You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Let us first quickly review the chief facts about the theory of the libido.
The Latin word had long been employed by physicians and scholars working on the science of sexuality before Freud took it up for purposes of mental analysis and gave it his particular significance. In their writings it meant simply erotic appetite or old-fashioned lust: it stood for one sexual effect. Noteworthy is the fact that he did not choose the Greek word oistros, which his professional and academic antagonists might have expected him to employ. But torrid desire seemed to him at most a polar aspect of the energy's range, by no means its supreme characteristic.
For psychoanalysis the libido consists of a material, body fluid with qualities peculiar to itself, distinguishing it from other forms of biological energy. Two of its qualities Freud singled out for constant inquiry: (a) mobility—a power of floating from object to object, pervading and departing from things or sustaining itself in balances of tension, with a freedom rare in nature, which becomes lability in morbid states; (b) tenacity—a power of adhering or fixating to objects for long periods, even lifetimes, perhaps beyond the duration of life. The basis of both these qualities was imagined by the pioneer analysts as a chemical structure undefined, but comparable to the secretions of the endocrine glands. Freud expected that biochemistry would some day determine the exact nature of the libidinal substances; however he warned that they should not be searched for only in those organs traditionally labelled sexual: “The analyses of perversions and psychoneuroses have taught us that this sexual excitement is provided not only by the so-called sexual parts alone but by all organs of the body.”1 True, there flourished in nearly all species of organisms various parts gifted with a sort of specialized