Freud - Complete Works (492 page)

On Narcissism: An Introduction

2948

   This ideal ego is now the target
of the self-love which was enjoyed in childhood by the actual ego.
The subject’s narcissism makes its appearance displaced on to
this new ideal ego, which, like the infantile ego, finds itself
possessed of every perfection that is of value. As always where the
libido is concerned, man has here again shown himself incapable of
giving up a satisfaction he had once enjoyed. He is not willing to
forgo the narcissistic perfection of his childhood; and when, as he
grows up, he is disturbed by the admonitions of others and by the
awakening of his own critical judgement, so that he can no longer
retain that perfection, he seeks to recover it in the new form of
an ego ideal. What he projects before him as his ideal is the
substitute for the lost narcissism of his childhood in which he was
his own ideal.

   We are naturally led to examine
the relation between this forming of an ideal and sublimation.
Sublimation is a process that concerns object-libido and consists
in the instinct’s directing itself towards an aim other than,
and remote from, that of sexual satisfaction; in this process the
accent falls upon deflection from sexuality. Idealization is a
process that concerns the
object
; by it that object, without
any alteration in its nature, is aggrandized and exalted in the
subject’s mind. Idealization is possible in the sphere of
ego-libido as well as in that of object-libido. For example, the
sexual overvaluation of an object is an idealization of it. In so
far as sublimation describes something that has to do with the
instinct and idealization something to do with the object, the two
concepts are to be distinguished from each other.

   The formation of an ego ideal is
often confused with the sublimation of instinct, to the detriment
of our understanding of the facts. A man who has exchanged his
narcissism for homage to a high ego ideal has not necessarily on
that account succeeded in sublimating his libidinal instincts. It
is true that the ego ideal demands such sublimation, but it cannot
enforce it; sublimation remains a special process which may be
prompted by the ideal but the execution of which is entirely
independent of any such prompting. It is precisely in neurotics
that we find the highest differences of potential between the
development of their ego ideal and the amount of sublimation of
their primitive libidinal instincts; and in general it is far
harder to convince an idealist of the inexpedient location of his
libido than a plain man whose pretensions have remained more
moderate. Further, the formation of an ego ideal and sublimation
are quite differently related to the causation of neurosis. As we
have learnt, the formation of an ideal heightens the demands of the
ego and is the most powerful factor favouring repression;
sublimation is a way out, a way by which those demands can be met
without
involving repression.

On Narcissism: An Introduction

2949

   It would not surprise us if we
were to find a special psychical agency which performs the task of
seeing that narcissistic satisfaction from the ego ideal is ensured
and which, with this end in view, constantly watches the actual ego
and measures it by that ideal. If such an agency does exist, we
cannot possibly come upon it as a
discovery
- we can only
recognize
it; for we may reflect that what we call our
‘conscience’ has the required characteristics.
Recognition of this agency enables us to understand the so-called
‘delusions of being noticed’ or more correctly, of
being
watched
, which are such striking symptoms in the
paranoid diseases and which may also occur as an isolated form of
illness, or intercalated in a transference neurosis. Patients of
this sort complain that all their thoughts are known and their
actions watched and supervised; they are informed of the
functioning of this agency by voices which characteristically speak
to them in the third person (‘Now she’s thinking of
that again’, ‘now he’s going out’). This
complaint is justified; it describes the truth. A power of this
kind, watching, discovering and criticizing all our intentions,
does really exist. Indeed, it exists in every one of us in normal
life.

   Delusions of being watched
present this power in a regressive form, thus revealing its genesis
and the reason why the patient is in revolt against it. For what
prompted the subject to form an ego ideal, on whose behalf his
conscience acts as watchman, arose from the critical influence of
his parents (conveyed to him by the medium of the voice), to whom
were added, as time went on, those who trained and taught him and
the innumerable and indefinable host of all the other people in his
environment - his fellow-men - and public opinion.

   In this way large amounts of
libido of an essentially homosexual kind are drawn into the
formation of the narcissistic ego ideal and find outlet and
satisfaction in maintaining it. The institution of conscience was
at bottom an embodiment, first of parental criticism, and
subsequently of that of society - a process which is repeated in
what takes place when a tendency towards repression develops out of
a prohibition or obstacle that came in the first instance from
without. The voices, as well as the undefined multitude, are
brought into the foreground again by the disease, and so the
evolution of conscience is reproduced regressively. But the revolt
against this ‘censoring agency’ arises out of the
subject’s desire (in accordance with the fundamental
character of his illness) to liberate himself from all these
influences, beginning with the parental one, and out of his
withdrawal of homosexual libido from them. His conscience then
confronts him in a regressive form as a hostile influence from
without.

   The complaints made by paranoics
also show that at bottom the self-criticism of conscience coincides
with the self-observation on which it is based. Thus the activity
of the mind which has taken over the function of conscience has
also placed itself at the service of internal research, which
furnishes philosophy with the material for its intellectual
operations. This may have some bearing on the characteristic
tendency of paranoics to construct speculative systems.¹

  
¹
I should like to add to this, merely by way
of suggestion, that the developing and strengthening of this
observing agency might contain within it the subsequent genesis of
(subjective) memory and the time-factor, the latter of which has no
application to unconscious processes.

On Narcissism: An Introduction

2950

   It will certainly be of
importance to us if evidence of the activity of this critically
observing agency - which becomes heightened into conscience and
philosophic introspection - can be found in other fields as well. I
will mention here what Herbert Silberer has called the
‘functional phenomenon’, one of the few indisputably
valuable additions to the theory of dreams. Silberer, as we know,
has shown that in states between sleeping and waking we can
directly observe the translation of thoughts into visual images,
but that in these circumstances we frequently have a
representation, not of a thought-content, but of the actual state
(willingness, fatigue, etc.) of the person who is struggling
against sleep. Similarly, he has shown that the conclusions of some
dreams or some divisions in their content merely signify the
dreamer’s own perception of his sleeping and waking. Silberer
has thus demonstrated the part played by observation - in the sense
of the paranoic’s delusions of being watched - in the
formation of dreams. This part is not a constant one. Probably the
reason why I overlooked it is because it does not play any great
part in my own dreams; in persons who are gifted philosophically
and accustomed to introspection it may become very evident.

   We may here recall that we have
found that the formation of dreams takes place under the dominance
of a censorship which compels distortion of the dream-thoughts. We
did not, however, picture this censorship as a special power, but
chose the term to designate one side of the repressive trends that
govern the ego, namely the side which is turned towards the
dream-thoughts. If we enter further into the structure of the ego,
we may recognize in the ego ideal and in the dynamic utterances of
conscience the
dream-censor
as well. If this censor is to
some extent on the alert even during sleep, we can understand how
it is that its suggested activity of self-observation and
self-criticism - with such thoughts as, ‘now he is too sleepy
to think’, ‘now he is waking up’ - makes a
contribution to the content of the dream.¹

  
¹
I cannot here determine whether the
differentiation of the censoring agency from the rest of the ego is
capable of forming the basis of the philosophic distinction between
consciousness and self-consciousness.

On Narcissism: An Introduction

2951

   At this point we may attempt some
discussion of the self-regarding attitude in normal people and in
neurotics.

   In the first place self-regard
appears to us to be an expression of the size of the ego; what the
various elements are which go to determine that size is irrelevant.
Everything a person possesses or achieves, every remnant of the
primitive feeling of omnipotence which his experience has
confirmed, helps to increase his self-regard.

   Applying our distinction between
sexual and ego-instincts, we must recognize that self-regard has a
specially intimate dependence on narcissistic libido. Here we are
supported by two fundamental facts: that in paraphrenics
self-regard is increased, while in the transference neuroses it is
diminished; and that in love-relations not being loved lowers the
self-regarding feelings, while being loved raises them. As we have
indicated, the aim and the satisfaction in a narcissistic
object-choice is to be loved.

   Further, it is easy to observe
that libidinal object-cathexis does not raise self-regard. The
effect of dependence upon the loved object is to lower that
feeling: a person in love is humble. A person who loves has, so to
speak, forfeited a part of his narcissism, and it can only be
replaced by his being loved. In all these respects self-regard
seems to remain related to the narcissistic element in love.

   The realization of impotence, of
one’s own inability to love, in consequence of mental or
physical disorder, has an exceedingly lowering effect upon
self-regard. Here, in my judgement, we must look for one of the
sources of the feelings of inferiority which are experienced by
patients suffering from the transference neuroses and which they
are so ready to report. The main source of these feelings is,
however, the impoverishment of the ego, due to the extraordinarily
large libidinal cathexes which have been withdrawn from it - due,
that is to say, to the injury sustained by the ego through sexual
trends which are no longer subject to control.

On Narcissism: An Introduction

2952

   Adler is right in maintaining
that when a person with an active mental life recognizes an
inferiority in one of his organs, it acts as a spur and calls out a
higher level of performance in him through overcompensation. But it
would be altogether an exaggeration if, following Adler’s
example, we sought to attribute every successful achievement to
this factor of an original inferiority of an organ. Not all artists
are handicapped with bad eyesight, nor were all orators originally
stammerers. And there are plenty of instances of excellent
achievements springing from
superior
organic endowment. In
the aetiology of neuroses organic inferiority and imperfect
development play an insignificant part - much the same as that
played by currently active perceptual material in the formation of
dreams. Neuroses make use of such inferiorities as a pretext, just
as they do of every other suitable factor. We may be tempted to
believe a neurotic woman patient when she tells us that it was
inevitable she should fall ill, since she is ugly, deformed or
lacking in charm, so that no one could love her; but the very next
neurotic will teach us better - for she persists in her neurosis
and in her aversion to sexuality, although she seems more
desirable, and is more desired, than the average woman. The
majority of hysterical women are among the attractive and even
beautiful representatives of their sex, while, on the other hand,
the frequency of ugliness, organic defects and infirmities in the
lower classes of society does not increase the incidence of
neurotic illness among them.

   The relations of self-regard to
erotism - that is, to libidinal object-cathexes - may be expressed
concisely in the following way. Two cases must be distinguished,
according to whether the erotic cathexes are ego-syntonic, or, on
the contrary, have suffered repression. In the former case (where
the use made of the libido is ego-syntonic), love is assessed like
any other activity of the ego. Loving in itself, in so far as it
involves longing and deprivation, lowers self-regard; whereas being
loved, having one’s love returned, and possessing the loved
object, raises it once more. When libido is repressed, the erotic
cathexis is felt as a severe depletion of the ego, the satisfaction
of love is impossible, and the re-enrichment of the ego can be
effected only by a withdrawal of libido from its objects. The
return of the object-libido to the ego and its transformation into
narcissism represents, as it were, a happy love once more; and, on
the other hand, it is also true that a real happy love corresponds
to the primal condition in which object-libido and ego-libido
cannot be distinguished.