Translator's Preface I have often found that the translator's notes to the new translations of Freud, edited by Adam Phillips and published by Penguin Books to be sometimes more interesting than the new translation. Here are the notes of the translator, John Reddick on his translation of Freud's metapsychological paper, Zur Einfiihrung des Narzissmus, which he has translated as On the Introduction of Narcissism as opposed to Strachey's translation of the title On Narcissism: An Introduction. He is highly critical Strachey's translation of this paper, and you will be able to follow his argument as a bilingual of the Strachey translation will follow Reddick's notes. Richard G. Klein

It is a curious and remarkable fact that Sigmund Freud's ideas have

entered and conditioned modem consciousness not in their original German form, but mainly through English translations, most notably those enshrined in the Standard Edition, under the general editorship of James Strachey, and the ever jealous guardianship of the Institute of Psycho-Analysis. This circumstance would be enough in itself to justify new English versions even if the Standard Edition were flawless, since no translation, however good, can ever render the shapes and shades of an original text in all their subtlety; but in fact the Standard Edition is deeply, systematically flawed, making new translations all the more imperative. Take the opening para-

graph of the Narcissism essay, for instance, which in the Standard Edition reads as follows: ON NARCISSISM: AN INTRODUCTION

The term narcissism is derived from clinical description and was chosen by Paul Nacke in 1899 to denote the attitude of a person who treats his own body in the same way in which the body of a sexual object is ordinarily treated - who looks at it, that is to say, strokes it and fondles it till he obtains complete satisfaction through these activities. Developed to this degree, narcissism has the significance of a perversion that has absorbed the whole of the subject's sexual life, and it will consequently exhibit the characteristics which we expect to meet with in the study of all perversions.

If this were handed in by a student as a translation exercise, it would end up covered in red pencil, with everything from light squiggles

..........

Tra11slator's Preface

to heavy underlinings and multiple exclamation marks, for it is so full of slips and shifts and omissions as to be a travesty of Freud's original. At the less serious end of the spectrum, 'attitude' would merit at least a squiggle: Freud's word is Verhalten, 'behaviour'; so, too, would 'developed to this degree': Freud's in dieser Ausbildung simply means 'in this form' or, more loosely, 'in this sense'; the phrase 'has the significance of' would also elicit a tut-tut and a squiggle, since the German translates quite simply as 'means' or 'signifies' (the second sentence would thus more crisply and more correctly begin 'Narcissism in this form means . . .'). We can also cavil at 'absorbed', as it loses the force of Freud's graphic metaphor aufgesogen, which in this context means 'sucked up' or 'swallowed up'; while 'exhibit[s] the characteristics' is an unduly loose rendering of words that more strictly mean 'is subject to the expectations . . .' (unterliegt den Envartungen). A more serious distortion lurks in the words 'a person who treats his own body in the same way in which the body of a sexual object is ordinarily treated': what Freud's German unambiguously says is that the narcissist (in Nacke's sense of the term) treats his own body in the same way in which he - the narcissist himself - might treat that of any other sexual object. Whilst none of these infelicities makes much difference on its own, their cumulative effect is to alter the whole tone and thrust of the passage (and we find similar shifts if we take almost any paragraph in Freud's original German and compare it with the translation offered in the Standard Edition) . They are as nothing.. however, by the side of the two quite startling mistranslations that reveal themselves in these few lines. One of them is in fact much worse than a mistranslation -it is a flagrant case of bowdlerization. No one reading the first sentence of the Standard Edition could possibly djvine that in Freud's original the narcissist is said to stroke and caress and gaze at his own body mit sexuellem Wohlgefallen , 'with sexual pleasure': this oh-so-explicit phrase is quite simply excised and thus another bit of Freud's characteristic oomph and colour is obliterated. Much more serious, however, is the garbled title: the wording 'On Narcissism: An Introduction' is a grave misrepresentation of Freud's heading Zur Einfi.ihrung des Narzissmus, which

Translator's Prefa ce

unarguably refers to the introduction of narcissism, and not to any kind of introduction to narcissism. This may conceivably have been ignorance on the part of the Standard Edition translators (they commonly misunderstand Freud's German) - but it is much more likely to have been a case of deliberate spin: Freud's choice of words clearly reflects the newness of his narcissism theory and a concomitant sense that it therefore needs a good deal of explaining; the Standard Edition (mis-)title, however, implies that the theory is soundly established, and that the novice reader is about to be introduced to it, rather as a first-year undergraduate might be introduced to macro-economics or human anatomy. The agenda here (and elsewhere) is clear, and not a little pernicious: Freud's writing is to he presented not as a hot and sweaty struggle with intractable and often crazily daring ideas, but as a cut-and-dried corpus of unchallengeable dogma. · This agenda is what also underlies the gravest and most pervasive defect of the Standard Edition, and that is its wilfully turgid and often obfuscatory style. Even the very best-educated English-speakers are likely to reach for their dictionary in the face of 'the thaumaturgical power of words', for example, whereas any German-speaking child of eight or nine would readily understand Freud's own plain-speaking description of the magical power of words: 'die 'Zauberkraft des Wortes'. Freud is often said to be a great prose-writer, but while this is plainly a nonsense if we compare his prose with that of Goethe or Nietzsche or Grass, he certainly writes with unmistakable verve and punch, particularly in the derring-do period when he was boldly carving out his more radical ideas- the period so powerfully reflected in this volume. The Standard Edition fed Freud through a kind of voice-synthesizer to make him sound like a droning academic; one of the main aspirations of this present translation is to render not only his meanings, but also the mercurial flavour of his style, so that his sometimes combative, sometimes diffident, sometimes solemn, sometimes mischievous voice can be clearly heard in all its registers. It has to be admitted, however, that while it is easy enough to criticize other people's translations, it is far from easy to make one's own - especially in the case of Freud, whose particular patterns of

Translator's Preface

thought and language are sometimes hard even to const~e, let alone render into satisfactory English. But the very fact that Freud's ideas have permeated world culture chiefly through the medium of the Standard Edition and the English terminology there enshrined, adds a whole extra dimension of difficulty: on page after page the re-translator faces the challenge of whether to retain or reject the old, often dubious, but now universally accepted terms invented by the earlier translators. In some cases the decision was easy: 'anaclitic', for instance, is a preposterous neologism founded on plain ignorance of Freud's German (Anlehnung), and was rejected with relish and relief; 'frustration' was likewise rejected as a startlingly inept misrendering of the important term Versagung ('refusal' is used instead). It was easy, too, to discard 'instinct' and 'satisfaction' as translations of Trleb and Befriedigung, and to use 'drive' and 'gratification' in their place. Other terms, however, often provoked months of head-scratching. In the end, '(super-)ego' and 'id' - latinisms quite devoid of the earthy punch of Freud's ( Ober-)Ich and Es - were reluctantly retained, for want of any practicable alternatives; so too, with even greater reluctance, was Strachey's opaque and ugly word 'cathexis', together with the associated verb 'cathect': other translators in the new Penguin Freud Library have opted for plain-English alternatives to these rebarbative inventions, hut all such alternatives seemed to me to have misleading connotations. In general, specific terms of Freud's are consistently translated (thus for instance Abfuhr is always rendered as 'release', in preference to 'discharge' as used in the 'Standard Translation'), but in some cases his vocabulary renders any such laudable consistency impossible. A particularly fascinating instance of this is Freud's word Instanz, a metaphor he deploys again and again to describe the various processes of surveilJance, admonition, censorship, control to which, in his view, every human psyche is enduringly subject. Borrowing the term from the forbidding realms of the law (where it is a standard term for 'court', 'tribunal' etc.), Freud applies it to the whole panoply of literally - forbidding forces that bear upon individuals almost from the moment of their birth, firstly from without in the persons of their parents and, in due course, their teachers and the larger

Translator's Pref ace

community, then from within in the form of internalized control mechanisms - chiefly hypostasized by Freud in the 'pleasure principle' and, above all, the 'super-ego'. The sheer frequency of the word Instanz turns it into an integrative and (discornfitingly) evocative cypher in Freud's original texts - but this distinctive effect cannot be reproduced in English, which simply has no equivalent word or concept, so that we are forced to use a whole gamut of different makeshift terms, from 'parental voice' (Elteminstanz) through to 'entity', 'agency', 'matrix', 'arbiter' -and numerous others besides. (One wonders whether Freud could ever have arrived at his vision-cum-analysis of the human psyche if he had been born and brought up in, say, France or England, since it so clearly derives - like the poetic visions of Franz Kafka - from a specifically Austro-German matrix of notions and assumptions.) Various traps and chicanes await the translator of texts from an earlier age. One of these is the lure of anachronisms. In general this particular lure has been resisted throughout the present volume though it has to be admitted that the alert reader might find a handful of words and idioms that were not yet current in English in the period when Freµ the footnote in the Standard Edition makes embarrassingly clear: the expression does not imply 'attac.:h' or 'attachment'; it simply means that A 'is modelled

Rememberiug, Repeati11g, and Workirig Through

Noles

on', 'is based on', 'follows the example of' B; thus one might typically say that Beethoven's early symphonies lehne11 sich an the mature work of Mozart, or that Freud's theories lehnen sich an the ideas and visions of nineteenth-century German literature (in the Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis: New Series Freud himself notes that the term 'id' (das Es) was devised on the model of Nietzsche's linguistic practice - in Anlelmung

an den Sprachgebrauch bei Nietzsche) .] 28. [Freud's German is somewhat ambiguous; his wording is such that it could be understood to mean 'who have partly relinquished their own narcissism' (this is the interpretation preferred by the Standard Edition).] 29. [Freud cites the phrase in English, and is probably quoting the title of a painting exhibited in the Royal Academy, which depicted a baby being wheeled grandly across a busy London street while two policemen hold up the traffic.] 30. [.~ei11 aktuelles Ich.] 31. [Idealhildung . Freud is particularly fond of creating compound nouns ending in -hildung, the gerund of the verb hilclen, 'to form' (cognate with English 'build'), e.g. Reaktionsbildung, Symptomhildung, Traumbildung.] 32. [Freud's word ls Instan;; - a cardinal term in his vocabulary, but one that has no direct linguistic or indeed cultural equivalent in English, with the result that a number of different renderings are deployed in this present translation to match the relevant context. The key feature of the word is that it implies some kind of judicial or quasi-judicial authority making judgements about what is permissible and impermissible, acceptable and unacceptable - and doing so very often in implacably harsh and even sadistic terms involving 'guilt', 'condemnation', 'punishment' etc. This vision of the human .psyche as a domain under constant smveillance by draconian but shadowy forces is fascinatingly similar to that of Freud's fellow Jew and Austro-H ungarian near-contemporary, Franz Kafka.] 33. Merely by way of conjecture I would add that the development and consolidation of this all-scrutinizing entity might also embrace the ultimate emergence of (subjective) memory and of the phenomenon whereby time holds no validity for unconscious processes. 34. [Having thus far used abstract nouns (lnstanz, umsur) to convey the policing of the psyche, Freud gives the process a far sharper edge here by suddenly personifying it (Zensor).] 35. I cannot here resolve the issue whether the differentiation of this censorial entity from the rest of the ego is capable of providing a psychological substantiation of the philosophical distinction between consciousness and self-consciousness. 244

36. [Selbstgefahl. The Standard Edition bizarrely renders this as 'selfregarding attitude'. For useful definitions and examples of 'self-feeling' as a technical term current in nineteenth and early twentieth-century thinking, see OED .] 37-

[Ichgerecht . The Standard Edition has 'ego-syntonic', but this is mislead-

ing as well

;measure of which, may justifiablr,be attributed to every living f?creature. · · · · •· ··: · · · ·:. .· . . . ;L' A pressing motive for occupying ourselves with the conception of a primary and normal narcissism arose when the attempt was made .to subsume what we know of dementia praecox (Krae. pelin) or schizophrenia (Bleuler) under the hypothesis of the · · libido theory. Patients of this kind, whom I have proposed to term paraphrenics, 1 display two funaamental characteristics: megalomania and diversion of their interest from the external world-from people and things. In consequence of the latter change, they become inaccessible to the influence of psychoanalysis and cannot be curc;d by our efforts. But the paraphrenic's turning away from the external world needs to be more precisely characterized. A patient suffering from hysteria or obsessional neurosis has also, as far as his illness extends · · given up his relation to reality. But analysis shows that he has b; no means broken off his erotic relations to people and things. He still retains them in phantasy; i.e. he has, on the one hand, substituted for real objects imaginary ones from his memory, or has mixed the latter with the former; and on the other hand; he has renounced the initiation of motor activities for the attainment of his aims in connection with those objects. Only to this · condition of the libido may we legitimately apply the term 'introversion' of the libido which is used by Jung indiscriminately.• It is,otherwise with the paraphrenic. He seems really to have withdrawn his libido from people and thing! in the external world, without replacing them by others in phantasy. When he does so replace them, the process seems to be a · secondary one and to be part of an attempt at recovery, designed to lead the libido back to objects.• The question arises: What happens to the libido which has been withdrawn from external objects in schizophrenia? The megalomania characteristic of these states points the way. This . megalomania has no doubt come into being at the expense of 1

(For a discussion of Freud's use of this tenn, see a long Editor's footnote near the end of Section III of the Schreber analysis (1911c).] 1 (Cf. a footnote in 'The DynamiCI of Transference' (1912b).] 1 In connection with this see my discussion of the 'end of the world' in [Section III of] the analysis ofSenatsprllsidcnt Schrcbcr [191 lc]; also Abraham, 1908. [Sec also below, p. 86.]

. zllng zum Egoismus des Selbsterhalnmgstriebes, von deril jedem Lehi:.·' WCS!mmit Redit ein Stiick zugesdirieben wird.: · · . . . · · .• · , . ; Ein dringendes Motiv, sidi mit dei:Vorst_ellu11g eine5 J>rimiren und nor•; . . malen NarziBmus-~11 besdiaftigen, ergab sidi, als der Versudi untemom- · . men wurde, das Verstandnis der Dementia praecox (Kraepelin) oder Sdiizophrenie (Bleuler) unter die Voraussetzung der Libidotheorie zu bringen. Zwei fundamentale Charakterziige zeigen soldie Kranke, die idi vorgesdilagen habe, als Paraphreniker 1 zu bezeidinen: den GriiBen- . wahn und die Abwendung ihres Interesses von der AuBenwelt (Personen und Dingen). Infolge der letzteren Veranderung entziehen sie si~ der Beeinflussung durdi die Psydioanalyse, werden sie fiir unsere Bemiihungen unheilbar. Die Abwendung des Paraphrenikers von. der AuBenwelt bedarf aber einer genaueren Kennzeidinung. Audi der flysteriker und Zwangsneurotiker hat, soweit seine Krankheit reidit, die Beziehung zur Realitat aufgegeben. Die Analyse zeigt aber, daB er die erotisd:te Beziehung zu Personen und Dingen keineswegs aufgehoben hat. Er halt sie nod:t iii der Phantasie fest, das heiBt, er hat einerseits die . realen Objekte durdi imaginare seiner Erinnerung ersetzt oder sie mit ihnen vermengt, anderseits darauf verziditet, die motorisdien Aktionen 2ur Erreidiung seiner Ziele an diesen Objekten einzuleiten. Fur diesen Zu1tand der Libido sollte man 111lein den von Jung ohne Untencheidung gebrauditen Ausdruck: Introversion der Libido gelten l11ssen •. Anders der Paraphreniker. Dieser sd:teint seine Libido von den Person en und Dingen der AuBenwelt wirklidi zuruckgezogen ZU haben, ohne diese durdi andere in seiner Phantasie zu ersetzen. Wo dies dann gesd:tieht, sdieint es sekundar zu sein und einem Heilungsversudi anzugehiiren, weldier die Libido zum Objekt zuruckfUhren will 8• Es entsteht die Frage: Weldies ist das Sdiicksal der den Objekten entzogenen Libido bei der Sd:tizophrer:ie? Der GriiBenwahn dieser Zustande weist hier den Weg. Er ist wohl auf Kosten der Objektli~ido

[Ober Freuds Gebraudi dieses Terminm s. die editorisdie Anmerkung gegen Ende von Absdinitt III dcr Sdtrebcr-Analyse (1911 c), Studienausgahe,Bd. 7, S. 198, Anm.1.] I [Vgl. cine Anmcrkung zicmlidi zu Bcginn dcr Arbcit •Die Dynamik der Obertra· gungc (1912 h), Studionausgahe, Erganzungsband, S. 161 f.] a Vgl. fUr dicsc Aufstellungen die Diskussion det • Weltuntcrgangesc in der Analyse ' des Senatsprasidenten Sdtreber (1911 [c, Studienausgabe, Bd. 7, S. 191-5]). Fer11er: Abraham (1908). [S. audi unten, S. 53.) t

ON NARCISSISM: AN INTRODUCTION

75

· object-libido. The libido that has been withdrawn from the : external world has been directed to the ego .and thus gives rise . to an attitude which may be called narcissism. But the megalo·. mania itself is no new creation; on the contrary, it is, as we know, a magnification and plainer manifestation of a ·condition which had already exiSted previously. This leads us to look upon the narcissism which arises through the drawing in of objectcathexes as a secondary one, superimposed upon a primary · narcissism that is obscured by a number of different influences. Let me insist that I am not· proposing here to explain or penetrate further into the problem of schizophrenia, but that I am merely putting together what has already been said elsewhere,• in order to justify the introduction of the concept of

narcissism. This extension of the libido theory-in my opinion, a legitimate one-receives reinforcement from a third quarter, namely, from our observations and views on the mental life of children and primitive peoples. In the latter we find characteristics which, if they occurred singly, might be put down to megalomania: an over-estimation of the power of their wishes and mental acts, the 'omnipotence of thoughts', a belief in the thaumaturgic force of words, and a technique for dealing with the external world-'magic'-which appears to be a logical application of these grandiose premisses.• In the children of _ to-day, whose development is much more obscure to us, we' expect to find an exactly analogous attitude towards the external world.• Thus we form the idea of there being an original libidinal cathexis of the ego, from which some is later given off to objects, but which fundamentally persists and is related to the object-cathexes much as the body of an amoeba is related to the pseudopodia which it puts out.' In our 1 [See, in particular, the works referred to in the last footnote. On p. 86 below, Freud in fact penetrates further into the problem.] a Cf. the passages in my Totem and Taboo (1912-13) which deal with this subject. [These are chiefly in the third essay, Standard Ed.,

13, 83 ff.] •Cf. Ferenczi (1913a).

• (Freud used this and similar analogies more than once again, e.g.

in Lecture XXVI of his Introductory Lectures (1916-17) and in his short paper on 'A Difficulty in the Path of Psycho-Analysis' (1917a), Standard Ed., 17, 139. He later revised some of the views expressed here. See the end of the Editor's Note, p. 71 above.]

c:ntstanden:Die der-Au6enwelt-~~~~gene Libido-lstdem-Idi-zugefiihrt .V..Orden,so d~6 ein Verhalten entstand, weldies wir Narzi6mus hei6en konnen. Der Gro6enwahn selbst ist aber keine Neusdiopfung, sondem, 'wie wir wissen, ·aie Vergro6erung und Verdeutlidiung eines Zustandes, 'der sdion vorher bestanden hatte. Somit werden wir dazu gefiihrt, den 'Narzi6mus, der durdi Einbeziehung der Objektbese!Zungen enuteht, ais'~~ '~k:..;ndaren-aufzufassen;- weldier sidi iiber einen primaren; durdi mannigfadie Einfliisse verdunkelten aufbaut. : · , ·· Idi bemerke nochmals, da6 ich hier keine Klarung oder; Vertiefung des Schizophrenieproblems geben will, sondern nur zusammentrage, was bereiu an anderen Stellen gesagt worden ist 1, um eine Einfiihrung des Nani6mus zu recbtfertigen. · Ei~- dritter Zuflu6 zu dieser, wie ich meine, legitimen Weiterbildung der Libidotheorie ergibt sich aus unseren Beobachtungen und Auffassungen des Seelenlebens von Kindern und.von primitiven VO!kern. Wir finden bei diesen letzteren Ziige, welche, wenn sie vereinzelt waren, dem Griifienwahn z~geredmet werden kiinnten, eine Obersdiatzung der Madit ihrer Wiinsche und psydiisdien Akte, die »Allmacht der Gedanken«_, · einen Glauben an die Zauberkrafl: der Worte, eine Tedinik gegen die Aufienwelt, die »Magiec, weldie a:ls konsequente Anwendung dieser_ grii6ensiichtigen Voraussetzungen erscheint 1 • Wir erwarten eine ganz analoge Einstellung zur Aufienwelt beim Kinde unserer Zeit, dessen . Entwiddung fiir uns weit undurdisiditiger ist 8• Wir bilden so die Vor, stellung einer urspriinglichen Libidobesetzung des Ichs, von der spater an die Objekte abgegeben wird, die aber, im Grunde genommen, verbleibt und sich zu den Objektbesetzungen verhalt wie der Kiirper ein~ Protoplasmatierchens zu den von ihm ausgeschidtten Pseudopodien '·, , ,. 1 . [S. vor allem die in der vorstehenden Anmerkung ·genannten Werke. Auf S. 's3, ·' , unten, besdiifrigt Freud sicb tatsacblicb ziemlicb eingehend mit dem Problem.] · I S, die entsprecbenden Abscbnitte in meinem Buch Tottm NnJ Tab11 (1912-13). [Sit linden sicb vor allem in der dritten Abhandlung, S111Jitn1111sg11bt; Bd. 9, S. 371 If.] '·, IS. Ferenczi (191311), . , .'· ,. • [Freud verwendete dieses und iihnlicbe Gl~icbnisse aucb spiiter nocb an mellreren Stellen, z. B. in der 26. seiner Vbrlesungen zur Ein/ilhrung (1916-17), S1uJkn1111sgabt, Dd. 1, S. 402. - Einige der oben dargelegten Ansicbten hat Freud sparer revidiert, S. den ScbluB der •Editoriscben Vorbemcrkung des schmerzhaft empfindlichen, irgendwie veranderten und doch nicht that is painfully tender, that is in some way changed and that i. · im · gewohnlichen Sinne kranken J)_ma115_ d3$._GenitaJe .m~~inen Eris yet not diseased in the ordinary sense, is the genital organ · 1 : regungszustanden. Eswird -.dann blutdurchstromt;. geschwellt, ~ur~­ in its states of excitation. In that condition it becomes congested. . feuchtet und der Sitz mannigfaltiger Sensationen. Nennen w1r die with bloOd, swollen and humected, and is the seat of a multi· Tatigkeit einer Korperstelle, sexuell erregende Reize ins Seelenleben plicity of sensations. Let us now, taking any part of the body, zu schicken, ihre Erogeneitat und denken daran, daB wir durch die Erdescribe its activity of sending sexually exciting stimuli to the wagungen der Se:ii:ualtheorie langsi an die Auffassung gewohnt sind, mind as its 'erotogenicity', and fet us further reflect that the gewisse andere Korperstellen - die erogenen Zonen - konnten die Geniconsiderations on which our theory of sexuality was based have long ac:customed us to the notion that certain other parts of . talien vertreten und sich ihnen analog verhalten 1, so haben wir bier nur the body-the 'erotogenic' zones-may act as substitutes for . einen Schritt weiter zu wagen. Wir konnen uns entschlieBen, die Erothe genitals and behave analogously to them. 1 We have then geneitat als allgemeine Eigensdtaft aller Organe anzusehen, und diirfen only one more step to take. We can decide to regard erotodann von der Steigerung oder Herabsetzung derselben an einem begenicity as a general characteristic of all organs and may stimmten Korperteile spredten. Jeder soldten Veranderung der Erothen speak of an increase or decrease of it in a particular geneitat in den Organen konnte eine Veranderung der Libidobesetzung part of the body. For every such change in the erotogenicity im Idt parallel gehen. In soldten Momenten batten wir das zu sudten, of the organs there might then be a parallel change of libidinal was wir der Hypodtondrie zugrunde legen und was die namlidte Eincathexis in the ego. Such factors would constitute ·what we wirkung auf die Libidoverteilung haben kann wie die materielle Erbelieve to underlie hypochondria and what may have the krankung der Organe. same effect upon the distribution of libido as is produced by a material illness of the organs. Wir merken, wenn. wir diesen Gedankengang fortsetzen, stoBen wir We see that, if we follow up this line of thought, we come aut das Problem nidtt nur der Hypodtondrie, sondern (ludt der anderen up against the problem not only of hypochondria, but of the Aktualneurosen, der Neurasthenie und der Angstneurose. Wir wollen other 'actual' neuroses-neurasthenia and anxiety neurosis. darum an dieser Stelle haltmadten; es liegt nidtt in der Absidtt einer Let us therefore stop at this point. It is not within the scope of rein psydtologisdten Untersudtung, die Grenze. so weit ins Gebiet der a purely psychological inquiry to penetrate so far behind the physiologisdten Forsdtung zu iibersdtreiten. Es sei nur erwahnt, daB frontiers of physiological research. I will merely mention that sidt von bier aus vermuten laBt, die Hypodtondrie stehe in einem ahnfrom this point of view we may suspect that the relation of lidten Verhaltnis zur Paraphrenie wie die anderen Aktualneurosen zur hypochondria to paraphrenia is similar to that of the other H ysterie und Zwangsneurose, hange also von der Ichlibido ab, wie die 'actual' neuroses to hysteria and obsessional neurosis: we may anderen von der Objektlibido; die hypodtondrisdte Angst· sei das suspect, that is, that it is dependent on ego-libido 'just as the others are on object-libido, and that hypochondriacal anxiety . ·. Gegenstiick von der Idtlibido her zur neurotisdten Angst. Ferner: Wenn is the. counterpart, as coming from ego-libido, to neurotic · . wir mit der Vorstellung bereits vertraut sind, den Medtanismus der anxiety. Further, since we are already familiar with the' idea . Erkrankung und Symptombildung bei den Obertraglmgsneurosen, den that the mechanism of falling ill and of the formation of sympFortsdtritt von .der Introversion zur Regression, an eine Stauung der .. toms in the transference neuroses-the path from introversion to. · , · Objektlibido zu kniipfen •, so. diirfen wir audt der Vorstellung einer regression-is to be linked to a damming-up of object-libido,• we may come to closer quarters with the idea of a damming-up 1

1

(Cf. Thru Essqys (1905d), Standard Ed., 7, 183 f.] Cf. [the opening pages of] 'Types of Onact of Neurosis' (1912e).

t [Vgl. Drei Abhandlungen (1905 J), Studienausgabt, Bd. 5, S. 90.] · • Vgl. [die emen Sei1en der Arbeit] >Ober neurotisdie Erkrankungstypen< (1912c) [Studienausgabe, Bd. 6, S. 219 If.]. · ·

ON NARCISSISM: AN. INTRODU(n'ION

85

of ego-libido as well and may bring this idea into relation with the phenomena of hypochondria and paraphrcnia. At' this point, our curiosity will of course raise the question ';why this damming-up of libido in the ego should have to be :, experienced as unplcasurable. I shall content myself with the . answer that unplcasure is always the expression of a .higher degree of tension, and that therefore what is happening is that , a quantity in the field of material events is being transformed , here as elsewhere into the psychical quality of unpleasure. Nevertheless it may be that what is decisive for the generation ,of unpleasure is not the absolute magnitude of the material event, but rather some particular function of that absolute magnitude. 1 Here we may even venture to touch on the question of what makes it necessary at all for our mental life to pass beyond the limits of narcissism and to attach the libido to objects.• The answer which would follow from our line of thought would once more be that this necessity arises when the cathexis of the ego with libido exceeds a certain amount. A strong egoism is a protection against falling ill; but in the last resort we must begin to love in order not to fall ill, and we arc. bound to fa~! ill if, in consequence of frustration, we are unable to love. This follows somewhat on the lines of Heine's picture of the psychogenesis of the Creation: Krankheit ist wohl der letzte Grund Des ganien Schopferdrangs gewesen; Erschaffend konnte ich genesen, Erschaffend wurde ich gesund. a We have recognized our mental apparatus as being first and foremost a device designed for mastering excitations which would otherwise be felt as distressing or would have pathogenic effects. Working them over in the mind helps remarkably towards an internal draining away of excitations which are incapable of direct discharge outwards, or for which such a 1 (This whole question is discussed much more fully in 'Instincts and their Vicissitudes' (1915c), below, p. 119 ff. For the use of the term 'quantity' in the last sentence, see Part I, Section I, of Freud's 'Project' (1950a), written in 1895.] 1 [A inuch more elaborate discussion of this problem too will be found in 'Instincts and their Vicissitudes' (1915c), p. 134 ff. below.] 1 [God is imagined as saying: 'Illness was no doubt the final cause of the whole urge to create. By creating, I could recover; by creating, I became healthy.' Neue Gedi&hu, 'Schopfungslieder VII'.]

Stauung der khlibido nahertreten und sie in Beziehung ZU den Phanomenen der Hypochondrie und der Paraphrenie bringen. · Natiirlich wird unsere WiBbegierde bier die Frage aufwerfen, warum eine solche Libidostauung im Ich als unlusivoll empfunden werden muS. · Idi mochte mich da mit der Antwort begniigen, daS Unlust iiberhaupt · der-A~~dr-uck-de;:-hoheren Spannung ist;-ciaB es also eine Quantitat des materiellen Geschehens ist, die sich bier wie anderwarts in die psychische Qualitat der Unlust umsetzt; fiir die Unlustentwicklung mag dann immerhin nicht die absolute GroSe jenes materiellen Vorganges entscheidend sein, sondern eher cine gewisse Funktion dieser absoluten GroSe 1• Von bier aus mag man es selbst wageri, an die Frage heranzutreten, woher denn iiberhaupt. die Notigung fiir das Seelenleben riihrt, iiber die Grenzen des NarziBmus hinauszugehen und die Libido 'auf Objekte zu setzen 1• Die aus unserem Gedankengang abfolgende Antwort wiirde wiederum sagen, diese Notigung trete ein, wenn die Ichbesetzung mit Libido ein gewisses MaS iiberschritten habe. Ein starker Egoismus schiitzt vor Erkrankung, aber endlich muS man beginnen zu lieben, um nicht krank zu werden, und muS erkranken, wenn man .infolge von Versagung nicht lieben kann. Etwa nadi dem Vorbild, wie sich H. Heine die Psychogenese der Weltschopfung vorstellt: »Krankheit ist wohl der letzte Grund Des ganzen Schiipferdrangs gewesen; Erschalfend konnte ich genesen, Erschalfend wurde ich gesund.« • Wir haben in unserem seelischen Apparat vor allem ein Mittel erkannt, welchem die Bewaltigung von Erregungen iibertragen ist, die sonst peinlich empfunden oder pathogen wirksam wiirden. Die psychische Bearbeitung leistet AuBerordentliches fiir die innere Ableitung von Erregungen, die einer unmittelbaren auSeren Abfuhr nicht fahig sind oder · '

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I [Dieser Fragenkomplex wird in •Triebe und Triebschicksale• (1915 c), unten, S. 82 ff., weit eingehender erortert. Beziiglich der Verwendung des Terminus •Quantitit• im ersten Teil des obigen Satzes vgl. Freuds •Entwurf• von 1895 (1950•), Tei! I, enter Abschnitt, •Erster Hauptsatz: Die quantitative Auffassung