and egoism be distinguished? I believe narcism is the libidinous
complement of egoism. When we speak of egoism we mean only the benefits
to the individual; if we speak of narcism we also take into account his
libidinous satisfaction. As practical motives the two can be followed up
separately to a considerable degree. One can be absolutely egoistic, and
still have strong libidinous occupation of objects, in so far as the
libidinous gratification by way of the object serves the needs of the
ego. Egoism will then take care that the striving for the object results
in no harm to the ego. One can be egoistic and at the same time
excessively narcistic, i.e., have very slight need of an object. This
need may be for direct sexual satisfaction or even for those higher
desires, derived from need, which we are in the habit of calling love as
opposed to sensuality. In all of these aspects, egoism is the
self-evident, the constant, and narcism the variable element. The
antithesis of egoism, _altruism_, is not the same as the conception of
libidinous occupation of objects. Altruism differs from it by the
absence of desire for sexual satisfaction. But in the state of being
completely in love, altruism and libidinous occupation with an object
clash. The sex object as a rule draws upon itself a part of the narcism
of the ego. This is generally called "sexual over-estimation" of the
object. If the altruistic transformation from egoism to the sex object
is added, the sex object becomes all powerful; it has virtually sucked
up the ego.
I think you will find it a pleasant change if after the dry phantasy of
science I present to you a poetic representation of the economic
contrast between narcism and being in love. I take it from the
_Westostliche Divans_ of Goethe:
SULEIKA:
Conqueror and serf and nation;
They proclaim it joyously;
Mankind's loftiest elation,
Shines in personality.
Life's enchantment lures and lingers,
Of yourself is not afar,
All may slip through passive fingers,
If you tarry as you are.
HATEM:
Never could I be thus ravished,
Other thoughts are in my mind,
All the gladness earth has lavished
In Suleika's charms I find.
When I cherish her, then only
Dearer to myself I grow,
If she turned to leave me lonely
I should lose the self I know.
Hatem's happiness were over,--
But his changeling soul would glide
Into any favored lover
Whom she fondles at her side.
The second observation is supplementary to the dream theory. We cannot
explain the origin of the dream unless we assume that the suppressed
unconscious has achieved a certain independence of the ego. It does not
conform to the wish for sleep and retains its hold on the energies that
have seized it, even when all the occupations with objects dependent
upon the ego have been released for the benefit of sleep. Not until then
can we understand how this unconscious can take advantage of the
nocturnal discontinuance or deposition of the censor, and can seize
control of fragments left over from the day to fashion a forbidden dream
wish from them. On the other hand, it is to the already existing
connections with these supposed elements that these fragments owe a part
of the resistance directed against the withdrawal of the libido, and
controlled by the wish for sleep. We also wish to supplement our
conception of dream formation with this trait of dynamic importance.
Organic diseases, painful irritations, inflammation of the organs create
a condition which clearly results in freeing the libido of its objects.
The withdrawn libido again finds itself in the ego and occupies the
diseased part of the part. We may even venture to assert that under
these conditions the withdrawal of the libido from its objects is more
conspicuous than the withdrawal of egoistic interest from the outside
world. This seems to open the way to an understanding of hypochondria,
where an organ occupies the ego in a similar way without being diseased,
according to our conception. I shall resist the temptation of continuing
along this line, or of discussing other situations which we can
understand or represent through the assumption that the object libido
travels to the ego. For I am eager to meet two objections, which I know
are absorbing your attention. In the first place, you want to call me to
account for my insistence upon distinguishing in sleep, in sickness and
in similar situations between libido and interest, sexual instincts and
ego instincts, since throughout the observations can be explained by
assuming a single and uniform energy, which, freely mobile, occupies now
the object, now the ego, and enters into the services of one or the
other of these impulses. And, secondly, how can I venture to treat the
freeing of libido from its object as the source of a pathological
condition, since such transformation of object-libido into
ego-libido--or more generally, ego-energy--belongs to the normal, daily
and nightly repeated occurrences of psychic dynamics?
The answer is: Your first objection sounds good. The discussion of the
conditions of sleep, of sickness and of being in love would in
themselves probably never have led to a distinction between ego-libido
and object-libido, or between libido and interest. But you do not take
into account the investigations from which we have set out, in the
light of which we now regard the psychic situations under discussion.
The necessity of distinguishing between libido and interest, that is,
between sexual instincts and those of self-preservation, is forced upon
us by our insight into the conflict out of which the transference
neuroses emerge. We can no longer reckon without it. The assumption that
object-libido can change into the ego-libido, in other words, that we
must reckon with an ego-libido, appeared to us the only possible one
wherewith to solve the riddle of the so-called narcistic neuroses--for
instance, dementia praecox--or to justify the similarities and
differences in a comparison of hysteria and compulsion. We now apply to
sickness, sleep and love that which we found undeniably affirmed
elsewhere. We may proceed with such applications as far as they will go.
The only assertion that is not a direct refutation of our analytic
experience is that libido remains libido whether it is directed towards
objects or toward the ego itself, and is never transferred into egoistic
interest, and vice-versa. But this assertion is of equal weight with the
distinction of sex and ego instincts which we have already critically
appraised, and which we will maintain from methodological motives until
it may possibly be disproved.
Your second objection, too, raises a justified question, but it points
in a wrong direction. To be sure the retreat of object-libido into the
ego is not purely pathogenic; we see that it occurs each time before
going to sleep, only to be released again upon awaking. The little
protoplasmic animal draws in its protrusions, only to send them out
again on a later occasion. But it is quite another matter when a
specific, very energetic process compels the withdrawal of libido from
the object. The libido has become narcistic and cannot find its way back
to the object, and this hindrance to the mobility of the libido
certainly becomes pathogenic. It appears that an accumulation of
narcistic libido cannot be borne beyond a certain point. We can imagine
that the reason for occupation with the object is that the ego found it
necessary to send out its libido in order not to become diseased because
it was pent up. If it were our plan to go further into the subject of
dementia praecox, I would show you that this process which frees the
libido from the objects and bars the way back to them, is closely
related to the process of suppression, and must be considered as its
counterpart. But above all you would recognize familiar ground, for the
conditions of these processes are practically identical, as far as we
can now see, with those of suppression. The conflict appears to be the
same, and to take place between the same forces. The reason for a result
as different as, for instance, the result in hysteria, can be found only
in a difference of dispositions. The vulnerable point in the libido
development of these patients lies in another phase; the controlling
fixation, which, as you will remember, permits the breach resulting in
the formation of symptoms, is in another place probably in the stage of
primitive narcism, to which dementia praecox returns in its final stage.
It is noteworthy that for all the narcistic neuroses, we must assume
fixation points of the libido which reach back into far earlier phases
of development than in cases of hysteria or compulsion neuroses. But you
have heard that the conceptions obtained in our study of transference
neuroses are sufficient to orient us in the narcistic neuroses, which
present far greater practical difficulties. The similarities are
considerable; it is fundamentally the same field of observation. But you
can easily imagine how hopeless the explanations of these conditions,
which belong to psychiatry, appear to him who is not equipped for this
task with an analytic knowledge of transference neuroses.
The picture given by the symptoms of dementia praecox, which, moreover,
is highly variable, is not exclusively determined by the symptoms. These
result from forcing the libido away from the objects and accumulating it
in the ego in the form of narcistic libido. A large space is occupied by
other phenomena, which result from the impulses of the libido to regain
the objects, and so show an attempt toward restitution and healing.
These symptoms are in fact the more conspicuous, the more clamorous;
they show an unquestionable similarity to those of hysteria, or less
often to those of compulsion neurosis, and yet they are different in
every respect. It appears that in dementia praecox the libido in its
endeavor to return to the objects, i.e., to the images of the objects,
really captures something, but only their shadows--I mean, the verbal
images belonging to them. This is not the place to discuss this matter,
but I believe that these reversed impulses of the libido have permitted
us an insight into what really determines the difference between a
conscious and an unconscious representation.
I have now brought you into the field where we may expect the further
progress of analytic work. Since we can now employ the conception of
ego-libido, the narcistic neuroses have become accessible to us. We are
confronted with the problem of finding a dynamic explanation of these
conditions and at the same time of enlarging our knowledge of psychic
life by an understanding of the ego. The ego psychology, which we strive
to understand, must not be founded upon introspective data, but rather,
as in the libido, upon analysis of the disturbances and decompositions
of the ego. When this greater task is accomplished we shall probably
disparage our previous knowledge of the fate of the libido which we
gained from our study of the transference neuroses. But there is still
much to be said in this matter. Narcistic neuroses can scarcely be
approached by the same technique which served us in the transference
neuroses. Soon you will hear why. After forging ahead a little in the
study of narcistic neuroses we always seem to come to a wall which
impedes progress. You know that in the transference neuroses we also
encountered such barriers of resistance, but we were able to break them
down piece by piece. In narcistic neuroses the resistance is
insuperable; at best we are permitted to cast a curious glance over the
wall to spy out what is taking place on the other side. Our technical
methods must be replaced by others; we do not yet know whether or not we
shall be able to find such a substitute. To be sure, even these patients
furnish us with ample material. They do say many things, though not in
answer to our questions, and for the time being we are forced to
interpret these utterances through the understanding we have gained from
the symptoms of transference neuroses. The coincidence is sufficiently
great to assure us a good beginning. How far this technique will go,
remains to be seen.
There are additional difficulties that impede our progress. The
narcistic conditions and the psychoses related to them can only be
solved by observers who have schooled themselves in analytic study of
transference neuroses. But our psychiatrists do not study psychoanalysis
and we psychoanalysts see too few psychiatric cases. A race of
psychiatrists that has gone through the school of psychoanalysis as a
preparatory science most first grow up. The beginnings of this are now
being made in America, where many leading psychiatrists explain the
teachings of psychoanalysis to their students, and where many owners of
sanatoriums and directors of institutes for the insane take pains to
observe their patients in the light of these teachings. But even here we
have occasionally been successful in casting a glance over the narcistic
wall and I shall tell you a few things that we think we have discovered.
The disease of paranoia, chronic systematic insanity, is given a very
uncertain position by the attempts at classification of present-day
psychiatry. There is no doubt of its close relationship to dementia
praecox. I once was so bold as to propose that paranoia and dementia
praecox could be classed together under the common name of paraphrenia.
The types of paranoia are described according to their content as:
megalomania, the mania of persecution, eroto mania, mania of jealousy,
etc. From psychiatry we do not expect attempts at explanation. As an
example of such an attempt, to be sure an antiquated and not entirely
valid example, I might mention the attempt to develop one symptom
directly out of another by means of an intellectual rationalization, as:
the patient who primarily believes he is being persecuted draws the
conclusion from this persecution that he must be an extraordinarily
important personality and thus develops megalomania. In our analytical
conception megalomania is the immediate outcome of exaggeration of the
ego, which results from the drawing-in of libidinous occupation with
objects, a secondary narcism as a recurrence of the originally early
infantile form. In cases of the mania of persecution we have noticed a
few things that lead us to follow a definite track. In the first place,
we observed that in the great majority of cases the persecutor was of
the same sex as the persecuted. This could still be explained in a
harmless way, but in a few carefully studied cases it was clearly shown
that the person of the same sex, who was most loved in normal times,
became the persecutor after the malady set in. A further development is
made possible by the fact that one loved person is replaced by another,
according to familiar affinities, e.g., the father by the teacher or the
superior. We concluded from such ever-increasing experiences, that
paranoia persecutoria is the form in which the individual guards himself
against a homosexual tendency that has become too powerful. The change
from affection to hate, which notoriously may take the form of serious
threats against the life of the loved and hated person, expresses the
transformation of libidinous impulse into fear, which is a regularly
recurring result of the process of suppression. As an illustration I
shall cite the last case in which I made observations on this subject. A
young physician had to be sent away from his home town because he had
threatened the life of the son of a university professor, who up to that
time had been his best friend. He ascribed truly devilish intentions to
his erstwhile friend and credited him with power of a demon. He was to
blame for all the misfortunes that had in recent years befallen the
family of the patient, for all his personal and social ill-luck. But
this was not enough. The wicked friend, and his father the professor,
had been the cause of the war and had called the Russians into the land.
He had forfeited his life a thousand times and our patient was convinced
that with the death of the culprit all misfortune would come to an end.
And yet his old affection for his friend was so great that it had
paralyzed his hand when he had had the opportunity of shooting down the
enemy at close quarters. In my short consultations with the patient, I
discovered that the friendship between the two dated back to early
school-life. Once at least the bonds of friendship had been
over-stepped; a night spent together had been the occasion for complete
sexual intercourse. Our patient never felt attracted to women, as would
have been natural to his age or his charming personality. At one time he
was engaged to a beautiful and distinguished young girl, but she broke
off the engagement because she found so little affection in her fiance.
Years later his malady broke out just at that moment when for the first
time he had succeeded in giving complete gratification to a woman. When
this woman embraced him, full of gratitude and devotion, he suddenly
felt a strange pain which cut around his skull like a sharp incision.
His later interpretation of this sensation was that an incision such as
is used to expose a part of the brain had been performed upon him, and
since his friend had become a pathological anatomist, he gradually came
to the conclusion that he alone could have sent him this last woman as a
temptation. From that time on his eyes were also opened to the other
persecutions in which he was to be the victim of the intrigues of his
former friend.
But how about those cases where the persecutor is not of the same sex as
the persecuted, where our explanation of a guard against homosexual
libido is apparently contradicted? A short time ago I had occasion to
investigate such a case and was able to glean corroboration from this
apparent contradiction. A young girl thought she was followed by a man,
with whom she had twice had intimate relations. She had, as a matter of
fact, first laid these maniacal imputations at the door of a woman, whom
we may consider as having played the part of a mother-substitute in her
psychic life. Only after the second meeting did she progress to the
point of diverting this maniacal idea from the woman and of transferring
it to the man. The condition that the persecutor must be of the same sex
was also originally maintained in this instance. In her claim before the
lawyer and the physician, this patient did not mention this first stage
of her mania, and this caused the appearance of a contradiction to our
theory of paranoia.
Homosexual choice of object is originally more natural to narcism than
the heterosexual. If it is a matter of thwarting a strong and
undesirable homosexual impulse, the way back to narcism is made
especially easy. Until now I have had very little opportunity of
speaking to you about the fundamental conditions of love-life, so far as
we know them, and now I cannot make up for lost time. I only want to
point out that the choice of an object, that progress in the development
of the libido which comes after the narcistic stage, can proceed
according to two different types--either according to the _narcistic_
type, which puts a very similar personality in the place of the personal
ego, or according to the _dependent_ type, which chooses those persons
who have become valuable by satisfying needs of life other than as
objects of the libido. We also accredit a strong fixation of the libido
to the narcistic type of object-choice when there is a disposition
toward manifest homosexuality.
You will recall that in our first meeting of this semester I told you
about the case of a woman who suffered from the mania of jealousy. Since
we are so near the end you certainly will be glad to hear the
psychoanalytic explanation of a maniacal idea. But I have less to say
about it than you expect. The maniacal idea as well as the compulsion
idea cannot be assailed by logical arguments or actual experience. This
is explained by their relation to the unconscious, which is represented
by the maniacal idea or the compulsion idea, and held down by whichever
is effective. The difference between the two is based upon respective
localization and dynamic relations of the two conditions.
As in paranoia, so also in melancholia, of which, moreover, very
different clinical forms are described. We have discovered a point of
vantage which will yield us an insight into the inner structure of the
condition. We realize that the self-accusations with which these
melancholic patients torture themselves in the most pitiless way, really
apply to another person, namely, the sex object which they have lost, or
which through some fault has lost value for them. From this we may
conclude that the melancholic has withdrawn his libido from the object.
Through a process which we designate as "narcistic identification" the
object is built up within the ego itself, is, so to say, projected upon
the ego. Here I can give you only a descriptive representation, as yet
without reference to the topical and dynamic relations. The personal ego
is now treated in the same manner as the abandoned object, and suffers
all the aggression and expressions of revenge which were planned for the
object. Even the suicidal tendencies of melancholia are more
comprehensible when we consider that this bitterness of the patient
falls alike on the ego itself and on the object of its love and hate. In
melancholia as well as in other narcistic conditions a feature of
emotional life is strikingly shown which, since the time of Bleuler, we
have been accustomed to designate as _ambivalence_. By this we mean that
hostile and affectionate feelings are directed against one and the same
person. I have, in the course of these discussions, unfortunately not
been in a position to tell you more about this emotional ambivalence.
We have, in addition to narcistic identification, an hysterical
identification as well, which moreover has been known to us for a much
longer time. I wish it were possible to determine clearly the difference
between the two. Of the periodic and cyclic forms of melancholia I can
tell you something that you will certainly be glad to hear, for it is
possible, under favorable circumstances--I have twice had the
experience--to prevent these emotional conditions (or their antitheses)
by means of analytic treatment in the free intervals between the
attacks. We learn that in melancholia as well as in mania, it is a
matter of finding a special way for solving the conflict, the
prerequisites for which entirely coincide with those of other neuroses.
You can imagine how much there still is for psychoanalysis to learn in
this field.
I told you, too, that we hoped to gain a knowledge of the structure of
the ego, and of the separate factors out of which it is built by means
of the analysis of narcistic conditions. In one place we have already
made a beginning. From the analysis of the maniacal delusion of being
watched we concluded that in the ego there is really an agent which
continually watches, criticizes and compares the other part of the ego
and thus opposes it. We believe that the patient imparts to us a truth
that is not yet sufficiently appreciated, when he complains that all his
actions are spied upon and watched, all his thoughts recorded and
criticized. He errs only in transferring this distressing force to
something alien, outside of himself. He feels the dominance of a factor
in his ego, which compares his actual ego and all of its activities to
an _ideal ego_ that he has created in the course of his development. We
also believe that the creation of this ideal ego took place with the
purpose of again establishing that self-satisfaction which is bound up
with the original infantile narcism, but which since then has
experienced so many disturbances and disparagements. In this
self-observing agent we recognize the ego-censor, the conscience; it is
the same factor which at night exercises dream-censorship, and which
creates the suppressions against inadmissible wish-impulses. Under
analysis in the maniacal delusion of being watched it reveals its origin
in the influence of parents, tutors and social environment and in the
identification of the ego with certain of these model individuals.