Ego and Libido

“At the very beginning, all the libido is accumulated in the id, while the ego is still in process of formation or is still feeble. The id sends part of this libido out into erotic object cathexes, whereupon the ego, now grown stronger, tries to get hold of this object-libido and to force itself on the id as a love-object. The narcissism of the ego is thus a secondary one, which has been withdrawn from the objects.” (The Ego and the Id, Chapter 4)

It’s interesting and totally plausible that a large part of human consciousness is characterized by a dedication to controlling which objects the libido can get connected to. “It would be characteristic of the ego to be more particular about the choice both of an object and of a path of discharge.”

So is this the key to human industry and culture? I’m pretty sure Freud writes about this elsewhere (Civilization and its Discontents?). These twin instincts of sex (Life) and death (falling back into the calm of final self-destruction) get sublimated, that is, detached from their instinctual nexus of meanings and objects, and redirected to ends which the ego deems most beneficial for its own life-in-the-world. So the human separates itself from the rest of nature by transforming its most powerful motivating energies into modes of life that lead to flourishing, that is, activities that accord with well-being beyond what would sooth internal signals and stressors.

It’s why Freud’s phrase reality testing is so important. This psychic organ, the ego, is charged with putting itself in-touch with exterior reality in order to bring all that is within the organism into fresh unity with what is exterior to it.

Here, as always, I am stunned by the mythic symbolism of Genesis 1-3. The human is not merely one species amid all the rest. The human is dropped into a world already constituted, already bound in myriad ecosystems. The human is charged with binding herself to all these ecosystems and species. He is different than the rest. A unifier and a mediator between species, between the world and its maker. Likewise, Freud speaks of the ego as a thing that longs to bind itself to the world through libidinal cathexes to as much of the world as possible. How does it do this? I think Freud is talking about the evolutionary-biological level, but the cultural parallels are, to me, quite clear. We make homes, build networks of homes, form friendships, join communities, leave our mark, develop skills, form families, have children, leave a legacy. If we only listened to our internal instincts, if we allowed those longings to press directly toward life and toward death, we would be like those male insects who mate and immediately die. As Freud says, “These creatures die in the act of reproduction because, after Eros has been eliminated through the process of satisfaction the death instinct ahs a free hand for accomplishing its purposes.” Its purposes? “…mastering the tensions.”