Regression of Ego-Orientation and Libido in Schizophrenia1

In his well-known paper on the case of Schreber Freud describes the interrelation between libidinal phases and regression, between the symptom and defence mechanism. The withdrawal of cathexis from objects plays the smaller part in the psychotic process; the main part of it is reconstruction. We need only recall the names of the authors to whom we owe the knowledge of details of the process of reconstruction: Tausk, Abraham, Nunberg, Staercke, Ophuijsen, Bibring, etc. And we shall only emphasize what Abraham confirms, namely, that the ejection of the introjected object can only occur at a certain level of psychosexual development. According to Freud it is an open question whether reconstruction is carried out through a progressive cathexis of libidinal stages. In 1926 Fenichel suggested that the reappearance of archaic phases of libidinal development may not be due to regression but may be regarded as a curative, progressive process, as a movement from ego to object cathexis, which however has not attained its goal but has stopped midway; for instance, on the path from narcissism to object love, it progresses as far as homosexuality.

We find not only a rivalry between the libidinal stages but also between developed and archaic mechanisms of reconstruction. Hermann, for instance, supposes that projection and auditory and visual hallucinations are the work of successful reconstruction which endeavours to overcome subordinate forms of the orientation of perception. These are the olfactory and thermic orientations, the genetic psychological prototypes of projection. The question which we are here discussing is that of thermic orientation. This is the prototype of exchange of cathexis between ego and object. An object becomes warm when another object in contact with it gives up a part of its own quantum of heat and becomes cold. In this way the various qualities of the objects are interchanged, a 'flowing over'