Chapter XII. The Libido Theory

It is well first to be clear here about what precisely Freud meant by the word ‘Libido’ and what by the ‘Libido theory’. The sexual instinct he regarded, like everyone else, as a psycho-physical process, having both bodily and mental manifestations. By ‘Libido’ he essentially meant the latter, in whatever form they may be displayed.

Here are Freud's own words on the matter. ‘The popular view distinguishes between hunger and love, seeing them as representatives of the instincts that aim at self-preservation and reproduction of the species respectively. In associating ourselves with this very evident distinction we postulate in psychoanalysis a similar one between the self-preservative or ego instincts on the one hand and the sexual instincts on the other; that force by which the sexual instinct is represented in the mind we call ‘Libido’—sexual longing—and regard it as analogous to the force of hunger, or the will to power, and other such trends among the ego-tendencies.’1

But Freud was seldom meticulous in adhering to precise definitions, and there are passages which give the impression that sometimes ‘Libido’ might be equivalent to ‘sexual instinct’ in both its bodily and mental aspects. Thus in one place it is defined simply as ‘the force by which the sexual instinct expresses itself’.2 Again, in a passage written in 1915: ‘We have defined the concept of Libido as a quantitatively variable force which could serve as a measure of processes and transformations occurring in the field of sexual excitation. We distinguish this Libido in respect of its special origin from the energy which must be supposed to underlie mental processes in general, and we thus also attribute a qualitative character to it.’3 He could even speak of the organic basis of the Libido. Thus, alluding to the ‘disturbances of the sexual processes, the processes which determine in the organism the formation and utilization of