Page:Psychology of the Unconscious (1916).djvu/199



We see in it the psychical representation of organic forces and take the popular distinction between the 'I' impulse and the sexual impulse, which appears to us to be in accord with the biological double rôle of the individual being who aspires to his own preservation as well as to the preservation of the species. But anything beyond this is a structure, which we set up, and also willingly let fall again in order to orient ourselves in the confusion of the dark processes of the soul; we expect particularly, from the psychoanalytic investigations into diseased soul processes, to have certain decisions forced upon us in regard to questions of the theory of instinct. This expectation has not yet been fulfilled on account of the still immature and limited investigations in these fields. At present the possibility of the reaction of libido disturbance upon the possession of the 'I' can be shown as little as the reverse; the secondary or induced disturbances of the libido processes through abnormal changes in the 'I.' It is probable that processes of this sort form the distinctive character of the psychoses. The conclusions arising from this, in relation to paranoia, are at present uncertain. One cannot assert that the paranoiac has completely withdrawn his interest from the outer world, nor withdrawn into the heights of repression, as one sometimes sees in certain other forms of hallucinatory psychoses. He takes notice of the outer world, he takes account of its changes, he is stirred to explanations by their influence, and therefore I consider it highly probable that the changed relation to the world is to be explained, wholly or in great part, by the deficiency of the libido interest."

In this passage Freud plainly touches upon the question whether the well-known longing for reality of the paranoic dement (and the dementia præcox patients),[8] to whom I have especially called attention in my book, "The Psychology of Dementia Præcox,"[9] is to be traced back to the withdrawal of the "libidinous affluxes" alone, or whether this coincides with the so-called objective interest in general. It is hardly to be assumed