Freud - Complete Works (489 page)

   Men are strong so long as they
represent a strong idea; they become powerless when they oppose it.
Psycho-analysis will survive this loss and gain new adherents in
place of these. In conclusion, I can only express a wish that
fortune may grant an agreeable upward journey to all those who have
found their stay in the underworld of psycho-analysis too
uncomfortable for their taste. The rest of us, I hope, will be
permitted without hindrance to carry through to their conclusion
our labours in the depths.

February
, 1914.  

2929

ON NARCISSISM: AN INTRODUCTION

(1914)

2930

Intentionally left blank

2931

ON NARCISSISM: AN INTRODUCTION

I

The term narcissism is derived from clinical
description and was chosen by Paul Näcke in 1899 to denote the
attitude of a person who treats his own body in the same way in
which the body of a sexual object is ordinarily treated - who looks
at it, that is to say, strokes it and fondles it till he obtains
complete satisfaction through these activities. Developed to this
degree, narcissism has the significance of a perversion that has
absorbed the whole of the subject’s sexual life, and it will
consequently exhibit the characteristics which we expect to meet
with in the study of all perversions.

   Psycho-analytic observers were
subsequently struck by the fact that individual features of the
narcissistic attitude are found in many people who suffer from
other disorders - for instance, as Sadger has pointed out, in
homosexuals - and finally it seemed probable that an allocation of
the libido such as deserved to be described as narcissism might be
present far more extensively, and that it might claim a place in
the regular course of human sexual development.¹ Difficulties
in psycho-analytic work upon neurotics led to the same supposition,
for it seemed as though this kind of narcissistic attitude in them
constituted one of the limits to their susceptibility to influence.
Narcissism in this sense would not be a perversion, but the
libidinal complement to the egoism of the instinct of
self-preservation, a measure of which may justifiably be attributed
to every living creature.

  
¹
Otto Rank (1911
c
).

On Narcissism: An Introduction

2932

   A pressing motive for occupying
ourselves with the conception of a primary and normal narcissism
arose when the attempt was made to subsume what we know of dementia
praecox (Kraepelin) or schizophrenia (Bleuler) under the hypothesis
of the libido theory. Patients of this kind, whom I have proposed
to term paraphrenics, display two fundamental characteristics:
megalomania and diversion of their interest from the external world
- from people and things. In consequence of the latter change, they
become inaccessible to the influence of psycho-analysis and cannot
be cured by our efforts. But the paraphrenic’s turning away
from the external world needs to be more precisely characterized. A
patient suffering from hysteria or obsessional neurosis has also,
as far as his illness extends, given up his relation to reality.
But analysis shows that he has by no means broken off his erotic
relations to people and things. He still retains them in phantasy;
i.e. he has, on the one hand, substituted for real objects
imaginary ones from his memory, or has mixed the latter with the
former; and on the other hand, he has renounced the initiation of
motor activities for the attainment of his aims in connection with
those objects. Only to this condition of the libido may we
legitimately apply the term ‘introversion’ of the
libido which is used by Jung indiscriminately. It is otherwise with
the paraphrenic. He seems really to have withdrawn his libido from
people and things in the external world, without replacing them by
others in phantasy. When he
does
so replace them, the
process seems to be a secondary one and to be part of an attempt at
recovery, designed to lead the libido back to objects.¹

   The question arises: What happens
to the libido which has been withdrawn from external objects in
schizophrenia? The megalomania characteristic of these states
points the way. This megalomania has no doubt come into being at
the expense of object-libido. The libido that has been withdrawn
from the external world has been directed to the ego and thus gives
rise to an attitude which may be called narcissism. But the
megalomania itself is no new creation; on the contrary, it is, as
we know, a magnification and plainer manifestation of a condition
which had already existed previously. This leads us to look upon
the narcissism which arises through the drawing in of
object-cathexes as a secondary one, superimposed upon a primary
narcissism that is obscured by a number of different
influences.

  
¹
In connection with this see my discussion
of the ‘end of the world’ in the analysis of
Senatspräsident Schreber; also Abraham, 1908.

On Narcissism: An Introduction

2933

   Let me insist that I am not
proposing here to explain or penetrate further into the problem of
schizophrenia, but that I am merely putting together what has
already been said elsewhere, in order to justify the introduction
of the concept of narcissism.

   This extension of the libido
theory - in my opinion, a legitimate one - receives reinforcement
from a third quarter, namely, from our observations and views on
the mental life of children and primitive peoples. In the latter we
find characteristics which, if they occurred singly, might be put
down to megalomania: an over-estimation of the power of their
wishes and mental acts, the ‘omnipotence of thoughts’,
a belief in the thaumaturgic force of words, and a technique for
dealing with the external world - ‘magic’ - which
appears to be a logical application of these grandiose
premisses.¹ In the children of to-day, whose development is
much more obscure to us, we expect to find an exactly analogous
attitude towards the external world.² Thus we form the idea of
there being an original libidinal cathexis of the ego, from which
some is later given off to objects, but which fundamentally
persists and is related to the object-cathexes much as the body of
an amoeba is related to the pseudopodia which it puts out. In our
researches, taking, as they did, neurotic symptoms for their
starting-point, this part of the allocation of libido necessarily
remained hidden from us at the outset. All that we noticed were the
emanations of this libido - the object-cathexes, which can be sent
out and drawn back again. We see also, broadly speaking, an
antithesis between ego-libido and object-libido. The more of the
one is employed, the more the other becomes depleted. The highest
phase of development of which object-libido is capable is seen in
the state of being in love, when the subject seems to give up his
own personality in favour of an object-cathexis; while we have the
opposite condition in the paranoic’s phantasy (or
self-perception) of the ‘end of the world’.³
Finally, as regards the differentiation of psychical energies, we
are led to the conclusion that to begin with, during the state of
narcissism, they exist together and that our analysis is too coarse
to distinguish between them; not until there is object-cathexis is
it possible to discriminate a sexual energy - the libido - from an
energy of the ego-instincts.

  
¹
Cf. the passages in my
Totem and
Taboo
(1912-13) which deal with this subject.

  
²
Cf. Ferenczi (1913
a
).

  
³
  There are two mechanisms of this
‘end of the world’ idea: in the one case, the whole
libidinal cathexis flows off to the loved object; in the other, it
all flows back into the ego.

On Narcissism: An Introduction

2934

   Before going any further I must
touch on two questions which lead us to the heart of the
difficulties of our subject. In the first place, what is the
relation of the narcissism of which we are now speaking to
auto-erotism, which we have described as an early state of the
libido? Secondly, if we grant the ego a primary cathexis of libido,
why is there any necessity for further distinguishing a sexual
libido from a non-sexual energy of the ego-instincts? Would not the
postulation of a single kind of psychical energy save us all the
difficulties of differentiating an energy of the ego-instincts from
ego-libido, and ego-libido from object-libido?

   As regards the first question, I
may point out that we are bound to suppose that a unity comparable
to the ego cannot exist in the individual from the start; the ego
has to be developed. The auto-erotic instincts, however, are there
from the very first; so there must be something added to
auto-erotism - a new psychical action - in order to bring about
narcissism.

   To be asked to give a definite
answer to the second question must occasion perceptible uneasiness
in every psycho-analyst. One dislikes the thought of abandoning
observation for barren theoretical controversy, but nevertheless
one must not shirk an attempt at clarification. It is true that
notions such as that of an ego-libido, an energy of the
ego-instincts, and so on, are neither particularly easy to grasp,
nor sufficiently rich in content; a speculative theory of the
relations in question would begin by seeking to obtain a sharply
defined concept as its basis. But I am of opinion that that is just
the difference between a speculative theory and a science erected
on empirical interpretation. The latter will not envy speculation
its privilege of having a smooth, logically unassailable
foundation, but will gladly content itself with nebulous, scarcely
imaginable basic concepts, which it hopes to apprehend more clearly
in the course of its development, or which it is even prepared to
replace by others. For these ideas are not the foundation of
science, upon which everything rests: that foundation is
observation alone. They are not the bottom but the top of the whole
structure, and they can be replaced and discarded without damaging
it. The same thing is happening in our day in the science of
physics, the basic notions of which as regards matter, centres of
force, attraction, etc., are scarcely less debatable than the
corresponding notions in psycho-analysis.

   The value of the concepts
‘ego-libido’ and ‘object-libido’ lies in
the fact that they are derived from the study of the intimate
characteristics of neurotic and psychotic processes. A
differentiation of libido into a kind which is proper to the ego
and one which is attached to objects is an unavoidable corollary to
an original hypothesis which distinguished between sexual instincts
and ego-instincts. At any rate, analysis of the pure transference
neuroses (hysteria and obsessional neurosis) compelled me to make
this distinction and I only know that all attempts to account for
these phenomena by other means have been completely
unsuccessful.

On Narcissism: An Introduction

2935

   In the total absence of any
theory of the instincts which would help us to find our bearings,
we may be permitted, or rather, it is incumbent upon us, to start
off by working out some hypothesis to its logical conclusion, until
it either breaks down or is confirmed. There are various points in
favour of the hypothesis of there having been from the first a
separation between sexual instincts and others, ego-instincts,
besides the serviceability of such a hypothesis in the analysis of
the transference neuroses. I admit that this latter consideration
alone would not be unambiguous, for it might be a question of an
indifferent psychical energy which only becomes libido through the
act of cathecting an object. But, in the first place, the
distinction made in this concept corresponds to the common, popular
distinction between hunger and love. In the second place, there are
biological considerations in its favour. The individual does
actually carry on a twofold existence: one to serve his own
purposes and the other as a link in a chain, which he serves
against his will, or at least involuntarily. The individual himself
regards sexuality as one of his own ends; whereas from another
point of view he is an appendage to his germ plasm, at whose
disposal he puts his energies in return for a bonus of pleasure. He
is the mortal vehicle of a (possibly) immortal substance - like the
inheritor of an entailed property, who is only the temporary holder
of an estate which survives him. The separation of the sexual
instincts from the ego-instincts would simply reflect this twofold
function of the individual. Thirdly, we must recollect that all our
provisional ideas in psychology will presumably some day be based
on an organic substructure. This makes it probable that it is
special substances and chemical processes which perform the
operations of sexuality and provide for the extension of individual
life into that of the species. We are taking this probability into
account in replacing the special chemical substances by special
psychical forces.

On Narcissism: An Introduction

2936

   I try in general to keep
psychology clear from everything that is different in nature from
it, even biological lines of thought. For that very reason I should
like at this point expressly to admit that the hypothesis of
separate ego-instincts and sexual instincts (that is to say, the
libido theory) rests scarcely at all upon a psychological basis,
but derives its principal support from biology. But I shall be
consistent enough to drop this hypothesis if psycho-analytic work
should itself produce some other, more serviceable hypothesis about
the instincts. So far, this has not happened. It may turn out that,
most basically and on the longest view, sexual energy - libido - is
only the product of a differentiation in the energy at work
generally in the mind. But such an assertion has no relevance. It
relates to matters which are so remote from the problems of our
observation, and of which we have so little cognizance, that it is
as idle to dispute it as to affirm it; this primal identity may
well have as little to do with our analytic interests as the primal
kinship of all the races of mankind has to do with the proof of
kinship required in order to establish a legal right of
inheritance. All these speculations take us nowhere. Since we
cannot wait for another science to present us with the final
conclusions on the theory of the instincts, it is far more to the
purpose that we should try to see what light may be thrown upon
this basic problem of biology by a synthesis of the
psychological
phenomena. Let us face the possibility of
error; but do not let us be deterred from pursuing the logical
implications of the hypothesis we first adopted of an antithesis
between ego-instincts and sexual instincts (a hypothesis to which
we were forcibly led by analysis of the transference neuroses), and
from seeing whether it turns out to be without contradictions and
fruitful, and whether it can be applied to other disorders as well,
such as schizophrenia.