, are at present uncertain. One cannot assert that the paranoiac has completely withdrawn his interest from the outer world, nor withdrawn into the heights of repression, as one sometimes sees in certain other forms of hallucinatory psychoses. He takes notice of the outer world, he takes account of its changes, he is stirred to explanations by their influence, and therefore I consider it highly probable that the changed relation to the world is to be explained, wholly or in great part, by the deficiency of the libido interest.”

In this passage Freud plainly touches upon the question whether the well-known longing for reality of the paranoic dement (and the dementia præcox patients), to whom I have especially called attention in my book, “The Psychology of Dementia Præcox,” is to be traced back to the withdrawal of the “libidinous affluxes” alone, or whether this coincides with the so-called objective interest in general. It is hardly to be assumed 142that the normal “fonction du réel” (Janet) is maintained only through affluxes of libido or erotic interest. The fact is that in very many cases reality disappears entirely, so that not a trace of psychological adaptation or orientation can be recognized. Reality is repressed under these circumstances and replaced by the contents of the complex. One must of necessity say that not only the erotic interest but the interest in general has disappeared, that is to say, the whole adaptation to reality has ceased. To this category belong the stuporose and catatonic automatons.

I have previously made use of the expression “psychic energy” in my “Psychology of Dementia Præcox” because I was unable to establish the theory of this psychosis upon the conception of the displacement of the affluxes of libido. My experience, at that time chiefly psychiatric, did not enable me to understand this theory. However, the correctness of this theory in regard to neuroses, strictly speaking the transference neuroses, was proven to me later after increased experience in the field of hysteria and compulsion neuroses. In the territory of these neuroses it is mainly a question whether any portion of the libido which is spared through the specific repression becomes introverted and regressive into earlier paths of transference; for example, the path of the parental transference. With that, however, the former non-sexual psychologic adaptation to the environment remains preserved so far as it does not concern the erotic and its secondary positions (symptoms). The reality which is lacking to the patients is just that portion 143of the libido to be found in the neurosis. In dementia præcox, on the contrary, not merely that portion of libido which is saved in the well-known specific sexual repression is lacking for reality, but much more than one could write down to the account of sexuality in a strict sense. The function of reality is lacking to such a degree that even the motive power must be encroached upon in the loss. The sexual character of this must be disputed absolutely, for reality is not understood to be a sexual function. Moreover, if that were so, the introversion of the libido in the strict sense must have as a result a loss of reality in the neuroses, and, indeed, a loss which could be compared with that of dementia præcox. These facts have rendered it impossible for me to transfer Freud’s theory of libido to dementia præcox, and, therefore, I am of the opinion that Abraham’s investigation is hardly tenable theoretically, from the standpoint of the Freudian theory of libido. If Abraham believes that through the withdrawal of the libido from the outer world the paranoid system or the schizophrenic symptomatology results, then this assumption is not justified from the standpoint of the knowledge of that time, because a mere libido introversion and regression leads, speedily, as Freud has clearly shown, into the neuroses, and, strictly speaking, into the transference neuroses, and not into dementia præcox. Therefore, the transference of the libido theory to dementia præcox is impossible, because this illness produces a loss of reality which cannot be explained by the deficiency of the libido defined in this narrow sense.

It affords me especial satisfaction that our teacher also, 144when he laid his hand on the delicate material of the paranoic psychology, was forced to doubt the applicability of the conception of libido held by him at that time. The sexual definition of this did not permit me to understand those disturbances of function, which affect the vague territory of the hunger instinct just as much as that of the sexual instinct. For a long time the theory of libido seemed to me inapplicable to dementia præcox. With increasing experience in analytical work, however, I became aware of a gradual change in my conception of libido. In place of the descriptive definition of the “Three Contributions” there gradually grew up a generic definition of the libido, which rendered it possible for me to replace the expression “psychic energy” by the term “libido.” I was forced to ask myself whether indeed the function of reality to-day does not consist only in its smaller part of libido sexualis and in the greater part of other impulses? It is still a very important question whether phylogenetically the function of reality is not, at least in great part, of sexual origin. To answer this question directly in regard to the function of reality is not possible, but we shall attempt to come to an understanding indirectly.

A fleeting glance at the history of evolution is sufficient to teach us that countless complicated functions to which to-day must be denied any sexual character were originally pure derivations from the general impulse of propagation. During the ascent through the animal kingdom an important displacement in the fundamentals of the procreative instinct has taken place. The mass of 145the reproductive products with the uncertainty of fertilization has more and more been replaced by a controlled impregnation and an effective protection of the offspring. In this way part of the energy required in the production of eggs and sperma has been transposed into the creation of mechanisms for allurement and for protection of the young. Thus we discover the first instincts of art in animals used in the service of the impulse of creation, and limited to the breeding season. The original sexual character of these biological institutions became lost in their organic fixation and functional independence. Even if there can be no doubt about the sexual origin of music, still it would be a poor, unæsthetic generalization if one were to include music in the category of sexuality. A similar nomenclature would then lead us to classify the cathedral of Cologne as mineralogy because it is built of stones. It can be a surprise only to those to whom the history of evolution is unknown to find how few things there really are in human life which cannot be reduced in the last analysis to the instinct of procreation. It includes very nearly everything, I think, which is beloved and dear to us. We spoke just now of libido as the creative impulse and at the same time we allied ourselves with the conception which opposes libido to hunger in the same way that the instinct of the preservation of the species is opposed to the instinct of self-preservation. In nature, this artificial distinction does not exist. Here we see only a continuous life impulse, a will to live which will attain the creation of the whole species through the preservation of the individual. Thus far this conception coincides with 146the idea of the Will in Schopenhauer, for we can conceive Will objectively, only as a manifestation of an internal desire. This throwing of psychological perceptions into material reality is characterized philosophically as “introjection.” (Ferenczi’s conception of “introjection” denoted the reverse, that is, the taking of the outer world into the inner world.) Naturally, the conception of the world was distorted by introjection. Freud’s conception of the principle of desire is a voluntary formulation of the idea of introjection, while his once more voluntarily conceived “principle of reality” corresponds functionally to that which I designate as “corrective of reality,” and R. Avenarius designates as “empiriokritische Prinzipialkoordination.” The conception of power owes its existence to this very introjection; this has already been said expressively by Galileo in his remark that its origin is to be sought in the subjective perception of the muscular power of the individual. Because we have already arrived at the daring assumption that the libido, which was employed originally in the exclusive service of egg and seed production, now appears firmly organized in the function of nest-building, and can no longer be employed otherwise; similarly this conception forces us to relate it to every desire, including hunger. For now we can no longer make any essential distinction between the will to build a nest and the will to eat. This view brings us to a conception of libido, which extends over the boundaries of the physical sciences into a philosophical aspect—to a conception of the will in general. I must give this bit of psychological “Voluntarismus” into the hands of the 147philosophers for them to manage. For the rest I refer to the words of Schopenhauer relating to this. In connection with the psychology of this conception (by which I understand neither metapsychology nor metaphysics) I am reminded here of the cosmogenic meaning of Eros in Plato and Hesiod, and also of the orphic figure of Phanes, the “shining one,” the first created, the “father of Eros.” Phanes has also orphically the significance of Priapus; he is a god of love, bisexual and similar to the Theban Dionysus Lysios. The orphic meaning of Phanes is similar to that of the Indian Kâma, the god of love, which is also the cosmogenic principle. To Plotinus, of the Neo-Platonic school, the world-soul is the energy of the intellect. Plotinus compares “The One,” the creative primal principle, with light in general; the intellect with the Sun (♂), the world-soul with the moon (♀). In another comparison Plotinus compares “The One” with the Father, the intellect with the Son. The “One” designated as Uranus is transcendent. The son as Kronos has dominion over the visible world. The world-soul (designated as Zeus) appears as subordinate to him. The “One,” or the Usia of the whole existence is designated by Plotinus as hypostatic, also as the three forms of emanation, also μία οὐσία ἐν τρισὶν ὑποστάσεσιν. As Drews observed, this is also the formula of the Christian Trinity (God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost) as it was decided upon at the councils of Nicea and Constantinople. It may also be noticed that certain early Christian sectarians attributed a maternal significance 148to the Holy Ghost (world-soul, moon). (See what follows concerning Chi of Timæus.) According to Plotinus, the world-soul has a tendency toward a divided existence and towards divisibility, the conditio sine qua non of all change, creation and procreation (also a maternal quality). It is an “unending all of life” and wholly energy; it is a living organism of ideas, which attain in it effectiveness and reality. The intellect is its procreator, its father, which, having conceived it, brings it to development in thought.

“What lies enclosed in the intellect, comes to development in the world-soul as logos, fills it with meaning and makes it as if intoxicated with nectar.”

Nectar is analogous to soma, the drink of fertility and of life, also to sperma. The soul is fructified by the intellect; as oversoul it is called heavenly Aphrodite, as the undersoul the earthly Aphrodite. “It knows the birth pangs,” and so on. The bird of Aphrodite, the dove, is not without good cause the symbol of the Holy Ghost.

This fragment of the history of philosophy, which may easily be enlarged, shows the significance of the endopsychic perception of the libido and of its symbolism in human thought.

In the diversity of natural phenomena we see the desire, the libido, in the most diverse applications and forms. We see the libido in the stage of childhood almost wholly occupied in the instinct of nutrition, which takes care of the upbuilding of the body. With the development of the body there are successively opened new spheres of application 149for the libido. The last sphere of application, and surpassing all the others in its functional significance, is sexuality, which seems at first almost bound up with the function of nutrition. (Compare with this the influence on procreation of the conditions of nutrition in lower animals and plants.) In the territory of sexuality, the libido wins that formation, the enormous importance of which has justified us in the use of the term libido in general. Here the libido appears very properly as an impulse of procreation, and almost in the form of an undifferentiated sexual primal libido, as an energy of growth, which clearly forces the individual towards division, budding, etc. (The clearest distinction between the two forms of libido is to be found among those animals in whom the stage of nutrition is separated from the sexual stage by a chrysalis stage.)

From that sexual primal libido which produced millions of eggs and seeds from one small creature derivatives have been developed with the great limitation of the fecundity; derivatives in which the functions are maintained by a special differentiated libido. This differentiated libido is henceforth desexualized because it is dissociated from its original function of egg and sperma production; nor is there any possibility of restoring it to its original function. Thus, in general, the process of development consists in an increasing transformation of the primal libido which only produced products of generation to the secondary functions of allurement and protection of the young. This now presupposes a very different and very complicated relation to reality, a true 150function of reality, which, functionally inseparable, is bound up with the needs of procreation. Thus the altered mode of procreation carries with it as a correlate a correspondingly heightened adaptation to reality.

In this way we attain an insight into certain primitive conditions of the function of reality. It would be radically wrong to say that its compelling power is a sexual one. It was a sexual one to a large extent. The process of transformation of the primal libido into secondary impulses always took place in the form of affluxes of sexual libido, that is to say, sexuality became deflected from its original destination and a portion of it turned, little by little, increasing in amount, into the phylogenetic impulse of the mechanisms of allurement and of protection of the young. This diversion of the sexual libido from the sexual territory into associated functions is still taking place. Where this operation succeeds without injury to the adaptation of the individual it is called sublimation. Where the attempt does not succeed it is called repression.

The descriptive standpoint of psychology accepts the multiplicity of instincts, among which is the sexual instinct, as a special phenomenon; moreover, it recognizes certain affluxes of libido to non-sexual instincts.

Quite otherwise is the genetic standpoint. It regards the multiplicity of instincts as issuing from a relative unity, the primal libido; it recognizes that definite amounts of the primal libido are split off, as it were, associated with the newly formed functions and finally merged in them. As a result of this it is impossible, from the genetic standpoint, to hold to the strictly limited conception 151of libido of the descriptive standpoint; it leads inevitably to a broadening of the conception. With this we come to the theory of libido that I have surreptitiously introduced into the first part of this work for the purpose of making this genetic conception familiar to the reader. The explanation of this harmless deceit I have saved until the second part.

For the first time, through this genetic idea of libido, which in every way surpasses the descriptive sexual, the transference was made possible of the Freudian libido theory into the psychology of mental disease. The passage quoted above shows how the present Freudian conception of libido collides with the problem of the psychoses. Therefore, when I speak of libido, I associate with it the genetic conception which contains not only the immediate sexual but also an amount of desexualized primal libido. When I say a sick person takes his libido away from the outer world, in order to take possession of the inner world with it, I do not mean that he takes away merely the affluxes from the function of reality, but he takes energy away, according to my view, from those desexualized instincts which regularly and properly support the function of reality.

With this alteration in the libido conception, certain parts of our terminology need revision as well. As we know, Abraham has undertaken the experiment of transferring the Freudian libido theory to dementia præcox and has conceived the characteristic lack of rapport and the cessation of the function of reality as autoerotism. This conception needs revision. Hysterical introversion 152of the libido leads to autoerotism, since the patient’s erotic afflux of libido designed for the function of adaptation is introverted, whereby his ego is occupied by the corresponding amount of erotic libido. The schizophrenic, however, shuns reality far more than merely the erotic afflux would account for; therefore, his inner condition is very different from that of the hysteric. He is more than autoerotic, he builds up an intra-psychic equivalent for reality, for which purpose he has necessarily to employ other dynamics than that afforded by the erotic afflux. Therefore, I must grant to Bleuler the right to reject the conception of autoerotism, taken from the study of hysterical neuroses, and there legitimate, and to replace it by the conception of autismus. I am forced to say that this term is better fitted to facts than autoerotism. With this I acknowledge my earlier idea of the identity of autismus (Bleuler) and autoerotism (Freud) as unjustified, and, therefore, retract it. This thorough revision of the conception of libido has compelled me to this.

From these considerations it follows necessarily that the descriptive psychologic conception of libido must be given up in order for the libido theory to be applied to dementia præcox. That it is there applicable is best shown in Freud’s brilliant investigation of Schreber’s phantasies. The question now is whether this genetic conception of libido proposed by me is suitable for the neuroses. I believe that this question may be answered affirmatively. “Natura non fecit saltum”—it is not merely to be expected but it is also probable that at least temporary functional disturbances of various degrees appear 153in the neuroses, which transcend the boundaries of the immediate sexual; in any case, this occurs in psychotic episodes. I consider the broadening of the conception of libido which has developed through the most recent analytic work as a real advance which will prove of especial advantage in the important field of the introversion psychoses. Proofs of the correctness of my assumption are already at hand. It has become apparent through a series of researches of the Zurich School, which are now published in part, that the phantastic substitution products which take the place of the disturbed function of reality bear unmistakable traces of archaic thought. This confirmation is parallel to the postulate asserted above, according to which reality is deprived, not merely of an immediate (individual) amount of libido, but also of an already differentiated or desexualized quantity of libido, which, among normal people, has belonged to the function of reality ever since prehistoric times. A dropping away of the last acquisition of the function of reality (or adaptation) must of necessity be replaced by an earlier mode of adaptation. We find this principle already in the doctrines of the neuroses, that is, that a repression resulting from the failure of the recent transference is replaced by an old way of transference, namely, through a regressive revival of the parent imago. In the transference neurosis (hysterical), where merely a part of the immediate sexual libido is taken away from reality by the specific sexual repression, the substituted product is a phantasy of individual origin and significance, with only a trace of those archaic traits found in the phantasies of those 154mental disorders in which a portion of the general human function of reality organized since antiquity has broken off. This portion can be replaced only by a generally valid archaic surrogate. We owe a simple and clear example of this proposition to the investigation of Honegger. A paranoic of good intelligence who has a clear idea of the spherical form of the earth and its rotation around the sun replaces the modern astronomical views by a system worked out in great detail, which one must call archaic, in which the earth is a flat disc over which the sun travels. (I am reminded of the sun-phallus mentioned in the first part of this book, for which we are also indebted to Honegger.) Spielrein has likewise furnished some very interesting examples of archaic definitions which begin in certain illnesses to overlay the real meanings of the modern word. For example, Spielrein’s patient had correctly discovered the mythological significance of alcohol, the intoxicating drink, to be “an effusion of seed.” She also had a symbolism of boiling which I must place parallel to the especially important alchemistic vision of Zosimos, who found people in boiling water within the cavity of the altar. This patient used earth in place of mother, and also water to express mother. I refrain from further examples because future work of the Zurich School will furnish abundant evidence of this sort.

My foregoing proposition of the replacement of the disturbed function of reality by an archaic surrogate is supported by an excellent paradox of Spielrein’s. She says: “I often had the illusion that these patients might 155be simply victims of a folk superstition.” As a matter of fact, patients substitute phantasies for reality, phantasies similar to the actually incorrect mental products of the past, which, however, were once the view of reality. As the Zosimos vision shows, the old superstitions were symbols which permitted transitions to the most remote territory. This must have been very expedient for certain archaic periods, for by this means convenient bridges were offered to lead a partial amount of libido over into the mental realm. Evidently Spielrein thinks of a similar biological meaning of the symbols when she says:

“Thus a symbol seems to me to owe its origin in general to the tendency of a complex for dissolution in the common totality of thought.... The complex is robbed by that of the personal element.... This tendency towards dissolution (transformation) of every individual complex is the motive for poetry, painting, for every sort of art.”

When here we replace the formal conception “complex” by the conception of the quantity of libido (the total effect of the complex), which, from the standpoint of the libido theory, is a justified measure, then does Spielrein’s view easily agree with mine. When primitive man understands in general what an act of generation is, then, according to the principle of the path of least resistance, he never can arrive at the idea of replacing the generative organs by a sword-blade or a shuttle; but this is the case with certain Indians, who explain the origin of mankind by the union of the two transference symbols. He then must be compelled to devise an analogous thing in order to bring a manifest sexual interest upon an asexual expression. 156The propelling motive of this transition of the immediate sexual libido to the non-sexual representation can, in my opinion, be found only in a resistance which opposes primitive sexuality.

It appears as if, by this means of phantastic analogy formation, more libido would gradually become desexualized, because increasingly more phantasy correlates were put in the place of the primitive achievement of the sexual libido. With this an enormous broadening of the world idea was gradually developed because new objects were always assimilated as sexual symbols. It is a question whether the human consciousness has not been brought to its present state entirely or in great part in this manner. It is evident, in any case, that an important significance in the development of the human mind is due to the impulse towards the discovery of analogy. We must agree thoroughly with Steinthal when he says that an absolutely overweening importance must be granted to the little phrase “Gleich wie” (even as) in the history of the development of thought. It is easy to believe that the carryover of the libido to a phantastic correlate has led primitive man to a number of the most important discoveries.

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