You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
In his book “The Ego and the It” Freud describes processes in which the Ego, through identification with an object, binds the sexual object—libido to the Ego—alteration originated by the identification, whereby the sexual object—libido becomes narcissistic, i.e., nonsexual, libido. Such a desexualization, says Freud, may also be called sublimation, and one may assume that all sublimation can come about in such a fashion, through the medium of the Ego.
It is now made probable that not only object—libido, but also auto—erotic libido, can be desexualised by just such identification—processes. The identification would then not be an identification with a hetero—erotic libido, can be desexualized by just such identification—processes, erotic object but with the autoerotic objects, with the erogenous zones, organs and stimulative processes of one's own body.
We all know these identifications in pathological forms, in hysteria and the psychoses. In our present deliberations, however, we will deal with identifications which take place normally and regularly and transform autoerotic libido into non—sexual, narcissistic libido. We differentiate narcissism from autoerotism. We know that one can speak of an essential narcissism only when there is an Ego at hand, or one engaged in formation. Before this stage there is only a diffuse, autoerotic libido which proceeds from the individual zones and organs of the body and has these zones and organs as their