Freud - Complete Works (632 page)

   What we have learned from these
three sources may be summarized as follows. First, identification
is the original form of emotional tie with an object; secondly, in
a regressive way it becomes a substitute for a libidinal
object-tie, as it were by means of introjection of the object into
the ego; and thirdly, it may arise with any new perception of a
common quality shared with some other person who is not an object
of the sexual instinct. The more important this common quality is,
the more successful may this partial identification become, and it
may thus represent the beginning of a new tie.

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   We already begin to divine that
the mutual tie between members of a group is in the nature of an
identification of this kind, based upon an important emotional
common quality; and we may suspect that this common quality lies in
the nature of the tie with the leader. Another suspicion may tell
us that we are far from having exhausted the problem of
identification, and that we are faced by the process which
psychology calls ‘empathy’ and which plays the largest
part in our understanding of what is inherently foreign to our ego
in other people. But we shall here limit ourselves to the immediate
emotional effects of identification, and shall leave on one side
its significance for our intellectual life.

   Psycho-analytic research, which
has already occasionally attacked the more difficult problems of
the psychoses, has also been able to exhibit identification to us
in some other cases which are not immediately comprehensible. I
shall treat two of these cases in detail as material for our
further consideration.

   The genesis of male homosexuality
in a large class of cases is as follows. A young man has been
unusually long and intensely fixated upon his mother in the sense
of the Oedipus complex. But at last, after the end of puberty, the
time comes for exchanging his mother for some other sexual object.
Things take a sudden turn: the young man does not abandon his
mother, but identifies himself with her; he transforms himself into
her, and now looks about for objects which can replace his ego for
him, and on which he can bestow such love and care as he has
experienced from his mother. This is a frequent process, which can
be confirmed as often as one likes, and which is naturally quite
independent of any hypothesis that may be made as to the organic
driving force and the motives of the sudden transformation. A
striking thing about this identification is its ample scale; it
remoulds the ego in one of its important features - in its sexual
character - upon the model of what has hitherto been the object. In
this process the object itself is renounced - whether entirely or
in the sense of being preserved only in the unconscious is a
question outside the present discussion. Identification with an
object that is renounced or lost, as a substitute for that object -
introjection of it into the ego - is indeed no longer a novelty to
us. A process of the kind may sometimes be directly observed in
small children. A short time ago an observation of this sort was
published in the
Internationale Zeitschrift für
Psychoanalyse
. A child who was unhappy over the loss of a
kitten declared straight out that now he himself was the kitten,
and accordingly crawled about on all fours, would not eat at table,
etc.¹

  
¹
Marcuszewicz (1920)
.

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   Another such instance of
introjection of the object has been provided by the analysis of
melancholia, an affection which counts among the most notable of
its exciting causes the real or emotional loss of a loved object. A
leading characteristic of these cases is a cruel self-depreciation
of the ego combined with relentless self-criticism and bitter
self-reproaches. Analyses have shown that this disparagement and
these reproaches apply at bottom to the object and represent the
ego’s revenge upon it. The shadow of the object has fallen
upon the ego, as I have said elsewhere.¹ The introjection of
the object is here unmistakably clear.

   But these melancholias also show
us something else, which may be of importance for our later
discussions. They show us the ego divided, fallen apart into two
pieces, one of which rages against the second. This second piece is
the one which has been altered by introjection and which contains
the lost object. But the piece which behaves so cruelly is not
unknown to us either. It comprises the conscience, a critical
agency within the ego, which even in normal times takes up a
critical attitude towards the ego, though never so relentlessly and
so unjustifiably. On previous occasions² we have been driven
to the hypothesis that some such agency develops in our ego which
may cut itself off from the rest of the ego and come into conflict
with it. We have called it the ‘ego ideal’, and by way
of functions we have ascribed to it self-observation, the moral
conscience, the censorship of dreams, and the chief influence in
repression. We have said that it is the heir to the original
narcissism in which the childish ego enjoyed self-sufficiency; it
gradually gathers up from the influences of the environment the
demands which that environment makes upon the ego and which the ego
cannot always rise to; so that a man, when he cannot be satisfied
with his ego itself, may nevertheless be able to find satisfaction
in the ego ideal which has been differentiated out of the ego. In
delusions of observation, as we have further shown, the
disintegration of this agency has become patent, and has thus
revealed its origin in the influence of superior powers, and above
all of parents.³ But we have not forgotten to add that the
amount of distance between this ego ideal and the real ego is very
variable from one individual to another, and that with many people
this differentiation within the ego does not go further than with
children.

  
¹
See ‘Mourning and Melancholia’
(1917
e
).

  
²
In my paper on narcissism
(1914
c
).

  
³
Section III of my paper on
narcissism.

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   But before we can employ this
material for understanding the libidinal organization of groups, we
must take into account some other examples of the mutual relations
between the object and the ego.¹

  
¹
We are very well aware that we have not
exhausted the nature of identification with these examples taken
from pathology, and that we have consequently left part of the
riddle of group formations untouched. A far more fundamental and
comprehensive psychological analysis would have to intervene at
this point. A path leads from identification by way of imitation to
empathy, that is, to the comprehension of the mechanism by means of
which we are enabled to take up any attitude at all towards another
mental life. Moreover there is still much to be explained in the
manifestations of existing identifications. These result among
other things in a person limiting his aggressiveness towards those
with whom he has identified himself, and in his sparing them and
giving them help. The study of such identifications, like those,
for instance which lie at the root of clan feeling, led Robertson
Smith (
Kinship and Marriage
, 1885) to the surprising
discovery that they rest upon the acknowledgement of the possession
of a common substance, and may even therefore be created by a meal
eaten in common. This feature makes it possible to connect this
kind of identification with the early history of the human family
which I constructed in
Totem and Taboo
.

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VIII

BEING
IN LOVE AND HYPNOSIS

Even in its caprices the usage of language
remains true to some kind of reality. Thus it gives the name of
‘love’ to a great many kinds of emotional relationship
which we too group together theoretically as love; but then again
it feels a doubt whether this love is real, true, actual love, and
so hints at a whole scale of possibilities within the range of the
phenomena of love. We shall have no difficulty in making the same
discovery from our own observations.

   In one class of cases being in
love is nothing more than object cathexis on the part of the sexual
instincts with a view to directly sexual satisfaction, a cathexis
which expires, moreover, when this aim has been reached; this is
what is called common, sensual love. But, as we know, the libidinal
situation rarely remains so simple. It was possible to calculate
with certainty upon the revival of the need which had just expired;
and this must no doubt have been the first motive for directing a
lasting cathexis upon the sexual object and for
‘loving’ it in the passionless intervals as well.

   To this must be added another
factor derived from the very remarkable course of development which
is pursued by the erotic life of man. In its first phase, which has
usually come to an end by the time a child is five years old, he
has found the first object for his love in one or other of his
parents, and all of his sexual instincts with their demand for
satisfaction have been united upon this object. The repression
which then sets in compels him to renounce the greater number of
these infantile sexual aims, and leaves behind a profound
modification in his relation to his parents. The child still
remains tied to his parents, but by instincts which must be
described as being ‘inhibited in their aim’. The
emotions which he feels henceforward towards these objects of his
love are characterized as ‘affectionate’. It is well
known that the earlier ‘sensual’ tendencies remain more
of less strongly preserved in the unconscious, so that in a certain
sense the whole of the original current continues to
exist.¹

  
¹
See my
Three Essays
(1905
d
)
.

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   At puberty, as we know, there set
in new and very strong impulsions towards directly sexual aims. In
unfavourable cases they remain separate, in the form of a sensual
current, from the ‘affectionate’ trends of feeling
which persist. We then have before us a picture whose two aspects
are typified with such delight by certain schools of literature. A
man will show a sentimental enthusiasm for women whom he deeply
respects but who do not excite him to sexual activities, and he
will only be potent with other women whom he does not
‘love’ and thinks little of or even despises.¹
More often, however, the adolescent succeeds in bringing about a
certain degree of synthesis between the unsensual, heavenly love
and the sensual, earthly love, and his relation to his sexual
object is characterized by the interaction of uninhibited instincts
and of instincts inhibited in their aim. The depth to which anyone
is in love, as contrasted with his purely sensual desire, may be
measured by the size of the share taken by the aim-inhibited
instincts of affection.

   In connection with this question
of being in love we have always been struck by the phenomenon of
sexual overvaluation - the fact that the loved object enjoys a
certain amount of freedom from criticism, and that all its
characteristics are valued more highly than those of people who are
not loved, or than its own were at a time when it itself was not
loved. If the sensual impulsions are more or less effectively
repressed or set aside, the illusion is produced that the object
has come to be sensually loved on account of its spiritual merits,
whereas on the contrary these merits may really only have been lent
to it by its sensual charm.

   The tendency which falsifies
judgement in this respect is that of
idealization
. But now
it is easier for us to find our bearings. We see that the object is
being treated in the same way as our own ego, so that when we are
in love a considerable amount of narcissistic libido overflows on
to the object. It is even obvious, in many forms of love-choice,
that the object serves as a substitute for some unattained ego
ideal of our own. We love it on account of the perfections which we
have striven to reach for our own ego, and which we should now like
to procure in this roundabout way as a means of satisfying our
narcissism.

  
¹
‘On the Universal Tendency to
Debasement in the Sphere of Love’ (1912
d
)
.

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   If the sexual overvaluation and
the being in love increase even further, then the interpretation of
the picture becomes still more unmistakable. The impulsions whose
trend is towards directly sexual satisfaction may now be pushed
into the background entirely, as regularly happens, for instance,
with a young man’s sentimental passion; the ego becomes more
and more unassuming and modest, and the object more and more
sublime and precious, until at last it gets possession of the
entire self-love of the ego, whose self-sacrifice thus follows as a
natural consequence. The object has, so to speak, consumed the ego.
Traits of humility, of the limitation of narcissism, and of
self-injury occur in every case of being in love; in the extreme
case they are merely intensified, and as a result of the withdrawal
of the sensual claims they remain in solitary supremacy.