[1930] Civilization and Its Discontents by Sigmund Freud

Author:Sigmund Freud [Freud, Sigmund]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Civilization And Its Discontents
ISBN: 9780141919867
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 1930-02-23T16:00:00+00:00

VI

With none of my writings have I had such a strong feeling as I have now that what I am describing is common knowledge, that I am using pen and paper, and shall soon be using the services of the compositor and the printer, to say things that are in fact self-evident. For this reason I shall be glad to take the matter up if it appears that the recognition of a special, independent aggressive drive entails a modification of psychoanalytic theory regarding the drives.

It will be seen that this is not so, that it is merely a matter of focusing more sharply on a change of direction that took place long ago, and of following up its consequences. Of all the elements of analytic theory that have taken so long to develop, the doctrine of the drives is the one that has edged its way forward most laboriously. And yet it was so indispensable to the whole that something had to be put in its place. After I had at first been totally at a loss, my first clue came from a proposition by the poet-philosopher Schiller, to the effect that the mechanism of the world was held together by ‘hunger and love’. Hunger could be taken to represent those drives that seek to preserve the individual creature, whereas love strives after objects, and its chief function, favoured in every way by nature, is to preserve the species. Thus at first ego-drives and object-drives confronted one another. To denote the energy of the latter – and them alone – I introduced the term ‘libido’; there was thus a contrast between the ego-drives and the libidinal drives of love, in the widest sense of the word, which were directed towards an object. One of these latter, the sadistic drive, admittedly stood out from the rest because its aim was so utterly devoid of love. Moreover, in some respects it was obviously attached to the ego-drives; it could not conceal its close affinity to the drives that aim at domination and have no libidinal purpose. However, it proved possible to get over this discrepancy: after all, sadism was clearly part of sexual life, in which cruelty could replace tenderness. Neurosis appeared to be the result of a struggle between the interest of self-preservation and the demands of the libido, a struggle in which the ego had triumphed, but at the price of grave suffering and sacrifice.

Every analyst will admit that even today this does not sound like a long-discarded error. Yet a modification became indispensable when our research proceeded from what was repressed to the agent of repression, from the object-drives to the ego. The decisive step here was the introduction of the concept of narcissism – that is to say the recognition that the ego itself is occupied by libido, that it is in fact the libido’s original home and remains to some extent its headquarters. This narcissistic libido turns towards objects, thus becoming object-libido, and can change back again into narcissistic libido.

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