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We see then that for the narcissistic neuroses our technical methods must be replaced by others; we do not as yet know whether we shall succeed in so replacing them.
—FREUD: Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis.
In the course of its investigations psycho-analysis has taught us to recognize the laws which govern the instinctual life and to bring the knowledge so gained to bear upon mental phenomena. In so doing, it has thrown light upon the principal relations governing the object-libido, which is directed towards and dependent upon the outside world, and has applied its discoveries to the cure of the transference-neuroses. Little as we could expect to add anything fundamentally new to the already highly developed theory of these mental strata, we nevertheless keenly regret that our knowledge of the structure of the mental life has been extended very little beyond the frontier of narcissism and, above all, that as yet our power of influencing the mind does not extend to the psychoses. We may indeed suspect that the very nature of this form of illness should impose a limitation, if not upon our understanding, at least upon our power. For the distinguishing mark of psychosis is that the existing capacity for transference is not able to overcome the narcissistic fixations which are recognizable in the symptoms. Since the transference alone furnishes the energy with which, together with the patient's conscious will to recover, we are able to master the fixations of a neurosis, by our very definition there would seem to be no scope for an analogous mastering of psychosis.
In the following paper, however, I hope to be able to refute this conclusion as premature, for it is based on a theoretical conception by no means free from objection. We are to this extent conscious of the difficulty of this interesting problem and of its importance: that any knowledge gained of the operation of the ego-instincts may from the practical point of view of its ultimate application