Freud - Complete Works (491 page)

On Narcissism: An Introduction

2942

   A third way in which we may
approach the study of narcissism is by observing the erotic life of
human beings, with its many kinds of differentiation in man and
woman. Just as object-libido at first concealed ego-libido from our
observation, so too in connection with the object-choice of infants
(and of growing children) what we first noticed was that they
derived their sexual objects from their experiences of
satisfaction. The first auto-erotic sexual satisfactions are
experienced in connection with vital functions which serve the
purpose of self-preservation. The sexual instincts are at the
outset attached to the satisfaction of the ego-instincts; only
later do they become independent of these, and even then we have an
indication of that original attachment in the fact that the persons
who are concerned with a child’s feeding, care, and
protection become his earliest sexual objects: that is to say, in
the first instance his mother or a substitute for her. Side by
side, however, with this type and source of object-choice, which
may be called the ‘anaclitic’ or
‘attachment’ type, psycho-analytic research has
revealed a second type, which we were not prepared for finding. We
have discovered, especially clearly in people whose libidinal
development has suffered some disturbance, such as perverts and
homosexuals, that in their later choice of love-objects they have
taken as a model not their mother but their own selves. They are
plainly seeking
themselves
as a love-object, and are
exhibiting a type of object-choice which must be termed
‘narcissistic’. In this observation we have the
strongest of the reasons which have led us to adopt the hypothesis
of narcissism.

On Narcissism: An Introduction

2943

   We have, however, not concluded
that human beings are divided into two sharply differentiated
groups, according as their object-choice conforms to the anaclitic
or to the narcissistic type; we assume rather that both kinds of
object-choice are open to each individual, though he may show a
preference for one or the other. We say that a human being has
originally two sexual objects - himself and the woman who nurses
him - and in doing so we are postulating a primary narcissism in
everyone, which may in some cases manifest itself in a dominating
fashion in his object-choice.

   A comparison of the male and
female sexes then shows that there are fundamental differences
between them in respect of their type of object-choice, although
these differences are of course not universal. Complete object-love
of the attachment type is, properly speaking, characteristic of the
male. It displays the marked sexual overvaluation which is
doubtless derived from the child’s original narcissism and
thus corresponds to a transference of that narcissism to the sexual
object. This sexual overvaluation is the origin of the peculiar
state of being in love, a state suggestive of a neurotic
compulsion, which is thus traceable to an impoverishment of the ego
as regards libido in favour of the love-object. A different course
is followed in the type of female most frequently met with, which
is probably the purest and truest one. With the onset of puberty
the maturing of the female sexual organs, which up till then have
been in a condition of latency, seems to bring about an
intensification of the original narcissism, and this is
unfavourable to the development of a true object-choice with its
accompanying sexual overvaluation. Women, especially if they grow
up with good looks, develop a certain self-contentment which
compensates them for the social restrictions that are imposed upon
them in their choice of object. Strictly speaking, it is only
themselves that such women love with an intensity comparable to
that of the man’s love for them. Nor does their need lie in
the direction of loving, but of being loved; and the man who
fulfils this condition is the one who finds favour with them. The
importance of this type of woman for the erotic life of mankind is
to be rated very high. Such women have the greatest fascination for
men, not only for aesthetic reasons, since as a rule they are the
most beautiful, but also because of a combination of interesting
psychological factors. For it seems very evident that another
person’s narcissism has a great attraction for those who have
renounced part of their own narcissism and are in search of
object-love. The charm of a child lies to a great extent in his
narcissism, his self-contentment and inaccessibility, just as does
the charm of certain animals which seem not to concern themselves
about us, such as cats and the large beasts of prey. Indeed, even
great criminals and humorists, as they are represented in
literature, compel our interest by the narcissistic consistency
with which they manage to keep away from their ego anything that
would diminish it. It is as if we envied them for maintaining a
blissful state of mind - an unassailable libidinal position which
we ourselves have since abandoned. The great charm of narcissistic
women has, however, its reverse side; a large part of the
lover’s dissatisfaction, of his doubts of the woman’s
love, of his complaints of her enigmatic nature, has its root in
this incongruity between the types of object-choice.

On Narcissism: An Introduction

2944

   Perhaps it is not out of place
here to give an assurance that this description of the feminine
form of erotic life is not due to my tendentious desire on my part
to depreciate women. Apart from the fact that tendentiousness is
quite alien to me, I know that these different lines of development
correspond to the differentiation of functions in a highly
complicated biological whole; further, I am ready to admit that
there are quite a number of women who love according to the
masculine type and who also develop the sexual overvaluation proper
to that type.

   Even for narcissistic women,
whose attitude towards men remains cool, there is a road which
leads to complete object-love. In the child which they bear, a part
of their own body confronts them like an extraneous object, to
which, starting out from their narcissism, they can then give
complete object-love. There are other women, again, who do not have
to wait for a child in order to take the step in development from
(secondary) narcissism to object-love. Before puberty they feel
masculine and develop some way along masculine lines; after this
trend has been cut short on their reaching female maturity, they
still retain the capacity of longing for a masculine ideal - an
ideal which is in fact a survival of the boyish nature that they
themselves once possessed.

   What I have so far said by way of
indication may be concluded by a short summary of the paths leading
to the choice of an object.

   A person may love:-

   (1) According to the narcissistic
type:

           
(
a
) what he himself is (i.e. himself),

           
(
b
) what he himself was,

           
(
c
) what he himself would like to be,

           
(
d
) someone who was once part of himself.

   (2) According to the anaclitic
(attachment) type:

           
(
a
) the woman who feeds him,

           
(
b
) the man who protects him,

and the succession of substitutes who take
their place. The inclusion of case (
c
) of the first type
cannot be justified till a later stage of this discussion.

   The significance of narcissistic
object-choice for homosexuality in men must be considered in
another connection.

On Narcissism: An Introduction

2945

   The primary narcissism of
children which we have assumed and which forms one of the
postulates of our theories of the libido, is less easy to grasp by
direct observation than to confirm by inference from elsewhere. If
we look at the attitude of affectionate parents towards their
children, we have to recognize that it is a revival and
reproduction of their own narcissism, which they have long since
abandoned. The trustworthy pointer constituted by overvaluation,
which we have already recognized as a narcissistic stigma in the
case of object-choice, dominates, as we all know, their emotional
attitude. Thus they are under a compulsion to ascribe every
perfection to the child - which sober observation would find no
occasion to do - and to conceal and forget all his shortcomings.
(Incidentally, the denial of sexuality in children is connected
with this.) Moreover, they are inclined to suspend in the
child’s favour the operation of all the cultural acquisitions
which their own narcissism has been forced to respect, and to renew
on his behalf the claims to privileges which were long ago given up
by themselves. The child shall have a better time than his parents;
he shall not be subject to the necessities which they have
recognized as paramount in life. Illness, death, renunciation of
enjoyment, restrictions on his own will, shall not touch him; the
laws of nature and of society shall be abrogated in his favour; he
shall once more really be the centre and core of creation -
‘His Majesty the Baby’,¹ as we once fancied
ourselves. The child shall fulfil those wishful dreams of the
parents which they never carried out - the boy shall become a great
man and a hero in his father’s place, and the girl shall
marry a prince as a tardy compensation for her mother. At the most
touchy point in the narcissistic system, the immortality of the
ego, which is so hard pressed by reality, security is achieved by
taking refuge in the child. Parental love, which is so moving and
at bottom so childish, is nothing but the parents’ narcissism
born again, which, transformed into object-love, unmistakably
reveals its former nature.

  
¹
[In English in the original.]

On Narcissism: An Introduction

2946

III

   The disturbances to which a
child’s original narcissism is exposed, the reactions with
which he seeks to protect himself from them and the paths into
which he is forced in doing so - these are themes which I propose
to leave on one side, as an important field of work which still
awaits exploration. The most significant portion of it, however,
can be singled out in the shape of the ‘castration
complex’ (in boys, anxiety about the penis - in girls, envy
for the penis) and treated in connection with the effect of early
deterrence from sexual activity. Psycho-analytic research
ordinarily enables us to trace the vicissitudes undergone by the
libidinal instincts when these, isolated from the ego-instincts,
are placed in opposition to them; but in the particular field of
the castration complex, it allows us to infer the existence of an
epoch and a psychical situation in which the two groups of
instincts, still operating in unison and inseparably mingled, make
their appearance as narcissistic interests. It is from this context
that Adler has derived his concept of the ‘masculine
protest’, which he has elevated almost to the position of the
sole motive force in the formation of character and neurosis alike
and which he bases not on a narcissistic, and therefore still a
libidinal, trend, but on a social valuation. Psycho-analytic
research has from the very beginning recognized the existence and
importance of the ‘masculine protest’, but it has
regarded it, in opposition to Adler, as narcissistic in nature and
derived from the castration complex. The ‘masculine
protest’ is concerned in the formation of character, into the
genesis of which it enters along with many other factors, but it is
completely unsuited for explaining the problems of the neuroses,
with regard to which Adler takes account of nothing but the manner
in which they serve the ego-instincts. I find it quite impossible
to place the genesis of neurosis upon the narrow basis of the
castration complex, however powerfully it may come to the fore in
men among their resistances to the cure of a neurosis.
Incidentally, I know of cases of neurosis in which the
‘masculine protest’, or, as we regard it, the
castration complex, plays no pathogenic part, and even fails to
appear at all.

On Narcissism: An Introduction

2947

   Observation of normal adults
shows that their former megalomania has been damped down and that
the psychical characteristics from which we inferred their
infantile narcissism have been effaced. What has become of their
ego-Iibido? Are we to suppose that the whole amount of it has
passed into object-cathexes? Such a possibility is plainly contrary
to the whole trend of our argument; but we may find a hint at
another answer to the question in the psychology of repression.

   We have learnt that libidinal
instinctual impulses undergo the vicissitude of pathogenic
repression if they come into conflict with the subject’s
cultural and ethical ideas. By this we never mean that the
individual in question has a merely intellectual knowledge of the
existence of such ideas; we always mean that he recognizes them as
a standard for himself and submits to the claims they make on him.
Repression, we have said, proceeds from the ego; we might say with
greater precision that it proceeds from the self-respect of the
ego. The same impressions, experiences, impulses and desires that
one man indulges or at least works over consciously will be
rejected with the utmost indignation by another, or even stifled
before they enter consciousness. The difference between the two,
which contains the conditioning factor of repression, can easily be
expressed in terms which enable it to be explained by the libido
theory. We can say that the one man has set up an
ideal
in
himself by which he measures his actual ego, while the other has
formed no such ideal. For the ego the formation of an ideal would
be the conditioning factor of repression.