interdiction. I am able to attribute as little particular strength to incestuous desires in childhood as in primitive humanity. I do not even seek the reason for regression in primary incestuous or any other sexual desires. I must state that a purely sexual ætiology of neurosis seems to me much too narrow. I base this criticism upon no prejudice against sexuality, but upon an intimate acquaintance with the whole problem.
Therefore I suggest that the psychoanalytic theory should be liberated from the purely sexual standpoint. In place of it I should like to introduce an energic view-point into the psychology of neurosis.
All psychological phenomena can be considered as manifestations of energy, in the same way as all physical phenomena are already understood as energic manifestations since Robert Mayer discovered the law of the conservation of energy. This energy is subjectively and psychologically conceived as desire. I call it libido, using the word in the original meaning of this term, which is by no means only sexual. Sallustius applies the term exactly in the way we do here: “Magis in armis et militaribus equis, quam in scortis et conviviis libidinem habebant.”
From a broader standpoint libido can be understood as vital energy in general, or as Bergson’s élan vital. The first manifestation of this energy in the suckling is the instinct of nutrition. From this stage the libido slowly develops through manifold varieties of the act of sucking into the sexual function. Hence I do not consider the act of sucking as a sexual act. The pleasure in sucking can certainly not be considered as sexual pleasure, but as pleasure in nutrition, for it is nowhere proved that pleasure is sexual in itself. This process of development continues into adult life and is connected with a constantly increased adaptation to the external world. Whenever the libido, in the process of adaptation, meets an obstacle, an accumulation takes place which normally gives rise to an increased effort to overcome the obstacle. But if the obstacle seems to be insurmountable, and the individual renounces the overcoming of it, the stored-up libido makes a
