Psychology of the Unconscious/Part II/Chapter II

[139] THE CONCEPTION AND THE GENETIC THEORY OF LIBIDO THE chief souice of the history of the analytic con ception of libido is Fieud's " Three Contributions to the Sexual Theoiy " There the teim libido is conceived by him in the original narrow sense of sexual impulse, sexual need Expeiience forces us to the assumption of a capacity for displacement of the libido, because functions or localizations of non-sexual foice are undoubtedly capable of taking up a certain amount of libidinous sexual impetus, a libidinous afflux 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 ovei flows into branches, and so on 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 " Triebbiindel " * (bundle of impulses), wheiein the sexual impulse figures as a partial impulse of the whole [140] system, and its encroachment into the other lealms of impulse is a fact of experience The theory of Freud, blanching off from this mteipretation, according to which the motor forces of a neurotic system correspond precisely to their libidinous additions to other (non-sexual) functional impulses, has been sufficiently proven as correct, it seems to me, by the work of Freud and his school " Since the appearance of the "Three Contributions, 1 ' in 1905, a change has taken place a in the libido conception; its field of application has been widened An extiemely clear example of this amplification is this present work, However, I must state that Fieud, as well as myself, saw the need of widening the conception of libido It was paranoia, so closely related to dementia praecox, which seemed to compel Freud to enlaige the earlier limits of the conception The passage in question, which I will quote heie, word for woid, readsT " A third consideration which presents itself, in regard to the views developed here, staits the query as to whether we should accept as sufficiently effectual the universal icceding of the libido from the outer world, in order to interpret from that, the end of the world or whether in this case, the firmly rooted possession of the ' I ' must not suffice to uphold the rappoit with the outer world Then one must either let that which we call possession of the hbido (interest from eiotic sources) coincide with interest m general, or else take into consideration the possibility that great disturbance in the disposition of the libido can also induce a corresponding disturbance in the possession of the ' I ' Now, these are the problems, which we are still absolutely helpless and unfitted to answer. Things would be different could we proceed from a safe fund of knowledge of instinct. But the truth is, we have nothing of that kind at our disposal. We understand instinct as the resultant of the reaction of the somatic and the psychic.
 * Functions or objects could,