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Freud's metapsychology attempted to make psychological facts more comprehensible by attributing different psychological functions to quasi personifications which he called 'id', 'ego' and 'superego'. In healthy persons who do not have strong inner conflicts which in turn bring them into conflict with their surroundings, no such division of psychological instances is observable. Although these terms help to visualize more easily the different forces1 in conflict, I do not believe they help much in our theoretical thinking. They come to be spoken of as if they were actual organs. And that, for instance, the superego is sometimes split into two kinds of superego which seek to enforce conflicting moral codes upon the ego shows that these simplifications of thinking lead to artificial complications.
However much psychoanalytic metapsychology2 be discounted, the libido theory remains essentially unchanged except that we do not look upon the libido as a preformed drive with specific sexual aims, which differ in the various periods of the development, but rather as an undifferentiated driving force directed by the sensual apparatus or by memories of sensual experiences. Libido is not drive, but the sensually oriented direction of drive towards objects. The different phases of libidinal development, as described by the libido theory, are expressions of the development of the sense organs.