Page:Psychology of the Unconscious (1916).djvu/197

 CHAPTER II

THE CONCEPTION AND THE GENETIC THEORY OF LIBIDO

The chief source of the history of the analytic conception of libido is Freud's "Three Contributions to the Sexual Theory." There the term libido is conceived by him in the original narrow sense of sexual impulse, sexual need. Experience forces us to the assumption of a capacity for displacement of the libido, because functions or localizations of non-sexual force are undoubtedly capable of taking up a certain amount of libidinous sexual impetus, a libidinous afflux.[1] Functions or objects could, therefore, obtain sexual value, which under normal circumstances really have nothing to do with sexuality.[2] From this fact results the Freudian comparison of the libido with a stream, which is divisible, which can be dammed up, which overflows into branches, and so on.[3] Freud's original conception does not interpret "everything sexual," although this has been asserted by critics, but recognizes the existence of certain forces, the nature of which are not well known; to which Freud, however, compelled by the notorious facts which are evident to any layman, grants the capacity to receive "affluxes of libido." The hypothetical idea at the basis is the symbol of the "Triebbündel"[4] (bundle of impulses), wherein the sexual impulse figures as a partial impulse of the whole