Beyond the Pleasure Principle (7 page)

Any
direct
study of narcissism seems to me to be prevented by a number of special difficulties. The principal means of approaching the matter is likely to remain the analysis of paraphrenias. Just as the transference neuroses have enabled us to trace the libidinal drive-impulses, so, too, dementia praecox and paranoia will afford us insight into the psychology of the ego. Once again, our understanding of the normal in all its seeming simplicity has to be derived from the pathological with all its warped and coarsened features. All the same, a few other paths to a better understanding of narcissism do remain open to us: the study of organic illness, of hypochondria, and of the love-life of the sexes; and I shall now discuss each of these in turn.

In considering the influence of organic illness on the distribution of the libido, I am following a suggestion made to me in conversation by Sándor Ferenczi. It is universally known, indeed it seems self-evident to us, that anyone tormented by organic pain and dire discomfort abandons all interest in the things of the external world, except in so far as they bear on his suffering. Closer observation shows us that he also withdraws all libidinal interest from his love-objects; that so long as he suffers, he ceases loving. The banality of this fact need not prevent us from translating it into the language of the libido theory. We would then say: the patient retracts his libido-cathexes into his ego, and redeploys them once he is well. “The sole abode of his soul forsooth’, says Wilhelm Busch of a toothache-stricken poet, ‘is the small black hole in his molar tooth.’ Libido and ego-interest share the same fate in this regard, and are
once again indistinguishable from each other. The notorious egoism of the ill covers both. We find this egoism so self-evident because we know for certain that in similar circumstances we would behave in exactly the same way. In its own way, comedy, too, exploits this phenomenon whereby physical ailments sweep away even the most passionate inclinations, and replace them with utter indifference.

Like illness, the sleep state, too, involves a narcissistic process whereby the libido is withdrawn from its various positions
¹⁸
and focused on the self or, to be more precise, on the sole desire for sleep. The egoism of dreams probably fits in very well in this context. If nothing else, we see examples in both cases of alterations in libido distribution as a result of ego-alteration.
¹⁹

Hypochondria, like organic illness, expresses itself in painful and distressing physical sensations, and matches it, too, in the effect it has on libido distribution. The hypochondriac withdraws both his interest and – particularly markedly – his libido from the objects of the external world, and concentrates both of them on the organ that concerns him. But a disparity between hypochondria and organic illness forces itself on our attention here: in the latter case the painful sensations are grounded in demonstrable physical changes, whereas in the former they seem not to be. However, it would be fully in accord with our conception of neurotic processes as a whole if we were to venture the view that the message given out by hypochondria must indeed be quite right, and that it, too, must surely involve organic changes. But what would these changes consist in?

We are going to let ourselves be guided here by our knowledge that physical sensations of an unpleasant kind, comparable to those encountered in hypochondria, are also present in the other neuroses. I have already on an earlier occasion mentioned my inclination to regard hypochondria as the third ‘actual’ neurosis
²⁰
alongside neurasthenia and anxiety neuros's.
²¹
It is probably not going too far to suppose that an element of hypochondria may also routinely be present in the other neuroses; the finest example of this is probably to be seen in anxiety neurosis and its overlying hysteria. It is of course
the genital organ in its various states of excitation that constitutes the most familiar exemplar of an organ at once painfully sensitive and physically changed in some way, yet not in any ordinary sense of the word morbid. In such circumstances it becomes engorged with blood, swollen, moist, and the locus of manifold sensations. Let us use the term
erogeneity
to describe the process whereby a part of the body transmits sexual stimuli to the psyche; let us also bring to mind that our reflections on the theory of sexuality have long since accustomed us to the view that certain other parts of the body – the
erogenous
zones – might be able to substitute for the genitals and behave in a similar way to them: there is then just one further step that we must dare to take at this point. We can venture to regard erogeneity as a general property of
all
the organs, and we can then speak of it as increasing or diminishing in intensity in any particular part of the body. Any such variation in the erogeneity of the organs might be paralleled by a change in libido-cathexis within the ego. It is in such factors perhaps that we need to search for whatever it is that we might consider the basis of hypochondria, and that is capable of having the same effect on libido distribution as when the organs are affected by physical illness.

We note that if we continue thinking along these lines we shall come face to face with the problem not only of hypochondria, but also of the other ‘actual’ neuroses, neurasthenia and anxiety neurosis. Let us therefore call a halt at this juncture: the purposes of a purely psychological study are not served by straying so far into the realm of physiological research. We might simply mention that on the available evidence it seems reasonable to suppose that hypochondria stands in a similar relationship to paraphrenia as the other ‘actual’ neuroses do to hysteria and obsessional neurosis, that is to say that it depends on ego-libido just as the others depend on object-libido; on this supposition, hypochondriac fear is the counterpart on the ego-libido side to neurotic fear. Furthermore, given that in the case of the transference neuroses we are already familiar with the idea that the mechanism of the onset of illness and of symptom-formation - the progression from introversion to regression – can be linked to
a heavy build-up of object-libido,
²²
then we may also feel more inclined to embrace the idea of a heavy build-up of ego-libido, and relate it to the phenomena of hypochondria and paraphrenia.

Naturally enough, our thirst for knowledge prompts us at this point to ask why such a build-up of libido in the ego has to be experienced as unpleasurable. I should like to make do here with the reply that unpleasure is routinely the form in which increased tension expresses itself, and that therefore what happens here, as elsewhere, is that a certain quantity of the physical process transmutes into the psychic quality of unpleasure; though it may then well be the case that what determines the degree of unpleasure is not the absolute magnitude of that physical process, but rather some particular function of it. From this vantage point one may even dare to approach the question as to
where
the compulsion comes from in the first place that makes the psyche transcend the boundaries of narcissism and invest the libido in objects. Again, the logical answer in terms of our overall train of thought would be that the compulsion arises when the libidinal cathexis of the ego has exceeded a certain level. A strong ego affords some protection against falling ill; but in the end we must necessarily start loving if we are not to fall ill, and we must necessarily fall ill if refusal
²³
makes us incapable of loving – rather along the lines of the model offered by Heinrich Heine when he envisions the psychogenesis of Creation:

We have identified our psychic apparatus as being above all an instrument charged with asserting control over excitations that
would otherwise prove distressingly uncomfortable or pathogenic. This psychic processing activity achieves extraordinary things with regard to the inner discharge of excitations that are incapable of direct external release,
²⁵
or for which such release would be undesirable at that particular moment. With inner processing of this kind, however, it is initially irrelevant whether it operates with real objects or imaginary ones. The difference only becomes apparent later on, if there is a heavy build-up of libido as a result of the latter turning to non-real objects (introversion). In the case of the paraphrenias, megalomania permits a similar inner processing of the libido once it has retreated into the ego; it is perhaps only when the megalomania has failed that the build-up of libido within the ego becomes pathogenic and triggers the healing process that strikes us so forcibly as illness.

Trying as I am at this point to penetrate just a little way into the mechanism of paraphrenia, I shall rehearse those concepts that seem to me at the present time to be worthy of attention. In my view, what makes these disorders different from the transference neuroses is the fact that when libido is freed up as a result of refusal, it does not resort with objects in the imagination, but withdraws to the ego; that being so, megalomania corresponds to the process in the transference neuroses whereby the psyche asserts control over this quantum of libido, i.e. introverts it onto products of the imagination; any failure of this psychic control-process gives rise to the hypochondria characteristic of paraphrenia, which is homologous to the fear characteristic of transference neuroses. We know that this latter fear can be dislodged by other forms of psychic processing too, namely conversion,
²⁶
reaction-formation, and the formation of protection mechanisms (phobias). In the case of the paraphrenias, this role is played by the phase of attempted restitution, to which we owe the conspicuous symptoms of morbidity. Given that paraphrenia in many – if not most – cases involves only a partial dislodgement of the libido from objects, the clinical picture may be divided into three distinct groups of symptoms: 1) those reflecting what the subject retains of his normal state or neurosis (residual symptoms); 2) those reflecting the illness process itself (dislodgement of the
libido from objects, and also megalomania, hypochondria, affective disorder, regression in all its various forms); 3) those reflecting the restitution process which, after the manner of hysteria (in the case of dementia praecox and paraphrenia proper) or obsessional neurosis (in the case of paranoia), re-attaches the libido to objects. This new libido-cathexis takes place on a different level and under different conditions from the primary one. The difference between the transference neuroses created by this secondary cathexis, and their counterparts as formed by the normal ego, would surely afford us the deepest possible insight into the structure of our psychic apparatus.

A third point of access to the study of narcissism is provided by the love-life of human beings, given the different forms that it takes in men and women. Just as the object-libido initially hid the ego-libido from our inquiring eye, so too in the case of object-choice on the part of the child (and developing individual) we initially focused our attention on the fact that they derive their sexual objects from their gratification experiences. A child's first experiences of autoerotic sexual gratification occur in the context of vital functions conducing to self-preservation. Sexual drives initially develop by imitating the ego drives and their gratification, and only subsequently make themselves independent of them – though the imitative process remains evident in the fact that it is the people concerned with the child's feeding, care and protection who become its first sexual objects, hence primarily the mother or mother-surrogate. But alongside this type and its associated source of object-choice, which we can term the
imitative
type,
²⁷
a second and quite unexpected one has been revealed to us by our psychoanalytical researches. We have found -and this has been particularly clear in the case of people whose libidinal development has been disturbed in some way, such as perverts and homosexuals - that they model their subsequent love-object not on their mother, but on their own person. They quite clearly seek
themselves
as love-object, thereby exhibiting what we can call the
narcissistic
type of object-choice. It is this observation above all that has driven us to our narcissism hypothesis.

Now we have not concluded from all this that human beings fall into two sharply differentiated groups, one predisposed to the imitative type of object-choice and the other to the narcissistic, but instead prefer the hypothesis that both paths are open to each and every individual, and that either is equally capable of being preferred. We are arguing that every human being originally has two sexual objects: himself, and the woman who cares for him; and concomitantly we postulate a primary narcissism in all human beings, which in certain circumstances can prove dominant in their object-choice.

A comparison of males and females then shows that there are fundamental – though not of course universal – differences between them in their relationship to the two types of object-choice. Full object-love as per the imitative type really does seem to be characteristic of males. It displays conspicuous sexual over-valuation, which probably derives from the original narcissism present in childhood, and accordingly represents its transference onto the sexual object. This sexual over-valuation gives rise to the curious condition of being in love, reminiscent of neurotic obsession, and amounting as such to a transfer of libido that depletes the ego for the benefit of the object. Things develop in a quite different way in the commonest, probably purest and most authentic type of female. Here, the onset of puberty manifest in the development of the previously latent female sexual organs appears to be accompanied by an intensification of her original narcissism unfavourable to the forming of any proper object-love with its due complement of sexual over-valuation. Particularly where she develops the attributes of beauty, a woman comes to feel sufficient unto herself, which compensates her for the greatly reduced freedom of object-choice imposed on her by society. Strictly speaking, such women love only themselves, and with the same intensity as men display in loving them. Their need, furthermore, is not to love, but to
be
loved, and they deign to tolerate any man who fulfils this condition. The importance of this type of woman for the love-life of human beings is very great. Such women hold the greatest possible fascination for men, not only for aesthetic reasons, since they are usually the most beautiful, but also because
of an interesting combination of psychological factors. For it seems clearly apparent that narcissism in an individual becomes magnetically attractive to those who have altogether relinquished their own narcissism,
²⁸
and who are casting around for object-love. The fascination of the child rests to a great extent on its narcissism, on the fact that it is sufficient to itself and impervious to others; so too does the fascination of certain animals that appear to show no interest in us, such as cats and the great beasts of prey; indeed, even dire criminals and comic heroes captivate us within the context of the arts by dint of the narcissistic rigour with which they keep at bay anything tending to diminish their ego. It is as though we envied them their retention of a blissful psychic state, of an unassailable libido position, that we ourselves have since relinquished. However, the powerful fascination of the narcissistic woman is not without its darker side; the lovelorn male's frustration, his doubts about the woman's love, his lamentations on her enigmatic nature, are largely rooted in this incongruence of the two types of object-choice involved.