Freud - Complete Works (624 page)

Beyond The Pleasure Principle

3752

   Here then is an opportunity for
looking back over the slow development of our libido theory. In the
first instance the analysis of the transference neuroses forced
upon our notice the opposition between the ‘sexual
instincts’, which are directed towards an object, and certain
other instincts, with which we were very insufficiently acquainted
and which we described provisionally as the
‘ego-instincts’. A foremost place among these was
necessarily given to the instincts serving the self-preservation of
the individual. It was impossible to say what other distinctions
were to be drawn among them. No knowledge would have been more
valuable as a foundation for true psychological science than an
approximate grasp of the common characteristics and possible
distinctive features of the instincts. But in no region of
psychology were we groping more in the dark. Everyone assumed the
existence of as many instincts or ‘basic instincts’ as
he chose, and juggled with them like the ancient Greek natural
philosophers with their four elements - earth, air, fire and water.
Psycho-analysis, which could not escape making
some
assumption about the instincts, kept at first to the popular
division of instincts typified in the phrase ‘hunger and
love’. At least there was nothing arbitrary in this; and by
its help the analysis of the psychoneuroses was carried forward
quite a distance. The concept of ‘sexuality’, and at
the same time of the sexual instinct, had, it is true, to be
extended so as to cover many things which could not be classed
under the reproductive function; and this caused no little hubbub
in an austere, respectable or merely hypocritical world.

Beyond The Pleasure Principle

3753

   The next step was taken when
psycho-analysis felt its way closer towards the psychological ego,
which it had first come to know only as a repressive, censoring
agency, capable of erecting protective structures and reactive
formations. Critical and far-seeing minds had, it is true, long
since objected to the concept of libido being restricted to the
energy of the sexual instincts directed towards an object. But they
failed to explain how they had arrived at their better knowledge or
to derive from it anything of which analysis could make use.
Advancing more cautiously, psycho-analysis observed the regularity
with which libido is withdrawn from the object and directed on to
the ego (the process of introversion); and, by studying the
libidinal development of children in its earliest phases, came to
the conclusion that the ego is the true and original reservoir of
libido, and that it is only from that reservoir that libido is
extended on to objects. The ego now found its position among sexual
objects and was at once given the foremost place among them. Libido
which was in this way lodged in the ego was described as
‘narcissistic’.¹ This narcissistic libido was of
course also a manifestation of the force of the sexual instinct in
the analytical sense of those words, and it had necessarily to be
identified with the ‘self-preservative instincts’ whose
existence had been recognized from the first. Thus the original
opposition between the ego-instincts and the sexual instincts
proved to be inadequate. A portion of the ego-instincts was seen to
be libidinal; sexual instincts - probably alongside others -
operated in the ego. Nevertheless we are justified in saying that
the old formula which lays it down that psychoneuroses are based on
a conflict between ego-instincts and sexual instincts contains
nothing that we need reject to-day. It is merely that the
distinction between the two kinds of instinct, which was originally
regarded as in some sort of way
qualitative
, must now be
characterized differently - namely as being
topographical
.
And in particular it is still true that the transference neuroses,
the essential subject of psycho-analytic study, are the result of a
conflict between the ego and the libidinal cathexis of objects.

   But it is all the more necessary
for us to lay stress upon the libidinal character of the
self-preservative instincts now that we are venturing upon the
further step of recognizing the sexual instinct as Eros, the
preserver of all things, and of deriving the narcissistic libido of
the ego from the stores of libido by means of which the cells of
the soma are attached to one another. But we now find ourselves
suddenly faced by another question. If the self-preservative
instincts too are of a libidinal nature, are there perhaps no other
instincts whatever but the libidinal ones? At all events there are
none other visible. But in that case we shall after all be driven
to agree with the critics who suspected from the first that
psycho-analysis explains
everything
by sexuality, or with
innovators like Jung who, making a hasty judgement, have used the
word ‘libido’ to mean instinctual force in general.
Must not this be so?

  
¹
See my paper on narcissism
(1914
c
).

Beyond The Pleasure Principle

3754

   It was not our
intention
at all events to produce such a result. Our argument had as its
point of departure a sharp distinction between ego-instincts, which
we equated with death instincts, and sexual instincts, which we
equated with life instincts. (We were prepared at one stage to
include the so-called self-preservative instincts of the ego among
the death instincts; but we subsequently corrected ourselves on
this point and withdrew it.) Our views have from the very first
been
dualistic
, and to-day they are even more definitely
dualistic than before - now that we describe the opposition as
being, not between ego-instincts and sexual instincts but between
life instincts and death instincts. Jung’s libido theory is
on the contrary
monistic
; the fact that he has called his
one instinctual force ‘libido’ is bound to cause
confusion, but need not affect us otherwise. We suspect that
instincts other than those of self-preservation operate in the ego,
and it ought to be possible for us to point to them. Unfortunately,
however, the analysis of the ego has made so little headway that it
is very difficult for us to do so. It is possible, indeed, that the
libidinal instincts in the ego may be linked in a peculiar manner
with these other ego-instincts which are still strange to us. Even
before we had any clear understanding of narcissism,
psycho-analysts had a suspicion that the
‘ego-instincts’ had libidinal components attached to
them. But these are very uncertain possibilities, to which our
opponents will pay very little attention. The difficulty remains
that psycho-analysis has not enabled us hitherto to point to any
instincts other than the libidinal ones. That, however, is no
reason for our falling in with the conclusion that no others in
fact exist.

Beyond The Pleasure Principle

3755

   In the obscurity that reigns at
present in the theory of the instincts, it would be unwise to
reject any idea that promises to throw light on it. We started out
from the great opposition between the life and death instincts. Now
object-love itself presents us with a second example of a similar
polarity - that between love (or other affection) and hate (or
aggressiveness). If only we could succeed in relating these two
polarities to each other and in deriving one from the other! From
the very first we recognized the presence of a sadistic component
in the sexual instinct.¹ As we know, it can make itself
independent and can, in the form of a perversion, dominate an
individual’s entire sexual activity. It also emerges as a
predominant component instinct in one of the ‘pregenital
organizations’, as I have named them. But how can the
sadistic instinct, whose aim it is to injure the object, be derived
from Eros, the preserver of life? Is it not plausible to suppose
that this sadism is in fact a death instinct which, under the
influence of the narcissistic libido, has been forced away from the
ego and has consequently only emerged in relation to the object? It
now enters the service of the sexual function. During the oral
stage of organization of the libido, the act of obtaining erotic
mastery over an object coincides with that object’s
destruction; later, the sadistic instinct separates off, and
finally, at the stage of genital primacy, it takes on, for the
purposes of reproduction, the function of overpowering the sexual
object to the extent necessary for carrying out the sexual act. It
might indeed be said that the sadism which has been forced out of
the ego has pointed the way for the libidinal components of the
sexual instinct, and that these follow after it to the object.
Wherever the original sadism has undergone no mitigation or
intermixture, we find the familiar ambivalence of love and hate in
erotic life.

   If such an assumption as this is
permissible, then we have met the demand that we should produce an
example of a death instinct - though, it is true, a displaced one.
But this way of looking at things is very far from being easy to
grasp and creates a positively mystical impression. It looks
suspiciously as though we were trying to find a way out of a highly
embarrassing situation at any price. We may recall, however, that
there is nothing new in an assumption of this kind. We put one
forward on an earlier occasion, before there was any question of an
embarrassing situation. Clinical observations led us at that time
to the view that masochism, the component instinct which is
complementary to sadism, must be regarded as sadism that has been
turned round upon the subject’s own ego.² But there is
no difference in principle between an instinct turning from an
object to the ego and its turning from the ego to an object - which
is the new point now under discussion. Masochism, the turning round
of the instinct upon the subject’s own ego, would in that
case be a return to an earlier phase of the instinct’s
history, a regression. The account that was formerly given of
masochism requires emendation as being too sweeping in one respect:
there
might
be such a thing as primary masochism - a
possibility which I had contested at that time.³

  
¹
This was already so in the first edition of
Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality
in 1905.

  
²
See my
Three Essays
(1905
d
)
and ‘Instincts and their Vicissitudes’
(1915
c
).

  
³
A considerable portion of these
speculations have been anticipated by Sabina Spielrein (1912) in an
instructive and interesting paper which, however, is unfortunately
not entirely clear to me. She there describes the sadistic
components of the sexual instinct as ‘destructive’. A.
Stärke (1914), again, has attempted to identify the concept of
libido itself with the biological concept (assumed on theoretical
grounds) of an impetus towards death. See also Rank (1907). All
these discussions, like that in the text, give evidence of the
demand for a clarification of the theory of the instincts such as
has not yet been achieved.

Beyond The Pleasure Principle

3756

   Let us, however, return to the
self-preservative sexual instincts. The experiments upon protista
have already shown us that conjugation - that is, the coalescence
of two individuals which separate soon afterwards without any
subsequent cell-division occurring - has a strengthening and
rejuvenating effect upon both of them.1 In later generations they
show no signs of degenerating and seem able to put up a longer
resistance to the injurious effects of their own metabolism. This
single observation may, I think, be taken as typical of the effect
produced by sexual union as well. But how is it that the
coalescence of two only slightly different cells can bring about
this renewal of life? The experiment which replaces the conjugation
of protozoa by the application of chemical or even of mechanical
stimuli (cf. Lipschütz, 1914) enables us to give what is no
doubt a conclusive reply to this question. The result is brought
about by the influx of fresh amounts of stimulus. This tallies well
with the hypothesis that the life process of the individual leads
for internal reasons to an abolition of chemical tensions, that is
to say, to death, whereas union with the living substance of a
different individual increases those tensions, introducing what may
be described as fresh ‘vital differences’ which must
then be lived off. As regards this dissimilarity there must of
course be one or more optima. The dominating tendency of mental
life, and perhaps of nervous life in general, is the effort to
reduce, to keep constant or to remove internal tension due to
stimuli (the ‘Nirvana principle’, to borrow a term from
Barbara Low) - a tendency which finds expression in the pleasure
principle; and our recognition of that fact is one of our strongest
reasons for believing in the existence of death instincts.

  
¹
See the account quoted above
p. 3748
from Lipschütz
(1914).

Beyond The Pleasure Principle

3757

   But we still feel our line of
thought appreciably hampered by the fact that we cannot ascribe to
the sexual instinct the characteristic of a compulsion to repeat
which first put us on the track of the death instincts. The sphere
of embryonic developmental processes is no doubt extremely rich in
such phenomena of repetition; the two germ-cells that are involved
in sexual reproduction and their life history are themselves only
repetitions of the beginnings of organic life. But the essence of
the processes to which sexual life is directed is the coalescence
of two cell-bodies. That alone is what guarantees the immortality
of the living substance in the higher organisms.