Re-Evaluation of the Libido Theory1

At the beginning of the morning session Robert Waelder outlined the idea and the plan of the panel. The idea was to concentrate on the clinical rather than on the metapsychological aspects of the libido theory. These clinical aspects he defined as follows: (1) The concept of sexuality is properly not limited to the genital expressions of sexuality, such as cohabitation, but on the contrary, as Freud proposed in 1905 in the Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex, many other activities and propensities of the human organism rightfully deserve to be called sexual as well. (2) As Freud also proposed even earlier, psychoneuroses are primarily due to an inner conflict over sexual drives. That is, the clinical aspect of the libido theory may be said to refer to the doctrine of the crucial importance of infantile sexuality for the development of character, of neurosis, and indeed of all psychopathological phenomena. In this connection Waelder reminded us at both sessions that Freud held to this view throughout his life and expressed it even in his last work, the unfinished Outline of Psychoanalysis, in which he offered the opinion that the time of greatest psychic vulnerability was childhood and that the area of greatest vulnerability was that of the sexual functions.

The plan of the panel was that the morning session was devoted to a consideration of the more radical criticisms of the libido theory by those who might be called culturalists or environmentalists. Such critics would discard the libido theory as untenable altogether. The afternoon session was devoted to the discussion of less radical forms of criticism, that is, in Waelder's words, "criticism which does not question the role of the libido theory as such, but which sees its range of applicability both defined and restricted by the development of psychoanalytic thought in the last thirty years, which has been occupied above all with problems of aggression and with ego psychology."