Free Beyond the Pleasure Principle by Sigmund Freud Page B

every other expedient factor. One has no sooner given credence to a neurotic patient's notion that she was bound to become ill because – as she saw it – she was ugly, misshapen and devoid ofcharm, so that no one could ever conceivably love her, than one is taught a lesson by the very next female neurotic to come along, who doggedly cleaves to her neurosis and rejection of sexuality despite seeming more than averagely desirable, and indeed being actively desired. The majority of hysterical women may be numbered among the attractive and even beautiful representatives of their sex; and inversely, the heavy incidence of ugliness, infirmity and wasted organs in the lower classes of our society has no effect whatever on the frequency of neurotic disorders occurring amongst them.
    The relationship of self-feeling to the erotic (i.e. to libidinal object-cathexes) may be summed up in the following terms. We need to determine which of two alternatives applies: whether the love-cathexes are
ego-accordant
, 37 or whether on the contrary they have undergone repression. In the former case (i.e. where libido deployment is ego-accordant), the same value attaches to loving as to any other activity of the ego. The process of loving in itself, inasmuch as it entails yearning and going without, diminishes self-feeling; the process of being loved, of finding one's love returned, of gaining possession of the loved object, restores it to its previous level. In the case of repressed libido, the love-cathexis is experienced as a severe depletion of the ego; no gratification of the love is possible; replenishment of the ego can be achieved only by withdrawal of the libido from its objects. The return of object-libido to the ego, and its transformation into narcissism, creates as it were a semblance of love happily achieved, whilst a love happily achieved in actual reality corresponds in turn to the primal state in which object-libido and ego-libido cannot be differentiated from one another.
    The importance and complexity of this subject is perhaps sufficient justification for appending a few extra paragraphs here in more or less random order:
    The development of the ego consists in an ever-increasing separation from one's primary narcissism, and gives rise to an intense struggle to retrieve it. This separation occurs through the displacement of libido onto an ego-ideal imposed from without; gratification occurs through fulfilment of that ideal.
    At the same time, the ego sends forth libidinal object-cathexes. It becomes depleted for the sake of these cathexes and for the sake of the ego-ideal, but replenishes itself through object-gratifications 38 and through fulfilment of the ideal.
    One part of self-feeling is primary, the residue of childhood narcissism; another derives from our sense of omnipotence as borne out by experience (fulfilment of the ego-ideal); a third arises out of the gratification of our object-libido.
    The ego-ideal puts considerable difficulties in the way of libido gratification through objects by causing some of them to be rejected by its censor 39 as unsuitable. Where no such ideal has developed, the relevant sexual urge enters the individual's personality in unmodified form as a perversion. Becoming our own ideal again in respect of our sexual urges as well as everything else, just as in our childhood: therein lies the happiness that human beings aspire to.
    Being in love consists in the ego-libido overflowing abundantly onto the object. It has the power to undo repressions and remedy perversions. 40 It exalts the sexual object into the status of sexual ideal. Given that in the case of the ‘object’ or ‘imitative’ type it has its basis in the fulfilment of infantile conditions of love, we may venture the dictum: ‘Whatever fulfils this condition of love is consequently idealized.’
    The sexual ideal can enter into an interesting support role in relation to the ego-ideal. Where narcissistic gratification encounters