Freud - Complete Works (490 page)

On Narcissism: An Introduction

2937

   It would, of course, be a
different matter if it were proved that the libido theory has
already come to grief in the attempt to explain the latter disease.
This has been asserted by C. G. Jung (1912) and it is on that
account that I have been obliged to enter upon this last
discussion, which I would gladly have been spared. I should have
preferred to follow to its end the course embarked upon in the
analysis of the Schreber case without any discussion of its
premisses. But Jung’s assertion is, to say the least of it,
premature. The grounds he gives for it are scanty. In the first
place, he appeals to an admission of my own that I myself have been
obliged, owing to the difficulties of the Schreber analysis, to
extend the concept of libido (that is, to give up its sexual
content) and to identify libido with psychical interest in general.
Ferenczi (1913
b
), in an exhaustive criticism of Jung’s
work, has already said all that is necessary in correction of this
erroneous interpretation. I can only corroborate his criticism and
repeat that I have never made any such retractation of the libido
theory. Another argument of Jung’s, namely, that we cannot
suppose that the withdrawal of the libido is in itself enough to
bring about the loss of the normal function of reality, is no
argument but a dictum. It ‘begs the question’,¹
and saves discussion; for whether and how this is possible was
precisely the point that should have been under investigation. In
his next major work, Jung (1913) just misses the solution I had
long since indicated: ‘At the same time’, he writes,
‘there is this to be further taken into consideration (a
point to which, incidentally, Freud refers in his work on the
Schreber case) - that the introversion of the
libido
sexualis
leads to a cathexis of the "ego", and that
it may possibly be this that produces the result of a loss of
reality. It is indeed a tempting possibility to explain the
psychology of the loss of reality in this fashion.’ But Jung
does not enter much further into a discussion of this possibility.
A few lines later he dismisses it with the remark that this
determinant ‘would result in the psychology of an ascetic
anchorite, not in a dementia praecox’. How little this inapt
analogy can help us to decide the question may be learnt from the
consideration that an anchorite of this kind, who ‘tries to
eradicate every trace of sexual interest’ (but only in the
popular sense of the word ‘sexual’), does not even
necessarily display any pathogenic allocation of the libido. He may
have diverted his sexual interest from human beings entirely, and
yet may have sublimated it into a heightened interest in the
divine, in nature, or in the animal kingdom, without his libido
having undergone an introversion on to his phantasies or a return
to his ego. This analogy would seem to rule out in advance the
possibility of differentiating between interest emanating from
erotic sources and from others. Let us remember, further, that the
researches of the Swiss school, however valuable, have elucidated
only two features in the picture of dementia praecox - the presence
in it of complexes known to us both in healthy and neurotic
subjects, and the similarity of the phantasies that occur in it to
popular myths - but that they have not been able to throw any
further light on the mechanism of the disease. We may repudiate
Jung’s assertion, then, that the libido theory has come to
grief in the attempt to explain dementia praecox, and that it is
therefore disposed of for the other neuroses as well.

  
¹
[In English in the original.]

On Narcissism: An Introduction

2938

II

   Certain special difficulties seem
to me to lie in the way of a direct study of narcissism. Our chief
means of access to it will probably remain the analysis of the
paraphrenias. Just as the transference neuroses have enabled us to
trace the libidinal instinctual impulses, so dementia praecox and
paranoia will give us an insight into the psychology of the ego.
Once more, in order to arrive at an understanding of what seems so
simple in normal phenomena, we shall have to turn to the field of
pathology with its distortions and exaggerations. At the same time,
other means of approach remain open to us, by which we may obtain a
better knowledge of narcissism. These I shall now discuss in the
following order: the study of organic disease, of hypochondria and
of the erotic life of the sexes.

   In estimating the influence of
organic disease upon the distribution of libido, I follow a
suggestion made to me orally by Sándor Ferenczi. It is
universally known, and we take it as a matter of course, that a
person who is tormented by organic pain and discomfort gives up his
interest in the things of the external world, in so far as they do
not concern his suffering. Closer observation teaches us that he
also withdraws
libidinal
interest from his love-objects: so
long as he suffers, he ceases to love. The commonplace nature of
this fact is no reason why we should be deterred from translating
it into terms of the libido theory. We should then say:(the sick
man withdraws his libidinal cathexes back upon his own ego, and
sends them out again when he recovers. ‘Concentrated is his
soul’, says Wilhelm Busch of the poet suffering from
toothache, ‘in his molar’s narrow hole.’ Here
libido and ego-interest share the same fate and are once more
indistinguishable from each other. The familiar egoism of the sick
person covers both. We find it so natural because we are certain
that in the same situation we should behave in just the same way.
The way in which a lover’s feelings, however strong, are
banished by bodily ailments, and suddenly replaced by complete
indifference, is a theme which has been exploited by comic writers
to an appropriate extent.

On Narcissism: An Introduction

2939

   The condition of sleep, too,
resembles illness in implying a narcissistic withdrawal of the
positions of the libido on to the subject’s own self, or,
more precisely, on to the single wish to sleep. The egoism of
dreams fits very well into this context. In both states we have, if
nothing else, examples of changes in the distribution of libido
that are consequent upon an alteration of the ego.

   Hypochondria, like organic
disease, manifests itself in distressing and painful bodily
sensations, and it has the same effect as organic disease on the
distribution of libido. The hypochondriac withdraws both interest
and libido - the latter specially markedly - from the objects of
the external world and concentrates both of them upon the organ
that is engaging his attention. A difference between hypochondria
and organic disease now becomes evident: in the latter, the
distressing sensations are based upon demonstrable changes; in the
former, this is not so. But it would be entirely in keeping with
our general conception of the processes of neurosis if we decided
to say that hypochondria must be right: organic changes must be
supposed to be present in it, too.

   But what could these changes be?
We will let ourselves be guided at this point by our experience,
which shows that bodily sensations of an unpleasurable nature,
comparable to those of hypochondria, occur in the other neuroses as
well. I have said before that I am inclined to class hypochondria
with neurasthenia and anxiety-neurosis as a third
‘actual’ neurosis. It would probably not be going too
far to suppose that in the case of the other neuroses a small
amount of hypochondria was regularly formed at the same time as
well. We have the best example of this, I think, in anxiety
neurosis with its superstructure of hysteria. Now the familiar
prototype of an organ that is painfully tender, that is in some way
changed and that is yet not diseased in the ordinary sense, is the
genital organ in its states of excitation. In that condition it
becomes congested with blood, swollen and humected, and is the seat
of a multiplicity of sensations. Let us now, taking any part of the
body, describe its activity of sending sexually exciting stimuli to
the mind as its ‘erotogenicity’, and let us further
reflect that the considerations on which our theory of sexuality
was based have long accustomed us to the notion that certain other
parts of the body - the ‘erotogenic’ zones - may act as
substitutes for the genitals and behave analogously to them. We
have then only one more step to take. We can decide to regard
erotogenicity as a general characteristic of all organs and may
then speak of an increase or decrease of it in a particular part of
the body. For every such change in the erotogenicity of the organs
there might then be a parallel change of libidinal cathexis in the
ego. Such factors would constitute what we believe to underlie
hypochondria and what may have the same effect upon the
distribution of libido as is produced by a material illness of the
organs.

On Narcissism: An Introduction

2940

   We see that, if we follow up this
line of thought, we come up against the problem not only of
hypochondria, but of the other ‘actual’ neuroses -
neurasthenia and anxiety neurosis. Let us therefore stop at this
point. It is not within the scope of a purely psychological inquiry
to penetrate so far behind the frontiers of physiological research.
I will merely mention that from this point of view we may suspect
that the relation of hypochondria to paraphrenia is similar to that
of the other ‘actual’ neuroses to hysteria and
obsessional neurosis: we may suspect, that is, that it is dependent
on ego-libido just as the others are on object-libido, and that
hypochondriacal anxiety is the counterpart, as coming from
ego-libido, to neurotic anxiety. Further, since we are already
familiar with the idea that the mechanism of falling ill and of the
formation of symptoms in the transference neuroses - the path from
introversion to regression - is to be linked to a damming-up of
object-libido,¹ we may come to closer quarters with the idea
of a damming-up of ego-libido as well and may bring this idea into
relation with the phenomena of hypochondria and paraphrenia.

   At this point, our curiosity will
of course raise the question why this damming-up of libido in the
ego should have to be experienced as unpleasurable. I shall content
myself with the answer that unpleasure is always the expression of
a higher degree of tension, and that therefore what is happening is
that a quantity in the field of material events is being
transformed here as elsewhere into the psychical quality of
unpleasure. Nevertheless it may be that what is decisive for the
generation of unpleasure is not the absolute magnitude of the
material event, but rather some particular function of that
absolute magnitude. Here we may even venture to touch on the
question of what makes it necessary at all for our mental life to
pass beyond the limits of narcissism and to attach the libido to
objects. The answer which would follow from our line of thought
would once more be that this necessity arises when the cathexis of
the ego with libido exceeds a certain amount. A strong egoism is a
protection against falling ill, but in the last resort we must
begin to love in order not to fall ill, and we are bound to fall
ill if, in consequence of frustration, we are unable to love. This
follows somewhat on the lines of Heine’s picture of the
psychogenesis of the Creation:

                                               
Krankheit ist wohl der letzte Grund

                                               
Des ganzen Schöpferdrangs gewesen;

                                               
Erschaffend konnte ich genesen,

                                               
Erschaffend wurde ich gesund.
²

   We have recognized our mental
apparatus as being first and foremost a device designed for
mastering excitations which would otherwise be felt as distressing
or would have pathogenic effects. Working them over in the mind
helps remarkably towards an internal draining away of excitations
which are incapable of direct discharge outwards, or for which such
a discharge is for the moment undesirable. In the first instance,
however, it is a matter of indifference whether this internal
process of working-over is carried out upon real or imaginary
objects. The difference does not appear till later - if the turning
of the libido on to unreal objects (introversion) has led to its
being dammed up. In paraphrenics, megalomania allows of a similar
internal working-over of libido which has returned to the ego;
perhaps it is only when the megalomania fails that the damming-up
of libido in the ego becomes pathogenic and starts the process of
recovery which gives us the impression of being a disease.

  
¹
Cf. ‘Types of Onset of
Neurosis’ (1912
c
).

  
²
[‘Illness was no doubt the final
cause of the whole urge to create. By creating, I could recover; by
creating, I became healthy.’]

On Narcissism: An Introduction

2941

   I shall try here to penetrate a
little further into the mechanism of paraphrenia and shall bring
together those views which already seem to me to deserve
consideration. The difference between paraphrenic affections and
the transference neuroses appears to me to lie in the circumstance
that, in the former, the libido that is liberated by frustration
does not remain attached to objects in phantasy, but withdraws on
to the ego. Megalomania would accordingly correspond to the
psychical mastering of this latter amount of libido, and would thus
be the counterpart of the introversion on to phantasies that is
found in the transference neuroses; a failure of this psychical
function gives rise to the hypochondria of paraphrenia and this is
homologous to the anxiety of the transference neuroses. We know
that this anxiety can be resolved by further psychical working
over, i.e. by conversion, reaction-formation or the construction of
protections (phobias). The corresponding process in paraphrenics is
an attempt at restoration, to which the striking manifestations of
the disease are due. Since paraphrenia frequently, if not usually,
brings about only a
partial
detachment of the libido from
objects, we can distinguish three groups of phenomena in the
clinical picture: (1) those representing what remains of a normal
state or of neurosis (residual phenomena); (2) those representing
the morbid process (detachment of libido from its objects and,
further, megalomania, hypochondria, affective disturbance and every
kind of regression); (3) those representing restoration, in which
the libido is once more attached to objects, after the manner of a
hysteria (in dementia praecox or paraphrenia proper), or of an
obsessional neurosis (in paranoia). This fresh libidinal cathexis
differs from the primary one in that it starts from another level
and under other conditions. The difference between the transference
neuroses brought about in the case of this fresh kind of libidinal
cathexis and the corresponding formations where the ego is normal
should be able to afford us the deepest insight into the structure
of our mental apparatus.