Beyond the Pleasure Principle
V
The fact that the sensitive cortical layer has no protective barrier against excitations emanating from within will have one inevitable consequence: viz. that these transmissions of stimuli acquire increased economic significance and frequently give rise to economic disturbances comparable to the traumatic neuroses. The most prolific sources of such inner excitations are the so-called instincts of the organism, the representatives of all forces arising within the body and transmitted to the psychic apparatus—the most important and most obscure element in psychological research.
Perhaps we shall not find it too rash an assumption that the excitations proceeding from the instincts do not conform to the type of the ‘bound’ but of the free-moving nerve processes that are striving for discharge. The most trustworthy knowledge we have of these processes comes from the study of dreams. There we found that the processes in the unconscious systems are fundamentally different from those in the (pre)conscious; that in the unconscious ‘charges’ may easily be completely transferred, displaced or condensed, while if this happened with preconscious material only defective results would be obtained. This is the reason for the well-known peculiarities of the manifest dream, after the preconscious residues of the day before have undergone elaboration according to the laws of the unconscious. I termed this kind of process in the unconscious the psychic ‘primary process’ in contradistinction to the secondary process valid in our normal waking life. Since the excitations of instincts all affect the unconscious systems, it is scarcely an innovation to say that they follow the lines of the primary process, and little more so to identify the psychic primary process with the freely mobile charge, the secondary process with changes in Breuer’s bound or tonic charge.[15] It would then be the task of the higher layers of the psychic apparatus to bind the instinct-excitation that reaches the primary process. The failure to effect this binding would evoke a disturbance analogous to the traumatic neuroses; it is only after the binding had been successfully accomplished that the pleasure-principle (and its modification the reality-principle) would have an opportunity to assert its sway without hindrance. Till then, the other task of the psychic apparatus would take precedence, viz. to obtain control of or to bind the excitation, not in opposition to the pleasure-principle but independently of it and in part without regard to it.
The expressions of a repetition-compulsion which we have described, both in the early activities of infantile psychic life and in the experiences of psycho-analytic treatment, show in a high degree an instinctive character, and, where they come into contrast with the pleasure-principle, a daemonic character. In the play of children we seem to arrive at the conclusion that the child repeats even the unpleasant experiences because through his own activity he gains a far more thorough mastery of the strong impression than was possible by mere passive experience. Every fresh repetition seems to strengthen this mastery for which the child strives; even with pleasurable experiences the child cannot do enough in the way of repetition and will inexorably insist on the identity of the impression. This characteristic is destined later to disappear. A witticism heard for the second time will almost fail of effect; a theatrical performance will never make the same impression the second time that it did on the first occasion; indeed it is hard to persuade the adult to read again at all soon a book he has enjoyed. Novelty is always the necessary condition of enjoyment. The child, however, never gets tired of demanding from a grown-up the repetition of a game he has played with him before or has shown him, till at last the grown-up refuses, utterly worn out; similarly if he has been told a pretty story, he wants always to hear the same story instead of a new one, insists inexorably on exact repetition and corrects each deviation which the narrator lets slip by mistake, which perhaps he even thought to gain new merit by inserting. Here there is no contradiction of the pleasure-principle: it is evident that the repetition, the rediscovery of the identity, is itself a source of pleasure. In the case of a patient in analysis, on the other hand, it is plain that the compulsion to repeat in the transference the occurrences of his infantile life disregards in every way the pleasure-principle. The patient behaves in this respect completely like a child, and thus makes it clear to us that the repressed memory-traces of his primitive experience are not present in a ‘bound’ form, are indeed, in a sense, not capable of the secondary process. To this fact of their not being bound they owe their power to weave a wish-phantasy that will be represented in a dream, by adhering to the residues from waking experiences. We frequently encounter the same repetition-compulsion as a therapeutic obstacle, when at the end of the treatment we wish to bring about complete detachment from the physician;
and it may be supposed that the vague dread with which those who are unfamiliar with it view analysis, as though they feared to wake what they think is better left to sleep, is at root a fear of the appearance of this daemonic compulsion.
In what way is the instinctive connected with the compulsion to repetition? At this point the idea is forced upon us that we have stumbled on the trace of a general and hitherto not clearly recognised—or at least not expressly emphasised—characteristic of instinct, perhaps of all organic life. According to this, an instinct would be a tendency innate in living organic matter impelling it towards the reinstatement of an earlier condition, one which it had to abandon under the influence of external disturbing forces—a kind of organic elasticity, or, to put it another way, the manifestation of inertia in organic life.[16]
This conception of instinct strikes us as strange, since we are accustomed to see in instinct the factor urging towards change and development, and now we find ourselves required to recognise in it the very opposite, viz. the expression of the conservative nature of living beings. On the other hand, we soon think of those examples in animal life which appear to confirm the idea of instinct having been historically conditioned. When certain fish undertake arduous journeys at spawning-time, in order to deposit the spawn in certain definite waters far removed from their usual habitats, according to the interpretation of many biologists they are only seeking the earlier homes of their kind, which in course of time they have exchanged for others. The same is said to be true of the migratory flights of birds of passage, but the search for further examples becomes superfluous when we remember that in the phenomena of heredity and in the facts of embryology we have the most imposing proofs of the organic compulsion to repetition. We see that the germ cell of a living animal is obliged to repeat in its development—although in a fleeting and curtailed fashion—the structures of all the forms from which the animal is descended, instead of hastening along the shortest path to its own final shape. A mechanical explanation of this except in some trifling particulars is impossible, and the historical explanation cannot be disregarded. In the same way we find extending far upwards in the animal kingdom a power of reproduction whereby a lost organ is replaced by the growth of a new one exactly like it.
The obvious objection, that it may well be that besides the conservative instincts compelling repetition there are others which press towards new formation and progress, should certainly not be left unnoticed; it will be considered at a later stage of our discussion. But we may first be tempted to follow to its final consequences the hypothesis that all instincts have as their aim the reinstatement of an earlier condition. If what results gives an appearance of ‘profundity’ or bears a resemblance to mysticism, still we know ourselves to be clear of the reproach of having striven after anything of the sort. We are in search of sober results of investigation or of reflections based upon it, and the only character we wish for in these results is that of certainty.
If then all organic instincts are conservative, historically acquired, and are directed towards regression, towards reinstatement of something earlier, we are obliged to place all the results of organic development to the credit of external, disturbing and distracting influences. The rudimentary creature would from its very beginning not have wanted to change, would, if circumstances had remained the same, have always merely repeated the same course of existence. But in the last resort it must have been the evolution of our earth, and its relation to the sun, that has left its imprint on the development of organisms. The conservative organic instincts have absorbed every one of these enforced alterations in the course of life and have stored them for repetition; they thus present the delusive appearance of forces striving after change and progress, while they are merely endeavouring to reach an old goal by ways both old and new. This final goal of all organic striving can be stated too. It would be counter to the conservative nature of instinct if the goal of life were a state never hitherto reached. It must rather be an ancient starting point, which the living being left long ago, and to which it harks back again by all the circuitous paths of development. If we may assume as an experience admitting of no exception that everything living dies from causes within itself, and returns to the inorganic, we can only say ‘The goal of all life is death’, and, casting back, ‘The inanimate was there before the animate.’
At one time or another, by some operation of force which still completely baffles conjecture, the properties of life were awakened in lifeless matter. Perhaps the process was a prototype resembling that other one which later in a certain stratum of living matter gave rise to consciousness. The tension then aroused in the previously inanimate matter strove to attain an equilibrium; the first instinct was present, that to return to lifelessness. The living substance at that time had death within easy reach; there was probably only a short course of life to run, the direction of which was determined by the chemical structure of the young organism. So through a long period of time the living substance may have been constantly created anew, and easily extinguished, until decisive external influences altered in such a way as to compel the still surviving substance to ever greater deviations from the original path of life, and to ever more complicated and circuitous routes to the attainment of the goal of death. These circuitous ways to death, faithfully retained by the conservative instincts, would be neither more nor less than the phenomena of life as we now know it. If the exclusively conservative nature of the instincts is accepted as true, it is impossible to arrive at any other suppositions with regard to the origin and goal of life.
If these conclusions sound strangely in our ears, equally so will those we are led to make concerning the great groups of instincts which we regard as lying behind the vital phenomena of organisms. The postulate of the self-preservative instincts we ascribe to every living being stands in remarkable contrast to the supposition that the whole life of instinct serves the one end of bringing about death. The theoretic significance of the instincts of self-preservation, power and self-assertion, shrinks to nothing, seen in this light; they are part-instincts designed to secure the path to death peculiar to the organism and to ward off possibilities of return to the inorganic other than the immanent ones, but the enigmatic struggle of the organism to maintain itself in spite of all the world, a struggle that cannot be brought into connection with anything else, disappears. It remains to be added that the organism is resolved to die only in its own way; even these watchmen of life were originally the myrmidons of death. Hence the paradox comes about that the living organism resists with all its energy influences (dangers) which could help it to reach its life-goal by a short way (a short circuit, so to speak); but this is just the behaviour that characterises a pure instinct as contrasted with an intelligent striving.[17]
But we must bethink ourselves: this cannot be the whole truth. The sexual instincts, for which the theory of the neuroses claims a position apart, lead us to quite another point of view. Not all organisms have yielded to the external compulsion driving them to an ever further development. Many have succeeded in maintaining themselves on their low level up to the present time: there are in existence to-day, if not all, at all events many forms of life that must resemble the primitive stages of the higher animals and plants. And, similarly, not all the elementary organisms that make up the complicated body of a higher form of life take part in the whole path of evolution to the natural end, i.e. death. Some among them, the reproductive cells, probably retain the original structure of the living substance and, after a given time, detach themselves from the parent organism, charged as they are with all the inherited and newly acquired instinctive dispositions. Possibly it is just those two features that make their independent existence possible. If brought under favourable conditions they begin to develop, that is, to repeat the same cycle to which they owe their origin, the end being that again one portion of the substance carries through its development to a finish, while another part, as a new germinal core, again harks back to the beginning of the development. Thus these reproductive cells operate against the death of the living substance and are able to win for it what must seem to us to be potential immortality, although perhaps it only means a lengthening of the path to death. Of the highest significance is the fact that the reproductive cell is fortified for this function, or only becomes capable of it, by the mingling with another like it and yet different from it.
There is a group of instincts that care for the destinies of these elementary organisms which survive the individual being, that concern themselves with the safe sheltering of these organisms as long as they are defenceless against the stimuli of the outer world, and finally bring about their conjunction with other reproductive cells. These are collectively the sexual instincts. They are conservative in the same sense as the others are, in that they reproduce earlier conditions of the living substance, but they are so in a higher degree in that they show themselves specially resistant to external influences; and they are more conservative in a wider sense still, since they preserve life itself for a longer time. They are the actual life-instincts; the fact that they run counter to the trend of the other instincts which lead towards death indicates a contradiction between them and the rest, one which the theory of neuroses has recognised as full of significance. There is as it were an oscillating rhythm in the life of organisms: the one group of instincts presses forward to reach the final goal of life as quickly as possible, the other flies back at a certain point on the way only to traverse the same stretch once more from a given spot and thus to prolong the duration of the journey. Although sexuality and the distinction of the sexes certainly did not exist at the dawn of life, nevertheless it remains possible that the instincts which are later described as sexual were active from the very beginning and took up the part of opposition to the rôle of the ‘ego-instincts’ then, and not only at some later time.
Let us now retrace our steps for the first time, to ask whether all these speculations are not after all without foundation. Are there really, apart from the sexual instincts, no other instincts than those which have as their object the reinstatement of an earlier condition, none that strive towards a condition never yet attained? I am not aware of any satisfactory example in the organic world running counter to the characteristic I have suggested. The existence of a general impulse towards higher development in the plant and animal world can certainly not be established, though some such line of development is as a fact unquestionable. But, on the one hand, it is often merely a question of our own valuation when we pronounce one stage of development to be higher than another, and, on the other hand, biology makes clear to us that a higher development in one particular is often purchased with, or balanced by, retrogression in another. Then there are plenty of animal forms the youthful stages of which teach us that their development has taken a retrograde character rather than otherwise. Higher development and retrogression alike might well be the results of external forces impelling towards adaptation, and the part played by the instincts might be confined in both cases to retaining the enforced changes as sources of pleasure.[18]
Many of us will also find it hard to abandon our belief that in man himself there dwells an impulse towards perfection, which has brought him to his present heights of intellectual prowess and ethical sublimation, and from which it might be expected that his development into superman will be ensured. But I do not believe in the existence of such an inner impulse, and I see no way of preserving this pleasing illusion. The development of man up to now does not seem to me to need any explanation differing from that of animal development, and the restless striving towards further perfection which may be observed in a minority of human beings is easily explicable as the result of that repression of instinct upon which what is most valuable in human culture is built. The repressed instinct never ceases to strive after its complete satisfaction which would consist in the repetition of a primary experience of satisfaction: all substitution- or reaction-formations and sublimations avail nothing towards relaxing the continual tension; and out of the excess of the satisfaction demanded over that found is born the driving momentum which allows of no abiding in any situation presented to it, but in the poet’s words ‘urges ever forward, ever unsubdued’ (Mephisto in ‘Faust’, Act 1. Faust’s study.). The path in the other direction, back to complete satisfaction, is as a rule barred by the resistances that maintain the repressions, and thus there remains nothing for it but to proceed in the other, still unobstructed direction, that of development, without, however, any prospect of being able to bring the process to a conclusion or to attain the goal. What occurs in the development of a neurotic phobia, which is really nothing but an attempt at flight from the satisfaction of an instinct, gives us the prototype for the origin of this ostensible ‘impulse towards perfection’ which, however, we cannot possibly ascribe to all human beings. The dynamic conditions are, it is true, quite generally present, but the economic relations seem only in rare cases to favour the phenomenon.
Our discussion so far results in the establishing of a sharp antithesis between the ‘ego-instincts’ and the sexual instincts, the former impelling towards death and the latter towards the preservation of life, a result which we ourselves must surely find in many respects far from adequate. Further, only for the former can we properly claim the conservative—or, better, regressive—character corresponding to a repetition-compulsion. For according to our hypothesis the ego-instincts spring from the vitalising of inanimate matter, and have as their aim the reinstatement of lifelessness. As to the sexual instincts on the other hand: it is obvious that they reproduce primitive states of the living being, but the aim they strive for by every means is the union of two germ cells which are specifically differentiated. If this union does not take place, then the germ cell dies like all other elements of the multicellular organism. Only on this condition can the sexual function prolong life and lend it the semblance of immortality. Of what important happening then in the process of development of the living substance is sexual reproduction, or its forerunner, the copulation of two individual protozoa, the repetition? That question we do not know how to answer, and therefore we should feel relieved if the whole structure of our arguments were to prove erroneous. The opposition of ego- (or death-) instincts and sexual (life-) instincts would then disappear, and the repetition-compulsion would thereupon also lose the significance we have attributed to it.
Let us turn back therefore to one of the assumptions we interpolated, in the expectation that it will permit of exact refutation. We built up further conclusions on the basis of the assumption that all life must die from internal causes. We made this assumption so light-heartedly because it does not seem to us to be one. We are accustomed so to think, and every poet encourages us in the idea. Perhaps we have resolved so to think because there lies a certain consolation in this belief. If man must himself die, after first losing his most beloved ones by death, he would prefer that his life be forfeit to an inexorable law of nature, the sublime Ἀνάγκη, than to a mere accident which perhaps could have been in some way avoided. But perhaps this belief in the incidence of death as the necessary consequence of an inner law of being is also only one of those illusions that we have fashioned for ourselves ‘so as to endure the burden of existence’. It is certainly not a primordial belief: the idea of a ‘natural death’ is alien to primitive races; they ascribe every death occurring among themselves to the influence of an enemy or an evil spirit. So let us not neglect to turn to biological science to test the belief.
If we do so, we may be astonished to find how little agreement exists among biologists on the question of natural death, that indeed the very conception of death altogether eludes them. The fact of a certain average length of life, at least among the higher animals, is of course an argument for death from inner causes, but the circumstance that certain large animals and giant trees reach a very great age, one not to be computed up to now, once more removes this impression. According to the grandiose conception of W. Fliess all the vital phenomena—and certainly also death—are linked with the accomplishment of certain periods of time, among which there finds expression the dependence of two living substances, one male and one female, upon the solar year. But observations of how easily and extensively the influences of external forces can alter vital manifestations, especially in the plant world, as to their occurrence in time, can hasten or retard them, militate against the rigidity of the formulae laid down by Fliess and leaves at least doubtful the universality of the laws he sought to establish.
The treatment of these themes, death and the duration of life among organisms, in the works of A. Weismann[19] possesses the greatest interest for us. This investigator originated the distinction of living substance into a mortal and an immortal half; the mortal is the body in the narrower sense, the soma, which alone is subject to natural death; while the germ cells are potentially immortal, in so far as they are capable under certain favourable conditions of developing into a new individual, or expressed otherwise, of surrounding themselves with a new soma.[20]
What here arrests our attention is the unexpected analogy with our conception developed along so different a line of thought. Weismann, who is considering living substance morphologically, recognises in it a constituent which is the prey of death, the soma, the body viewed apart from sex or heredity elements, and, on the other hand, an immortal part, the germ-plasm, which serves the purpose of preservation of the species, of propagation. We have fixed our attention not on the living matter, but on the forces active in it, and have been led to distinguish two kinds of instincts: those the purpose of which is to guide life towards death, and the others, the sexual instincts, which perpetually strive for, and bring about, the renewal of life. This sounds like a dynamic corollary to Weismann’s morphological theory.
This appearance of an important correspondence vanishes as soon as we examine Weismann’s pronouncement on the problem of death. For Weismann admits the differentiation between the mortal soma and the immortal germ-plasm only in relation to multicellular organisms; with the unicellular beings the individual and the reproductive cell are still one and the same.[21] The unicellular he thus affirms to be potentially immortal; death appears only among the metazoa, the multicellular. This death of the higher organisms is, it is true, a natural one, a death from inner causes, but it does not depend on an inherent quality of the living substance,[22] is not to be conceived as an absolute necessity based on the nature of life.[23] Death is rather a purposive contrivance, a phenomenon of adaptation to the external conditions of life, because after the differentiation of the corporeal cells into soma and germ-plasm the indefinite prolongation of the life of the individual would have become a quite inexpedient luxury. With the appearance of this differentiation among multicellular organisms death became possible and expedient. Since then the soma of the higher organisms dies after a certain time from internal causes; the protozoa, however, remain immortal. Propagation, on the other hand, was not first introduced with death; it is on the contrary a primordial property of living matter like growth, in which it originated, and life has gone on uninterruptedly from its inception on the earth.[24]
It is easy to see that to concede natural death to the higher organisms does not greatly help our case. If death is a late acquisition of life, then death instincts traceable to the beginning of life on this planet no longer come into question. Multicellular organisms may continue to die from internal causes, whether defect of differentiation or imperfections of their metabolism; it possesses no interest for the inquiry on which we are engaged. Such a conception and derivation of death certainly more nearly approaches the ordinary human view of it than the unwonted assumption of ‘death-instincts’.
The discussion which has centred round Weismann’s assertions has in my opinion had no decisive result in any direction.[25] Many writers have reverted to the standpoint of Goette (1883) who saw in death the direct consequence of propagation. Hartmann does not regard as the characteristic of death the appearance of a ‘corpse’, a piece of living substance which has ‘died off’, but defines it as the ‘definitive end of individual development’. In this sense protozoa are also subject to death; with them death invariably coincides with propagation, but it is, so to speak, disguised by the latter, for the whole substance of the parent organism may be absorbed directly into the new individuals.[26]
The interest of the inquiry was soon directed towards testing experimentally the asserted immortality of living substance in unicellular beings. An American, named Woodruff, instituted a culture of a ciliated infusorium, a ‘slipper-animalcule’, which reproduces itself by division into two individuals; each time he isolated one of the products and put it into fresh water. He traced the propagation to the 3029th generation, when he discontinued the experiment. The last descendant of the first slipper-animalcule was just as lively as its original ancestor, without any sign of age or degeneration: if such numbers are convincing, the immortality of protozoa seemed thus experimentally demonstrable.[27]
Other investigators have arrived at other results. Maupas, Calkins, etc., found, in contradiction to Woodruff, that even these infusoria after a certain number of divisions become weaker, decrease in size, lose a portion of their organisation, and finally die if they do not encounter certain invigorating influences. According to this, protozoa die after a phase of senile decay just like higher animals, in direct contravention of what is maintained by Weismann, who recognises in death a late acquisition of living organisms.
Taking the net result of these researches together, we note two facts which seem to afford us a firm foothold. First: if the animalculae, at a time when they as yet show no signs of age, have the opportunity of mingling with each other, of ‘conjugating’—afterwards again separating—then they remain exempt from age, they have been ‘rejuvenated’. This conjugation is doubtless the prototype of sexual propagation of higher organisms: as yet it has nothing to do with multiplication, it is confined to the mingling of the substances of both individuals (Weismann’s Amphimixis). The invigorating influence of conjugation can also be replaced, however, by certain modes of stimulation, changes in the composition of the nutrient fluid, raising of temperature, or shaking. The famous experiment of J. Loeb will be recalled, who by the application of certain chemical stimuli to the ova of sea-urchins brought about processes of division which usually take place only after fertilisation.
Secondly: it is after all probable that the infusoria are brought to a natural death through their own vital process, for the contradiction between Woodruff’s findings and those of others arises from Woodruff having placed each generation in fresh nutrient fluid. When he refrained from doing so he observed, as did the other investigators, that the generations showed signs of age. He concluded that the animalculae were injured by the products of metabolism which they gave off into the surrounding fluid, and was then able to prove convincingly that only the products of its own metabolism had this effect in bringing about the death of the generation. For in a solution over-saturated with waste products of a distantly related species the very same animalculae throve excellently which when allowed to accumulate in their own nutrient fluid inevitably perished. Thus, left to itself, the infusorium dies a natural death from the imperfect disposal of its own metabolic products: perhaps all higher animals die ultimately from the same inability.
At this point the doubt may then occur to us whether any good purpose has been served in looking for the answer to the question as to natural death in the study of the protozoa. The primitive organisation of these forms of life may conceal from us important conditions which are present in them too, but can be recognised only among the higher animals where they have achieved for themselves a morphological expression. If we abandon the morphological point of view for the dynamic, it may be a matter of entire indifference to us whether the natural death of the protozoa can be proved or not. With them the substance later recognised as immortal has not yet separated itself in any way from the part subject to death. The instinctive forces which endeavour to conduct life to death might be active in them too from the beginning and yet their effect might be so obscured by that of the forces tending to preserve life that any direct evidence of their existence becomes hard to establish. We have heard, it is true, that the observations of biologists allow us to assume such death-ward tending inner processes also among the protozoa. But even if the protozoa prove to be immortal in Weismann’s sense, his assertion that death is a late acquisition holds good only of the outward manifestations of death, and does not invalidate any hypothesis as to such processes as impel towards death. Our expectation that biology would entirely put out of court any recognition of the death-instincts has not been fulfilled. It is open to us to occupy ourselves further with this possibility, if we have other reasons for doing so. The striking resemblance between Weismann’s separation of soma and germ-plasm and our distinction between the death and the life-instincts remains unshaken, moreover, and retains its value.
Let us dwell for a moment on this exquisitely dualistic conception of the instinctive life. According to E. Hering’s theory of the processes in living matter there course through it uninterruptedly two kinds of processes of opposite direction, one anabolic, assimilatory, the other katabolic, disintegrating. Shall we venture to recognise in these two directions of the vital processes the activity of our two instinctive tendencies, the life-instincts and the death-instincts? And we cannot disguise another fact from ourselves, that we have steered unawares into the haven of Schopenhauer’s philosophy for whom death is the ‘real result’ of life[28] and therefore in so far its aim, while the sexual instinct is the incarnation of the will to live.
Let us boldly try to go a step further. According to general opinion the union of numerous cells into one vital connection, the multicellularity of organisms, has become a means to the prolongation of their span of life. One cell helps to preserve the life of the others, and the cell-community can go on living even if single cells have to perish. We have already heard that also conjugation, the temporary mingling of two unicellular entities, has a preservative and rejuvenating effect on both. The attempt might consequently be made to transfer the Libido theory yielded by psycho-analysis to the relationship of the cells to one another and to imagine that it is the vital or sexual instincts active in every cell that take the other cells for their ‘object’, partially neutralise their death-instincts, i. e. the processes stimulated by these, and so preserve those cells in life, while other cells do the same for them, and still others sacrifice themselves in the exercise of this libidinous function. The germ cells themselves would behave in a completely ‘narcissistic’ fashion, as we are accustomed to describe it in the theory of the neuroses when an individual concentrates his libido on the ego, and gives out none of it for the charging of objects. The germ cells need their libido—the activity of their vital instincts—for themselves as a provision for their later enormous constructive activity. Perhaps the cells of the malignant growths that destroy the organism can also be considered to be narcissistic in the same sense. Pathology is indeed prepared to regard the kernels of them as congenital in origin and to ascribe embryonal attributes to them. Thus the Libido of our sexual instincts would coincide with the Eros of poets and philosophers, which holds together all things living.
At this point opportunity offers of reviewing the gradual development of our Libido theory. The analysis of the transference-neuroses forced on our notice in the first place the opposition between ‘sexual instincts’ which are directed towards an object and other instincts which we only imperfectly discerned and provisionally described as ‘ego-instincts’. Among the latter those which subserve the self-preservation of the individual had the first claim for recognition. What other distinctions were to be made, it was impossible to say. No knowledge would have been so important for the establishment of a sound psychology as some approximate understanding of the common nature and possible differences of the instincts. But in no department of psychology did one grope more in the dark. Everyone posited as many instincts or ‘fundamental instincts’ as he pleased, and contrived with them just as the ancient Greek philosophers did with their four elements: earth, air, fire and water. Psycho-Analysis, which could not dispense with some kind of hypothesis as to the instincts, adhered to begin with to the popular distinction, typically represented by the phrase ‘hunger and love’. It was at least no new arbitrary creation. With this one adequately covered a considerable distance in the analysis of the psychoneuroses. The conception of ‘sexuality’—and therewith that of a sexual instinct—certainly had to Be extended, till it included much that did not come into the category of the function of propagation, and this led to outcry enough in a severe and superior or merely hypocritical world.
The next step followed when Psycho-Analysis was able to feel its way a little nearer to the psychological ego, which was at first known to us only as a repressing, censoring agency, capable of constituting defences and reaction-formations. Critical and other far-seeing minds had indeed for a long time raised objections to the narrowing of the libido concept down to the energy of the sexual instinct as directed to the object. But they omitted to say whence they obtained this fuller comprehension, and failed to deduce anything from it of value for Psycho-Analysis. In the course of more deliberate advance it came under psycho-analytic observation how regularly libido is withdrawn from the object and directed towards the ego (introversion), and through the study of the libido-development of the child in its earliest phases it became clear that the ego is the true and original reservoir of the libido, which is extended to the object only from this. The ego took its place as one of the sexual objects and was immediately recognised as the choicest among them. Where the libido thus remained attached to the ego it was termed ‘narcissistic’.[29] This narcissistic libido was naturally also the expression of the energy of sexual instincts in the analytical sense which now had to be identified with the ‘instincts of self-preservation’, the existence of which was admitted from the first. Whereupon the original antithesis between the ego-instincts and the sexual instincts became inadequate. A part of the ego-instincts was recognised as libidinous: in the ego sexual instincts were found to be active—probably in addition to others; nevertheless one is justified in saying that the old formula, viz. that a psychoneurosis arises out of a conflict between the ego-instincts and the sexual instincts, contained nothing that we should have to reject to-day. Only, the difference of the two kinds of instincts which was supposed originally to be in some kind of way qualitative has now to be defined otherwise, namely on a topographical basis. In particular the transference-neurosis, the real object of psycho-analytic study, is still seen to be the result of a conflict between the ego and libidinous investment of an object.
We are the more compelled now to accentuate the libidinous character of the self-preservative instincts, since we are venturing on the further step of recognising the sexual instinct as the Eros, the all-sustaining, and of deriving the narcissistic libido of the ego from the sum of the libido quantities that bring about the mutual adherence of the somatic cells. But we now find ourselves suddenly confronted with this question: If the self-preservative instincts are also of a libidinous kind, then perhaps we have no other instincts at all than libidinous ones. There are at least no others apparent. In that event we must admit the critics to be in the right who from the first have suspected that psycho-analysis makes sexuality the explanation of everything, or the innovators like Jung who, quickly making up their mind, have used ‘libido’ as a synonym for ‘instinctive force’ in general. Is that not so?
This result was at all events one not intended by us. On the contrary, we took as our starting point a sharp distinction between the ego-instincts (= death-instincts) and the sexual instincts (= life-instincts). We were prepared indeed to reckon even the alleged self-preservative instincts of the ego among death-instincts, a position which we have since corrected and withdrawn from. Our standpoint was a dualistic one from the beginning, and is so to-day more sharply than before, since we no longer call the contrasting tendencies egoistic and sexual instincts, but life-instincts and death-instincts. Jung’s libido theory, on the other hand, is a monistic one; that he has applied the term libido to his only instinctive energy was bound to create confusion, but should not have any further effect on us. We suspect that there are in the ego other instincts than those of self-preservation; only we ought to be in a position to demonstrate them. Unfortunately so little progress has been made in the analysis of the ego that this proof becomes extraordinarily difficult of attainment. The libidinous instincts of the ego may indeed be conjoined in a special way with other ego-instincts of which we as yet know nothing. Before ever we had clearly recognised narcissism, the conjecture was already present in the minds of psychoanalysts that the ‘ego-instincts’ had drawn libidinous components to themselves. But these are merely vague possibilities which our opponents will hardly take into account. It remains an awkward fact that analysis up to now has only put us in the position of demonstrating libidinous impulses. The conclusion that therefore there are no others is one to which we do not assent.
In the obscurity that at present shrouds the theory of instinct, we shall certainly not do well to reject any idea that promises to throw light. We have made the antithesis between the life and death-instincts our point of departure. Object-love itself displays a second such polarity, that of love (tenderness) and hate (aggression). What if we could succeed in bringing these two polarities into relation with each other, in tracing the one to the other! We have long recognised a sadistic component of the sexual instinct:[30] it can, as we know, attain independence, and as a perversion, dominate the whole sexual trend of a person. In one of the organisations which I have termed ‘pregenital’ it appears as a dominating part-instinct. But how is one to derive the sadistic impulse, which aims at the injury of the object, from the life-sustaining Eros! Does not the assumption suggest itself that this sadism is properly a death-instinct which is driven apart from the ego by the influence of the narcissistic libido, so that it becomes manifest only in reference to the object? It then enters the service of the sexual function; at the oral stage of organisation of the libido, amorous possession is still one and the same as annihilation of the object; later the sadistic impulse separates itself, and at last at the stage of the genital primacy it takes over with the aim of propagation the function of so far overpowering the sex-object as the carrying out of the sexual act demands. One might even say that the sadism expelled from the ego has acted as guide to the libidinous components of the sexual instinct; these later press on towards the object. Where the original sadism experiences no abatement or fusion, the well-known hate-love ambivalence of the love-life is set up.
If the above assumption is justifiable then we have met the challenge of demonstrating an example of a death-instinct—though a displaced one. This conception, however, is far from being evident, and creates a frankly mystical impression. We incur the suspicion of having attempted at all costs to find a way out of an impasse. We may appeal against this verdict by saying that the assumption is no new one, that we have once before made it when there was no question of an impasse. Clinical observations forced upon us the view that the part-instinct of masochism, the one complementary to sadism, is to be understood as a recoil of the sadism on to the ego itself.[31] A turning of the instinct from the object to the ego is, however, essentially the same as a turning from the ego to the object, which is just now the new idea in question. Masochism, the turning of the instinct against the self, would then be in reality a return to an earlier phase of this, a regression. The exposition I then gave of masochism needs correction in one respect as being too exclusive: masochism may also be what I was there concerned to deny, primary.[32]
Let us return, however, to the life-sustaining sexual instincts. We have already learned from the investigation of the protozoa that the mingling of two individuals without consequent partition, just as copulation between two individuals which soon after separate, has a strengthening and rejuvenating effect (v. s. Lipschütz). There is no sign of degeneration in their descendents, and they also seem to have gained the capacity for withstanding for a longer time the injurious results of their own metabolism. I think that this one observation may be taken as a prototype of the effect of sexual intercourse also. But in what way does the blending of two slightly different cells bring about such a renewal of life? The experiment which substitutes for conjugation among protozoa the effect of chemical or even of mechanical stimuli[33] admits of our giving a reply with certainty: it comes about by the introduction of new stimulus masses. This is in close agreement with the hypothesis that the life-process of an individual leads, from internal causes, to the equalising of chemical tensions: i. e. to death, while union with an individually different living substance increases these tensions—so to speak, introduces new vital differentia, which then have to be again lived out. For this difference between the two there must naturally be one or more optima. Our recognition that the ruling tendency of psychic life, perhaps of nerve life altogether, is the struggle for reduction, keeping at a constant level, or removal of the inner stimulus tension (the Nirvana-principle, as Barbara Low terms it)—a struggle which comes to expression in the pleasure-principle—is indeed one of our strongest motives for believing in the existence of death-instincts.
But the course of our argument is still disturbed by an uneasy feeling that just in the case of the sexual instinct we are unable to demonstrate that character of a repetition-compulsion which first put us on the track of the death-instincts. It is true that the realm of embryonic developmental processes offers an abundance of such repetition phenomena—the two germ cells of sexual propagation and their life history are themselves only repetitions of the beginning of organic life: but the essential feature in the processes designed by the sexual instinct is nevertheless the mingling of two cells. Only by this is the immortality of the living substance among the higher forms of life assured.
To put it in other words: we have to make enquiry into the origin of sexual propagation and the source of the sexual instincts in general, a task before which the lay mind quails and which even specialists have not yet been able to solve. Let us, therefore, make a condensed selection from all the conflicting accounts and opinions of whatever can be brought into relation with our train of thought.
One view deprives the problem of propagation of its mysterious attraction by representing it as part of the phenomenon of growth (multiplication by division, germination, budding). The arising of propagation by means of germ cells sexually differentiated might be conceived, in accordance with the sober Darwinian mode of thought, as a way of maintaining and utilising for further development the advantage of the amphimixis which resulted in the first instance from the fortuitous conjugation of two protozoa.[34] ‘Sex’ would not thus be of very ancient origin and the extraordinarily powerful instincts which aim at bringing about sexual union would thereby repeat something which once chanced to happen and since became established as being advantageous.
The same question now recurs as arose in respect of death—namely, whether the protozoa can be credited with anything beyond what they exhibit, and whether we may assume that forces and processes which become perceptible only in the case of the higher animals did first arise in the more primitive. For our purpose the view of sexuality mentioned above helps very little. The objection may be raised against it that it presupposes the existence of life-instincts as already operative in the simplest forms of life, for otherwise conjugation, which works against the expiration of life and makes the task of dying harder, would not have been retained and elaborated, but would have been avoided. If, then, we are not to abandon the hypothesis of death-instincts maintained, we must associate them with life-instincts from the beginning. But we must admit that we are working here at an equation with two unknown quantities. Anything else that science can tell us of the origin of sexuality amounts to so little that this problem may be likened to an obscurity into which not even the ray of an hypothesis has penetrated. In quite another quarter, however, we encounter such an hypothesis, but it is of so fantastic a kind—assuredly a myth rather than a scientific explanation—that I should not venture to bring it forward if it did not exactly fulfil the one condition for the fulfilment of which we are labouring. That is to say, it derives an instinct from the necessity for the reinstatement of an earlier situation.
I refer, of course, to the theory that Plato in his Symposium puts into the mouth of Aristophanes and which deals not only with the origin of the sexual instinct but also with its most important variations in relation to the object. ‘Human nature was once quite other than now. Originally there were three sexes, three and not as to-day two: besides the male and the female there existed a third sex which had an equal share in the two first.... In these beings everything was double: thus, they had four hands and four feet, two faces, two genital parts, and so on. Then Zeus allowed himself to be persuaded to cut these beings in two, as one divides pears to stew them.... When all nature was divided in this way, to each human being came the longing for his own other half, and the two halves embraced and entwined their bodies and desired to grow together again.’[35]
Are we to follow the clue of the poet-philosopher and make the daring assumption that living substance was at the time of its animation rent into small particles, which since that time strive for reunion by means of the sexual instincts? That these instincts—in which the chemical affinity of inanimate matter is continued—passing through the realm of the protozoa gradually overcome all hindrances set to their striving by an environment charged with stimuli dangerous to life, and are impelled by it to form a protecting covering layer? And that these dispersed fragments of living substance thus achieve a multicellular organisation, and finally transfer to the germ cells in a highly concentrated form the instinct for reunion? I think this is the point at which to break off.
But not without a few words of critical reflection in conclusion. I might be asked whether I am myself convinced of the views here set forward, and if so how far. My answer would be that I am neither convinced myself, nor am I seeking to arouse conviction in others. More accurately: I do not know how far I believe in them. It seems to me that the affective feature ‘conviction’ need not come into consideration at all here. One may surely give oneself up to a line of thought, and follow it up as far as it leads, simply out of scientific curiosity, or—if you prefer—as advocatus diaboli, without, however, making a pact with the devil about it. I am perfectly aware that the third step in the theory of instinct which I am taking here cannot claim the same certainty as the two former ones, viz. the extending of the conception of sexuality and the establishing of narcissism. These innovations were direct translations of observation into theory, subject to no greater sources of error than is inevitable in anything of the kind. The assertion of the regressive character of instinct rests also, it is true, on observed material, namely on the facts of the repetition-compulsion. But perhaps I have over-estimated their significance. At all events there is no way of working out this idea except by combining facts with pure imagination many times in succession, and thereby departing far from observation. We know that the final result becomes the more untrustworthy the oftener one does this in the course of building up a theory, but the precise degree of uncertainty is not ascertainable. One may thereby have made a brilliant discovery or one may have gone ignominiously astray. In such work I trust little to so-called intuition: what I have seen of it seems to me to be the result of a certain impartiality of the intellect—only that people unfortunately are seldom impartial where they are concerned with the ultimate things, the great problems of science and of life. My belief is that there everyone is under the sway of preferences deeply rooted within, into the hands of which he unwittingly plays as he pursues his speculation. Where there are such good grounds for distrust, only a tepid feeling of indulgence is possible towards the results of one’s own mental labours. But I hasten to add that such self-criticism does not render obligatory any special tolerance of divergent opinions. One may inexorably reject theories that are contradicted by the very first steps in the analysis of observation and yet at the same time be aware that those one holds oneself have only a tentative validity.
Were we to appraise our speculations upon the life and death-instincts it would disturb us but little that so many processes go on which are surprising and hard to picture, such as one instinct being expelled by others, or turning from the ego to an object, and so on. This comes only from our being obliged to operate with scientific terms, i. e. with the metaphorical expressions peculiar to psychology (or more correctly: psychology of the deeper layers). Otherwise we should not be able to describe the corresponding processes at all, nor in fact even to have remarked them. The shortcomings of our description would probably disappear if for the psychological terms we could substitute physiological or chemical ones. These too only constitute a metaphorical language, but one familiar to us for a much longer time and perhaps also simpler.
On the other hand we wish to make it quite clear that the uncertainty of our speculation is enhanced in a high degree by the necessity of borrowing from biological science. Biology is truly a realm of limitless possibilities; we have the most surprising revelations to expect from it, and cannot conjecture what answers it will offer in some decades to the questions we have put to it. Perhaps they may be such as to overthrow the whole artificial structure of hypotheses. If that is so, someone may ask why does one undertake such work as the one set out in this article, and why should it be communicated to the world? Well, I cannot deny that some of the analogies, relations and connections therein traced appeared to me worthy of consideration.[36]
If this attempt to reinstate an earlier condition really is so universal a characteristic of the instincts, we should not find it surprising that so many processes in the psychic life are performed independently of the pleasure-principle. This characteristic would communicate itself to every part-instinct and would in that case concern a harking back to a definite point on the path of development. But all that the pleasure-principle has not yet acquired power over is not therefore necessarily in opposition to it, and we have not yet solved the problem of determining the relation of the instinctive repetition processes to the domination of the pleasure-principle.
We have recognised that one of the earliest and most important functions of the psychic apparatus is to ‘bind’ the instreaming instinctive excitations, to substitute the ‘secondary process’ for the ‘primary process’ dominating them, and to transform their freely mobile energy-charge into a predominantly quiescent (tonic) charge. During this transformation no attention can be paid to the development of ‘pain’, but the pleasure-principle is not thereby annulled. On the contrary, the transformation takes place in the service of the pleasure-principle; the binding is an act of preparation, which introduces and secures its sovereignty.
Let us distinguish function and tendency more sharply than we have hitherto done. The pleasure-principle is then a tendency which subserves a certain function—namely, that of rendering the psychic apparatus as a whole free from any excitation, or to keep the amount of excitation constant or as low as possible. We cannot yet decide with certainty for either of these conceptions, but we note that the function so defined would partake of the most universal tendency of all living matter—to return to the peace of the inorganic world. We all know by experience that the greatest pleasure it is possible for us to attain, that of the sexual act, is bound up with the temporary quenching of a greatly heightened state of excitation. The ‘binding’ of instinct-excitation, however, would be a preparatory function, which would direct the excitation towards its ultimate adjustment in the pleasure of discharge.
In the same connection, the question arises whether the sensations of pleasure and ‘pain’ can emanate as well from the bound as from the ‘unbound’ excitation processes. It appears quite beyond doubt that the ‘unbound’, the primary, processes give rise to much more intense sensations in both directions than the bound ones, those of the ‘secondary processes’. The primary processes are also the earlier in point of time; at the beginning of mental life there are no others, and we may conclude that if the pleasure-principle were not already in action in respect to them, it would not establish itself in regard to the later processes. We thus arrive at the result which at bottom is not a simple one, that the search for pleasure manifests itself with far greater intensity at the beginning of psychic life than later on, but less unrestrictedly: it has to put up with repeated breaches. At a maturer age the dominance of the pleasure-principle is very much more assured, though this principle as little escapes limitations as all the other instincts. In any case, whatever it is in the process of excitation that engenders the sensations of pleasure and ‘pain’ must be equally in existence when the secondary process is at work as with the primary process.
This would seem to be the place to institute further studies. Our consciousness conveys to us from within not only the sensations of pleasure and ‘pain’, but also those of a peculiar tension, which again may be either pleasurable or painful in itself. Now is it the ‘bound’ and ‘unbound’ energy processes that we have to distinguish from each other by the help of these sensations, or is the sensation of tension to be related to the absolute quantity, perhaps to the level of the charge, while the pleasure-pain series refers to the changes in the quantity of charge in the unit of time? We must also be struck with the fact that the life-instincts have much more to do with our inner perception, since they make their appearance as disturbers of the peace, and continually bring along with them states of tension the resolution of which is experienced as pleasure; while the death-instincts, on the other hand, seem to fulfil their function unostentatiously. The pleasure-principle seems directly to subserve the death-instincts; it keeps guard, of course, also over the external stimuli, which are regarded as dangers by both kinds of instincts, but in particular over the inner increases in stimulation which have for their aim the complication of the task of living. At this point innumerable other questions arise to which no answer can yet be given. We must be patient and wait for other means and opportunities for investigation. We must hold ourselves too in readiness to abandon the path we have followed for a time, if it should seem to lead to no good result. Only such ‘true believers’ as expect from science a substitute for the creed they have relinquished will take it amiss if the investigator develops his views further or even transforms them.
For the rest we may find consolation in the words of a poet for the slow rate of progress in scientific knowledge:
Whither we cannot fly, we must go limping.
· · · · ·
The Scripture saith that limping is no sin.[37]
Footnote 1:
op. cit., p. 90.
Footnote 2:
Cp. Psycho-Analysis and the War Neuroses, by Ferenczi, Abraham, Simmel and Ernest Jones; No. 2 of the International Psycho-Analytical Library, 1921.
Footnote 3:
1919, Bd. V, S. 243.
Footnote 4:
This interpretation was fully established by a further observation. One day when the mother had been out for some hours she was greeted on her return by the information ‘Baby o-o-o-o’ which at first remained unintelligible. It soon proved that during his long lonely hours he had found a method of bringing about his own disappearance. He had discovered his reflection in the long mirror which nearly reached to the ground and had then crouched down in front of it, so that the reflection was ‘fort’.
Footnote 5:
When the child was five and three-quarter years old his mother died. Now, when she was really ‘gone’ (o-o-o), the boy showed no grief for her. A second child had, it is true, been born in the meantime and had aroused his strongest jealousy.
Footnote 6:
Cp. ‘Eine Kindheitserinnerung aus “Dichtung und Wahrheit”.’ Imago,
1917, Bd. V, S. 49.
Footnote 7:
See ‘Zur Technik der Psychoanalyse. II. Erinnern, Wiederholen und
Durcharbeiten.’ Sammlung kleiner Schriften zur Neurosenlehre. IV.
Folge, 1918, S. 441.
Footnote 8:
Marcinowski: ‘Die erotischen Quellen der Minderwertigkeitsgefühle’,
Zeitschrift für Sexualwissenschaft, 1918, IV.
Footnote 9:
Cp. the pertinent observations of C. G. Jung in his article ‘Die Bedeutung des Vaters für das Schicksal des Einzelnen’. Jahrbuch für psychoanalytische und psychopathologische Forschungen, 1901, Bd. I.
Footnote 10:
Thus named after the German words Wahrnehmung (= perception) and
Bewußtsein (= consciousness).
Footnote 11:
Here I follow throughout J. Breuer’s exposition in the theoretical section of the ‘Studien über Hysterie’, 1895.
Footnote 12:
J. Breuer and S. Freud: Studien über Hysterie.
Footnote 13:
Cp. ‘Triebe und Triebschicksale’, Sammlung kleiner Schriften zur
Neurosenlehre. IV. Folge, 1918.
Footnote 14:
Psycho-Analysis and the War Neuroses. Introduction. International
Psycho-Analytical Library. No. 2, 1921.
Footnote 15:
Cp. Section VII, ‘Psychology of the Dream-Processes’ in my
‘Traumdeutung’.
Footnote 16:
I have little doubt that similar conjectures about the nature of instinct have been already repeatedly put forward.
Footnote 17:
Compare the subsequent criticism of this extreme view of the self-preservative instincts.
Footnote 18:
By a different route Ferenczi has arrived at the possibility of this conception. (‘Stages of Development in the Sense of Reality’. Ch. VIII of his Contributions to Psycho-Analysis, 1916.) He writes: ‘By following through this process of thought logically one is obliged to gain familiarity with the idea of a tendency to persistence or regression governing organic life also, while the tendency to progress in development, adaptation, etc. is manifested only as against external stimuli.’
Footnote 19:
Über die Dauer des Lebens, 1882; Über Leben und Tod, 2. Aufl., 1892;
Das Keimplasma, 1892, etc.
Footnote 20:
Über Leben und Tod, 2. Aufl., S. 20.
Footnote 21:
Über die Dauer des Lebens, S. 38.
Footnote 22:
Über Leben und Tod, 2. Aufl., S. 67.
Footnote 23:
Über die Dauer des Lebens, S. 33.
Footnote 24:
Über Leben und Tod. Conclusion.
Footnote 25:
Cp. Max Hartmann: Tod und Fortpflanzung, 1906; Alex. Lipschütz: ‘Warum wir sterben’, Kosmosbücher, 1914; Franz Doflein: Das Problem des Todes und der Unsterblichkeit bei den Pflanzen und Tieren, 1919.
Footnote 26:
Hartmann: loc. cit., S. 29.
Footnote 27:
For this and what follows see Lipschütz: Loc. cit., S. 26 and 52 ff.
Footnote 28:
‘Über die anscheinende Absichtlichkeit im Schicksale des Einzelnen’.
Großherzog Wilhelm Ernst Auflage, Bd. IV, S. 268.
Footnote 29:
‘Zur Einführung des Narzissmus’, Jahrbuch der Psychoanalyse, Bd. VI,
1914, and Sammlung kleiner Schriften zur Neurosenlehre, IV. Folge,
1918.
Footnote 30:
Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie, from the First Edition, 1905, onwards.
Footnote 31:
See Sexualtheorie, 4. Aufl., 1920, and ‘Triebe und Triebschicksale’ in
Sammlung kleiner Schriften, IV. Folge.
Footnote 32:
A considerable part of this speculation has been anticipated in a work which is full of valuable matter and ideas but is unfortunately not entirely clear to me: (Sabina Spielrein: ‘Die Destruktion als Ursache des Werdens’, Jahrbuch für Psychoanalyse, IV, 1912). She designates the sadistic component as ‘destructive’. In still another way A. Stärcke (Inleiding by de vertaling von S. Freud, De sexuele beschavingsmoral etc., 1914) has attempted to identify the libido concept itself with the biological concept of an impulsion towards death which is to be assumed on theoretical grounds (Cp. also Rank: ‘Der Künstler’). All these attempts, as the one in the text, indicate how much the need is felt for a clarification in the theory of instinct which we do not yet possess.
Footnote 33:
loc. cit.
Footnote 34:
Although Weismann (Das Keimplasma, 1892) denies even this advantage: ‘Fertilisation in no way signifies a rejuvenation or renewing of life,—it is in no way necessary for the prolongation of life; it is nothing but a device for making possible the blending of two different inheritance tendencies.’ Still, he considers an increase of variability in living organisms to be the result of such blending.
Footnote 35:
I am indebted to Prof. Heinrich Gomperz of Vienna for the following indications as to the origin of the Platonic myth, which I repeat partly in his own words: I should like to call attention to the fact that essentially the same theory is also to be found in the Upanishads. The Brihad-Aranyaka Upanishad 1, 4, 3 (Deussen, 60 Upanishads des Veda, S. 393), where the creation of the world from the Âtman (the self or ego) is described, has the following passage ‘Nor did he (the Âtman, the self or ego) experience any joy, and for that reason no one has joy when he is alone. So he longed for a partner. He was as big as a woman and a man together when they embrace. He divided himself into two parts, which made a husband and a wife. This body is therefore one half of the self, according to Yajnavalkya. And for the same reason this empty space here becomes filled by the woman.’
The Brihad-Aranyaka Upanishad is the oldest of all the Upanishads, and no expert authority would date it later than 800 B.C. In opposition to the prevailing opinion I should not like definitely to deny the possibility of Plato having been dependent, even though very indirectly, on these Indian thoughts, for this possibility cannot be absolutely put aside even for the doctrine of re-incarnation. A dependence of this sort, first conveyed through Pythagoras, would scarcely detract from the significance of the coincidence in thought, for Plato would not have adopted any such story conveyed in some way from Oriental traditions, let alone have given it such an important place, had he not himself felt the truth contained in it to be illuminating.
In an article by K. Ziegler (‘Menschen- und Weltwerden’, Neue Fahrbücher für das klassische Altertum, 1913, Band XXXI), which contains a systematic investigation of the thought in question, it is traced back to Babylonian ideas.
Footnote 36:
I would here subjoin a few words to clarify our nomenclature, one which has undergone a certain development in the course of our discussion. What ‘sexual instincts’ are, we knew through their relation to the sexes and to the function of propagation. We then retained this term when the findings of psycho-analysis compelled us to regard its relation to propagation as less close. With the discovery of narcissistic libido, and the extension of the libido concept to the individual cells, the sexual instinct became for us transformed into the Eros that endeavours to impel the separate parts of living matter to one another and to hold them together; what is commonly called the sexual instinct appears as that part of the Eros that is turned towards the object. Our speculation then supposes that this Eros is at work from the beginnings of life, manifesting itself as the ‘life-instinct’ in contradistinction to the ‘death-instinct’ which developed through the animation of the inorganic. It endeavours to solve the riddle of life by the hypothesis of these two instincts striving with each other from the very beginning. The transformation which the concept of the ‘ego-instincts’ has undergone is perhaps harder to review. Originally we applied this term to all those instinct-directions—not better known to us—which can be distinguished from the sexual instincts that have the object as their aim, thus contrasting the ego-instincts with the sexual ones, the expression of which is the libido. Later on we approached the analysis of the ego and saw that a part also of the ‘ego-instincts’ is of a libidinous nature, having taken its own self as an object. These narcissistic instincts of self-preservation therefore had now to be reckoned to the libidinous sexual instincts. The contrast between egoistic and sexual instincts was now converted into one between egoistic and object-instincts, both libidinous in nature. In its place, however, arose a new contrast between libidinous (ego and object) instincts and others whose existence can be determined in the ego and can perhaps be detected in the destruction-instincts. Speculation transforms this contrast into that of life-instincts (Eros) and death-instincts.
Footnote 37:
Rückert in the ‘Makamen des Hariri.’