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The definition of neutralization as a change from an instinctual towards a non-instinctual mode of energy utilization safeguards the distinction between the sublimated cathexis of an ego function and the sublimated cathexis of its aims and objects, and opens the way to problems essential for the metapsychology of the ego and of ego-id relations.
This paper is based on the probably threefold origin of neutralized energy in the two drives and in the ego (primary ego energy). There is evidence that sublimation is a continuous process and works with a continuum of gradations of energy from the fully instinctual to the fully neutralized mode. But secondary ego autonomy, which alone ensures the stability of an ego function and its resistivity to regression and reinstinctualization, presupposes the ego's accumulation in interaction with the outer and inner world of a reservoir of neutralized energy of its own which can be shifted to points where needed, and by which it is made independent of ad hoc acts of neutralization. Incentives to neutralization under the pressure of the id and under direction from the ego and, later, the superego are discussed. The operation of the primary process before the establishment of an ego organization involves displacements and symbolizations which may come in the course of development to be neutralized. Self-preservation, which in man is largely an ego function, is in fact geared to the operation of neutralization. Desexualization in Freud's view is correlated with defusion of instinct. The dangers of self- or object-destruction inherent in defusion can only be counteracted, therefore, if the ability to neutralize aggression is unimpaired. Sublimation of libido and aggression provides the ego in part with energy appropriate to its special needs.
The rôle of neutralization in defensive and in non-defensive ego functions and the varieties of cathexis involved is discussed. The aggression used in counter-cathexis in repression as well