libido Libido, like so many words associated with the sexual sphere, has a variety of meanings both popular and technical. On the most simple colloquial level it may be used as a synonym for the sexual drive, and various remedies are advertised as the surest way to revive a flagging libido, even perhaps incorporating ‘libido’ in the name (e.g. Dr X's Libido Energiser). The word is of much later derivation than the term ‘libidinous’ — from the Latin for lust, meaning characterized by excessive sexual desire. Libido was first brought into usage by Freud as a term which would express for the sexual instinct what ‘hunger’ did for the instinct of nutrition, and which did not have the duality of meaning (both desire and its satisfaction) that pertains to ‘lust’ in German.
Freud made the startling statement about this quality that, though generally assumed to be absent in childhood, to become manifest at
puberty, and to develop fully in maturity under the influence of irresistible sexual attraction between the opposite sexes, it was in fact present from birth and far less simple in its progression towards the end decreed by social convention. The infant's libido, he argued, was first directed to itself and the pleasures it could obtain from its own body. Thus the libido was initially directed towards the mouth and the oral pleasures of sucking, then to the anal region, and only subsequently to the genital organs. However, eventually the libido would become invested in (cathected towards) external objects. The first external object to which the libido became attached was the mother; it would attach to the father much later.
The popular assumption was that, following puberty, the libido would ‘naturally’ be turned as it awoke towards an eligible member of the opposite sex. However, if the libido had been in existence since birth, and had already become attached to various organs or objects, it might, Freud claimed, for various reasons, have become fixated at one particular level, which would create problems in turning in the direction of a more appropriate object. This could have disastrous effects for later sexual life. The individual would have no conscious awareness of the nature of the fixation, but the libido would constantly turn away from the possibility of satisfaction in reality, towards a fantasy gratification.
Freud has been criticized for his identification of the infantile (pre-pubertal) libido as male, so that the female child's sexuality, focussed on the clitoris, was defined by him as an immature masculine stage. As she developed, the female was supposed to make the transfer from clitoral to mature womanly vaginal satisfaction. However, given the importance which Freud attached to the pre-genital elements in the development of the libido, and his suggestion that only at puberty did a male–female polarity occur, it is possible to read the libido as a much less gendered force which, even in the male child, may not have an assertive and phallic quality.
Freud (
Libidinal Types, 1931) suggested that the direction of the adult libidinal urge fell into three broad categories, according to whether the instinctual id, the super-ego, or the ego predominated in the individual's make-up. The ‘erotic’ type, swayed by the ‘elementary instinctual demands of the id’, was mainly interested in love, and being loved was more important than loving. The ‘obsessional’ type, ruled by the super-ego, was ruled by fear of the naggings of conscience. And the ‘narcissisitic’ type did not have the tension between the requirements of the ego and the demands of the super-ego manifested by the obsessional type, was mainly interested in self-preservation, and in erotic life was more concerned with loving than being loved. However, these types were seldom found unmixed, and usually two were found in combination. Freud suggested that, while theoretically possible, it was almost a jest to posit the threefold mixture, erotic–obsessional–narcissistic, but a serious one since this was an absolute norm, an ideal harmony. However, although there were these three ways of deploying the libido, one or two were almost certain to predominate in any particular individual at the expense of the alternative possibilities.
In his later writings, and in particular following his identification of a ‘death instinct’, Freud positioned the libido as the characteristic energy of the life instincts. However, he never went as far as Carl Jung, for whom the libido was the manifestation of general psychic energy, which might be expressed through sexual channels but was not in itself sexual. Jung saw the libido as flowing between the opposite poles of the conscious and the unconscious, the outer and inner life, in a continuous cycle of progression and regression.
Other psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic schools also advanced differing views on the nature of the libido. The ‘Neo-Freudians’ ( Adler, Rank, Horney, Sullivan, and Fromm, to name the best-known theoreticians of this school) rejected the theory of instinctual drive embodied in classical Freudian libido theory, and emphasized the significance of interpersonal relationships in structuring the psyche, replacing the primitive drives of the libido with the idea of a healthy striving towards ‘self-realization’. Ronald Fairbairn (1889–1965), who had a significant influence on the British ‘object relations’ school, saw the object as the aim of the libido: it was a movement from the ego towards an object rather than an inherent quality, but did, however, most easily pass via the erotogenic zones. For Fairbairn, the libido, being concerned with the formation of a satisfactory emotional contact with an external object, was generated by the ego, whereas for Freud it was an impersonal force gushing out of the well of primitive passions, the id. At the other extreme, Wilhelm Reich reified the libido as an actual physical force grounded in the body, ‘orgone energy’, rather than a powerful metaphor for shifting and mutable sexual interest.
Freud's conception of the libido as a mutable, slippery, constantly transforming force is, it is apparent, reflected in the changing meanings which have been assigned to this concept.
Lesley A. Hall
See also
eroticism;
sexuality.
