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= D.: Libidostauung.–Es.: estancamiento de la libido.–Fr.: stase libidinale.–I.: stasi della libido.–P.: estase da libido.
Economic process which according to a hypothesis of Freud's may underlie the subject's lapse into neurosis or psychosis: deprived of an outlet towards discharge, libido collects on intrapsychic formations; the energy thus accumulated is put to use in the constitution of symptoms.
The economic notion of the damming up of libido originates in the theory of the actual neuroses* as expounded by Freud in his earliest writings: he deems the aetiological factor in these neuroses to be an accumulation (Anhäufung) of sexual excitations which, in the absence of an adequate *, are unable to find any path towards discharge.
In ‘Types of Onset of ’ (1912c) the notion of the damming up of libido becomes very broad in that the process is said to take place in all the various forms of entry into neurosis that Freud distinguishes; these forms are ‘different ways of establishing a particular pathogenic constellation in the mental economy–namely the damming up of libidio, which the ego cannot, with the means at its command, ward off without danger’ 1. All the same, important reservations are made about the aetiological function of damming up:
a. Freud does not make the damming up of libido a primary factor in all the types of onset; it is apparently in the cases nearest to –those involving reale Versagung or real –that it plays the decisive role. Elsewhere, it is merely a consequence of the psychical conflict.
b. Damming up is not in itself pathogenic. It may lead to normal behaviour: sublimation, or the transformation of ‘actual’ tension into activity that results in the acquisition of a satisfying object.
As from ‘On Narcissism: An Introduction’ (1914c) the notion of damming up is extended to the mechanism of the psychoses, which is seen as the damming of the libido cathecting the ego. ‘It seems that an accumulation of narcissistic libido beyond a