Beyond the Pleasure Principle (24 page)

There does appear to be just such a fact. We might reasonably substitute the polarity of love and hate for the antithesis constituted by the two types of drives. Whereas of course we have no problem showing how Eros is represented, it comes as quite a relief that we
are now able to identify the destruction drive – which takes its lead from hate – as representing the highly elusive death drive. Clinical observation, however, clearly shows us not only that hate is an unexpectedly regular accompaniment of love (ambivalence), and is very often its precursor in human relationships, but also that in certain circumstances hate changes into love, and love into hate. If this transformation involves anything more than just temporal succession, that is, one thing simply taking the place of the other, then clearly we are left with no basis for making such a fundamental distinction as that between erotic drives and death drives – a distinction premised on the notion of physiological processes that run directly counter to one another.

Now cases where we first love someone and then hate them (or
vice versa
) because they themselves have occasioned the change, clearly have no bearing on our problem; nor do those cases where love that has not yet become manifest reveals itself first through hostility and a tendency to aggression, for here the destructive component may simply have run on ahead during the process of object-cathexis, before being joined in due course by the erotic component. But a number of cases are known to us from the psychology of neuroses in which there are much stronger grounds for supposing that a transformation does indeed take place. In
paranoia persecutoria
the patient resists an excessive homosexual attachment to a particular individual in such a way that this most deeply loved individual turns into a persecutor against whom the often dangerous aggression of the patient is directed. We can legitimately interject that a previous phase had served to convert the love into hate. Regarding the genesis of homosexuality, indeed also of desexualized social feelings, psychoanalytical study has only recently revealed to us the existence of intense feelings of rivalry leading to aggressive tendencies, feelings that have to be overcome before the hated object can become the loved object, or become the object of an identification.
⁶⁷
The question arises whether we can assume that in these cases the hate is converted directly into love. After all, it is a matter here of purely internal changes, precipitated in no way by any change in behaviour on the part of the object.

However, another possible mechanism is familiar to us from our psychoanalytical study of the change that occurs in paranoia. Here, an ambivalent attitude is present from the outset, and the transformation is brought about through a reactive displacement of cathexis, whereby energy is withdrawn from the erotic impulse, and added to the hostile one.

Something very similar, albeit not quite the same, happens in the process that leads to homosexuality, namely the overcoming of hostile feelings of rivalry.
⁶⁸
Hostility is an attitude with no prospect of gratification, and in consequence – for economic reasons, in other words – it is replaced by the attitude of love, which offers better prospects of gratification, that is, the possibility of release. In neither of these cases, therefore, do we need to assume a direct transformation of hate into love, which would be incompatible with the notion of a qualitative difference between the two types of drives.

It has not escaped our notice, however, that in drawing on this other mechanism whereby love changes into hate, we have tacitly made a further assumption – one that deserves to be made fully explicit. We have based our argument on the supposition that there exists within the psyche – whether in the ego or the id is still uncertain – a displaceable energy which, though indifferent in itself, can join forces with a qualitatively differentiated erotic or destructive impulse and increase its overall cathexis. We simply cannot get anywhere without positing a displaceable energy of this kind. But we are still left wondering where it comes from, who
⁶⁹
it belongs to, and what it signifies.

The problem of the
quality
of drive-impulses, and how that quality is maintained throughout the sundry vicissitudes that drives are prone to, remains decidedly obscure, and to date barely any attempt has been made to tackle it. In the case of the sexual partial drives, which lend themselves particularly well to observation, one can see a number of processes that follow a similar pattern. Thus, for instance, the partial drives to some extent communicate with each other; a drive originating from one erogenous source is capable of surrendering its intensity in order to reinforce a partial drive originating from another; the gratification of one drive can serve
another in place of the latter's own. Further similarities could be cited – all of which inevitably encourages us to venture certain kinds of hypotheses.

In this present discussion, too, I can offer not proof but only a hypothesis. It seems plausible to suppose that this displaceable and indifferent energy, active very probably in both the ego and the id, derives from the store of narcissistic libido, and is thus desexualized Eros; indeed, the erotic drives in general seem to us to be more plastic, more displaceable, more displaceable than the destruction drives. That being so, we can quite logically go on to suggest that this displaceable libido operates on behalf of the pleasure principle, by preventing any undue build-up and facilitating release.
⁷⁰
In so doing it clearly displays considerable indifference as to which particular pathway is adopted by the release process, provided that the actual process itself takes place. We know this trait to be typical of the cathexis processes in the id. It is evident in erotic cathexes, where a marked indifference is displayed with regard to the object; and it is very marked indeed in the transferences that occur in analysis – transferences that
have
to be effected, regardless of who happens to be their object. Rank has recently produced some splendid examples demonstrating that neurotic acts of revenge tend to be directed against the wrong people. This type of behaviour on the part of the unconscious inevitably reminds us of that comic little story of the three village tailors, one of whom is due to be strung up because the village's sole blacksmith has done a dastardly deed that calls for a hanging.
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Someone
has to be punished, even if it's not the guilty party. This same disregard first came to our attention in the displacements characteristic of the primary process in dream-work.
⁷²
Whereas in that instance it was the
objects
that were apparently deemed to be of only secondary importance, in this present context it is the
pathways
utilized by the release process. If the ego were involved, we would expect to find an insistence on greater precision in the choice of both object and pathway.

If this displaceable energy is desexualized libido, then it may also be termed
sublimated
, for it would still be firmly adhering to Eros's central objective of being a unifying and binding force, by serving
to bring about that unity which – or at least the striving for which – is the ego's most distinctive feature. If we include thought processes in the broader sense amongst these displacements, then of course thinking, too, may be seen to be covered by the sublimation of erotic energy.

This brings us back to a possibility that we touched on earlier, namely that sublimation routinely takes place via the medium of the ego.
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Another circumstance that we might recall here is that this same ego deals with the initial object-cathexes of the id – and no doubt later ones as well – by taking their libido into itself and annexing it to the ego-alteration brought about by identification. Needless to say, this conversion [of object-libido] into ego-libido entails a desexualization, an abandonment of sexual goals. At all events this affords us clear insight into an important function of the ego in its relationship to Eros. By thus commandeering the libido of the various object-cathexes, setting itself up as sole love-object, and desexualizing or sublimating the libido of the id, it operates directly counter to the designs of Eros; it puts itself at the service of the opposing drive-impulses. In respect of certain other object-cathexes pertaining to the id, it simply has to put up with them – to tag along, so to speak. We shall return later to a further possible consequence of this activity on the part of the ego.
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At this point we probably need to make an important addition to the narcissism theory. At the very beginning the entire libido is massed in the id, during the period when the ego is in the process of formation, or formed but still weak. The id sends forth part of this libido for the purpose of erotic object-cathexes, whereupon the ego, having meanwhile gained in strength, seeks to commandeer this object-libido and force itself on the id as a love-object. The ego's form of narcissism is thus a
secondary
one – one that has been withdrawn from objects.
⁷⁵

Again and again, we find that the drive-impulses that we are capable of monitoring turn out to derive from Eros. If it were not for the arguments set forth in
Beyond the Pleasure Principle
, and ultimately also the sadistic admixtures encountered in Eros, we would have difficulty in holding firm to our fundamental dualist
position. But since we have no alternative, we are driven to the supposition that the death drives very largely remain silent, and that the clamour of life comes mostly from Eros.
⁷⁶

And also from the battle
against
Eros! There can be no denying the notion that the pleasure principle serves the id as a compass in its battle against the libido, which habitually disrupts the smooth process of life. If the constancy principle in Fechner's sense
⁷⁷
does indeed govern life, which on that view is supposed to be a steady slide into death, then it is the demands made by Eros, that is by the sexual drives, which – manifesting themselves as the
needs
that drives give rise to – interrupt the downward slide and create new tensions. Guided by the pleasure principle or, to be precise, by the awareness of unpleasure, the id defends itself against them by a variety of means. It does so in the first instance by meeting the demands of the non-desexualized libido as rapidly as possible, that is to say by striving to give gratification to the directly sexual urges. But it does so on a far larger scale by using one particular form of such gratification in which all the constituent demands coincide, in order to rid itself of those sexual substances that are the supersaturated vehicle, so to speak, of the erotic tensions. The shedding of the sexual substances in the sex act corresponds in a sense to the separating-out of soma and germ-plasm.
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This explains why the state that ensues upon full sexual gratification is similar to dying, while in certain lower animals death coincides with the act of procreation. Reproduction is the cause of these creatures' death in the sense that the death drive can effect its aims without let or hindrance once Eros has been removed from the picture through the act of gratification. And finally, as we have seen, the ego makes it easier for the id to assert control by sublimating parts of the libido for itself and its own purposes.

The sheer complexity of the topic in hand will perhaps excuse the fact that not one of these chapters has a title that entirely matches its content, and the associated fact that whenever we set out to explore new avenues of investigation we revert again and again to matters that we have already dealt with at an earlier stage.

Thus we have repeatedly stated that the ego very largely develops out of identifications which take the place of cathexes generated by the id and then abandoned, and that the first such identifications routinely assume the role of a special judgemental entity within the ego, and set about countering the ego
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by behaving as a super-ego – whereas at a later stage the ego, having become stronger, may well show greater resistance to any such attempts on the part of identifications to exert influence over it. The super-ego owes its special position within - or counterposed to – the ego to a circumstance that needs to be appreciated from two distinct vantage-points: for one thing, it was the
first
identification, and it took place while the ego was still at a weak stage of its development; and secondly, it is heir to the Oedipus complex, and as such was responsible for introducing the most momentous objects into the ego. It relates to later ego-alterations rather as the primary sexual phase in childhood relates to the individual's later sexual life after puberty. Although it remains open to all the influences that subsequently play upon it, it still forever retains the particular characteristic that it acquired through its origins in the father complex, namely the ability to counter the ego and overmaster it. It is a monument to the erstwhile weakness and dependency of the ego, and it goes on to exert its dominance over the mature ego as well. Just as the child was subject
to the compulsion that obliged it to obey its parents, so the ego submits to the categorical imperative of its super-ego.

However, the fact that the super-ego has its origins in the earliest object-cathexes of the id, and hence in the father complex, has other important implications for it as well: as we have already shown,
⁸⁰
these origins link it to the phylogenetic acquirements of the id, and make it a reincarnation of previous ego forms that have left a residual imprint in the id. This means that the super-ego always has a very close relationship to the id, and can act as its representative
vis-à-vis
the ego. It secretes itself in the very depths of the id, and in consequence is further from consciousness than the ego.
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