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23 May 1907
Dear colleague,
Since you have kept me waiting so long for your reaction to the Gradiva, I can only assume that you are immersed in D. pr. work, so I shall not make you wait any longer for the information you have asked for.
I see two problems in your letter: a) what the withdrawal of libido from the object means, b) what are the differences between paranoid outward projection and other projections. I shall tell you what I think.
I do not think that the libido withdraws from the real object to throw itself on the mental representation of the object, with which fantasy it proceeds to play its autoerotic game. By definition, the libido is not autoerotic as long as it has an object, real or imagined. I believe, rather, that the libido departs from the object-image, which is thereby divested of the cathexis that has characterized it as internal and can now be projected outward and, as it were, perceived. Then for a moment it can be perceived calmly as it were and subjected to the usual reality-testing. “People say that I love coitus. That is what they say, but it's not true!” Successful repression would accomplish this much; the liberated libido would somehow manifest itself autoerotically as in childhood. The source of all our misunderstandings, I believe, is that I have not stressed clearly enough the double onset of the process, the breakdown into repression of the libido and return of the libido.
We can now construct three possible cases.
Repression by the above-described process is permanently successful, then the case takes the course that seems characteristic of Dem. pr. The projected object-image may appear only briefly in the “delusional idea,” the libido turns definitively to autoerotism, the psyche is impoverished in the way you know so well.
Or there is a return of libido (failure of the projection), only a part of which is guided into autoerotism; another part goes back to the object which is now to be found at the perception end and is treated as