CHAPTER II
THE CONCEPTION AND THE GENETIC THEORY OF LIBIDO
The chief source of the history of the analytic conception
of libido is Freud's "Three Contributions to the
Sexual Theory." There the term libido is conceived by
him in the original narrow sense of sexual impulse, sexual
need. Experience forces us to the assumption of a
capacity for displacement of the libido, because functions
or localizations of non-sexual force are undoubtedly
capable of taking up a certain amount of libidinous sexual
impetus, a libidinous afflux.[1] Functions or objects could,
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 overflows into branches, and so on.[3]
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 "Triebbündel"[4] (bundle of impulses), wherein
the sexual impulse figures as a partial impulse of the whole
