Psychology of the Unconscious: A Study of the Transformations and Symbolisms of the Libido. A Contribution to the History of the Evolution of ThoughtJung, C. G. (Carl Gustav)
Philosophy
Psychology of the Unconscious: A Study of the Transformations and Symbolisms of the Libido. A Contribution to the History of the Evolution of Thought
Jung, C. G. (Carl Gustav)
Libido (Psychology); Mother and child; Psychoanalysis; Subconsciousness; Symbolism (Psychology)
In this way we attain an insight into certain primitive conditions of
the function of reality. It would be radically wrong to say that its
compelling power is a sexual one. It was a sexual one to a large extent.
The process of transformation of the primal libido into secondary
impulses always took place in the form of affluxes of sexual libido,
that is to say, sexuality became deflected from its original destination
and a portion of it turned, little by little, increasing in amount, into
the phylogenetic impulse of the mechanisms of allurement and of
protection of the young. This diversion of the sexual libido from the
sexual territory into associated functions is still taking place.[265]
Where this operation succeeds without injury to the adaptation of the
individual it is called _sublimation_. Where the attempt does not
succeed it is called _repression_.
The descriptive standpoint of psychology accepts the multiplicity of
instincts, among which is the sexual instinct, as a special phenomenon;
moreover, it recognizes certain affluxes of libido to non-sexual
instincts.
Quite otherwise is the genetic standpoint. It regards the multiplicity
of instincts as issuing from a relative unity, the primal libido;[266]
it recognizes that definite amounts of the primal libido are split off,
as it were, associated with the newly formed functions and finally
merged in them. As a result of this it is impossible, from the genetic
standpoint, to hold to the strictly limited conception of libido of the
descriptive standpoint; it leads inevitably to a broadening of the
conception. With this we come to the theory of libido that I have
surreptitiously introduced into the first part of this work for the
purpose of making this genetic conception familiar to the reader. The
explanation of this harmless deceit I have saved until the second part.
For the first time, through this genetic idea of libido, which in every
way surpasses the descriptive sexual, the transference was made possible
of the Freudian libido theory into the psychology of mental disease. The
passage quoted above shows how the present Freudian conception of libido
collides with the problem of the psychoses.[267] Therefore, when I speak
of libido, I associate with it the genetic conception which contains not
only the immediate sexual but also an amount of desexualized primal
libido. When I say a sick person takes his libido away from the outer
world, in order to take possession of the inner world with it, I do not
mean that he takes away merely the affluxes from the function of
reality, but he takes energy away, according to my view, from those
desexualized instincts which regularly and properly support the function
of reality.
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