Page:Freud - A general introduction to psychoanalysis.djvu/379

The Libido Theory and Narcism 363 which we have set out, in the light of which we now regard the psychic situations under discussion. The necessity of dis tinguishing 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 nar- cistic 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 pro ceed with such applications as far as they will go. The only assertion that is not a direct refutation of our analytic experi ence 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 dis proved. 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 protru sions, only to send them out again on a later occasion. But it is quite another matter when a specific, very energetic process com pels 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 suppres-