psychic energy
Few concepts have generated more theoretical turbulence within the depth-psychology corpus than libido. Its entry into the discipline is twofold: Freud introduced it in the Three Essays as the precise analogue of hunger within the domain of sexuality, a strictly erotic quantum of psychic investment; Jung then subjected this restricted definition to sustained critical pressure, ultimately generalizing libido into an undifferentiated psychic energy whose concrete character he likened to Schopenhauer's Will, Aristotle's hormē, and Bergson's élan vital. The decisive text is Jung's Symbols of Transformation and the associated essays in The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, where libido is recast as a neutral energic principle governed by gradient, equivalence, and entropy — flowing forward only along the path of greatest inclination, and requiring a tension of opposites to exist at all. Against this broad reformulation, Hillman's post-Jungian critique argues that Jung, in desexualizing libido, evacuated it of its sensuous phenomenological core, its etymological roots in dripping pleasure and lust. Freud, meanwhile, developed the libido concept in a different direction: distinguishing ego-libido from object-libido and treating the narcissistic reservoir as the original state from which all cathexes are dispatched and recalled. Murray Stein, Marie-Louise von Franz, and Andrew Samuels serve as secondary interpreters who clarify the energic model's philosophical lineage and chart its transformative movement from instinct toward spirit. The concept thus stands at the intersection of metapsychology, philosophy of mind, and clinical theory.
While I do not connect any specifically sexual definition with the word "libido," this is not to deny the existence of a sexual dynamism any more than any other dynamism, for instance that of the hunger-drive
Jung formally severs libido from exclusive sexual definition, repositioning it as a general psychic energy that encompasses but is not reducible to sexuality.
, The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, 1960thesis
the term libido really has a much wider range of meaning than it has in medicine. The concept of libido — whose sexual meaning in the Freudian sense we shall try to retain as long as possible — represents that dynamic factor which we were seeking in order to explain the shifting of the psychological scenery.
Jung traces libido's classical semantic breadth against Freud's medicalized restriction, proposing it as the dynamic factor underlying all psychological transformation.
, Collected Works Volume 1: Psychiatric Studies, 1902thesis
the disposable energy, the so-called libido, does seize hold of a rational object... there is no energy unless there is a tension of opposites; hence it is necessary to discover the opposite to the attitude of the conscious mind.
Jung defines libido's movement as conditional upon a gradient produced by the tension of opposites, making it the engine of psychological transformation.
, Two Essays on Analytical Psychology, 1953thesis
Narcissistic or ego-libido seems to be the great reservoir from which the object-cathexes are sent out and into which they are withdrawn once more; the narcissistic libidinal cathexis of the ego is the original state of things.
Freud articulates the structural economy of libido, distinguishing ego-libido as a primal reservoir from which object-cathexes are deployed and retracted.
, Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, 1905thesis
We may not speak of libido as energy only, as an abstraction equivalent to the energy concept of physics. Jung missed something essential, something essentially non-Christian, when he removed Freud's principle of pleasure, the eros, from the libido, leaving it as a bare concept without sensuous content.
Hillman charges that Jung's energic abstraction of libido strips it of its sensuous, erotic phenomenological content, a loss he regards as theologically and philosophically consequential.
, Alchemical Psychology, 2010thesis
libido. This is desire and emotion, the life blood of the psyche. Jung called libido psychic energy. In the previous two chapters, I have frequently used the term energy. This is the dynamic feature of the psyche.
Stein synthesizes Jung's libido theory as the animating force of all psychic structures, equating it with desire, emotion, and the dynamic principle of the psyche as a whole.
, Jung's Map of the Soul: An Introduction, 1998supporting
In contrast to Freud, however, he did not regard this energy as psychosexual libido but rather as being in itself entirely indefinite as to content. Only in the field of actual experience does it appear as power, drive, wish, willing, affect, work-achievement.
Von Franz clarifies that Jung's libido, unlike Freud's, is content-free in itself and acquires determinate form only through its concrete manifestations in lived experience.
, C.G. Jung: His Myth in Our Time, 1975supporting
Here libido means a 'want' or a 'wish,' and also, in contradistinction to the 'will' of the Stoics, 'unbridled desire.' Cicero uses it in this sense when he says: '[Gerere rem aliquam] libidine, non ratione' (to do something from wilful desire and not from reason).
Jung traces the classical Latin semantics of libido through Cicero, Sallust, and Augustine to establish the term's broad pre-Freudian range as general desire or passionate wanting.
, Symbols of Transformation, 1952supporting
Thus far our conception of libido coincides with Schopenhauer's Will, inasmuch as a movement perceived from the outside can only be grasped as the manifestation of an inner will or desire.
Jung aligns his expanded libido concept with Schopenhauer's Will, grounding psychic energy in a metaphysical tradition of immanent striving that transcends sexuality.
, Collected Works Volume 1: Psychiatric Studies, 1902supporting
Jung's focus was upon the transformation of libido and, in particular, on the movement of psychic energy 'upward' from instinct to the areas of value-making and spirituality. The problem was, and remains, how to keep the links between instinct and spirit without losing a sense of
Samuels identifies Jung's central preoccupation as the upward transformation of libido from instinctual substrate toward spiritual and axiological expression, noting the unresolved tension this creates.
, Jung and the Post-Jungians, 1985supporting
with regard to the changing localization of libidinal investments, we have to reckon not merely with the conscious but with another factor, the unconscious, into which the libido sometimes disappears.
Jung extends the libido economy into the unconscious, arguing that libidinal investment cannot be tracked through conscious processes alone.
, Collected Works Volume 4: Freud and Psychoanalysis, 1961supporting
His conception of components, of separate modes of functioning, began to be weakened, at first more in practice than in theory, and was eventually replaced by a conception of energy. The term chosen for this was libido.
Jung narrates the historical shift within Freudian theory from a component-instinct model to an energic one, with libido as the conceptual vehicle of that transition.
, Collected Works Volume 4: Freud and Psychoanalysis, 1961supporting
tional states or affects, which constitute the essence of libido. All these factors have their differentiations and subtle ramifications in the highly complicated human psyche.
Jung identifies affects and emotional states as the essential phenomenological substrate of libido, connecting psychic energy to lived emotional life.
, Symbols of Transformation, 1952supporting
Certain conditions — organic illness, painful accesses of stimulation, an inflammatory condition of an organ — have clearly the effect of loosening the libido from its attachment to its objects. The libido which has thus been withdrawn attaches itself again to the ego in the form of a stronger investment of the diseased region of the body.
Freud demonstrates the clinical mobility of libido, showing how somatic illness withdraws it from objects and redirects it narcissistically toward the body.
, Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis, 1917supporting
Freud finally decides that the paranoidal alteration is sufficiently explained by the recession of sexual libido... It therefore appears to me far more probable that the paranoiac's altered relation to the world is to be explained entirely or in the main by the loss of his libidinal interest.
Jung examines Freud's claim that the loss of reality in paranoia follows from libidinal recession, and begins to question whether erotic interest alone can account for the totality of objective engagement.
, Symbols of Transformation, 1952supporting
Physics had constructed an elaborate theory of energy, with laws of causality, entropy, conservation of energy, transformation, and so on. Looking to these laws of physics and leaving out the mathematical formulas and equations, Jung set out to conceptualize the psyche in a manner that reminds one somewhat of his earlier work in experimental psychology.
Stein explains Jung's methodological borrowing from physics as a conceptual scaffold for libido theory, emphasizing its metaphorical rather than literal character.
, Jung's Map of the Soul: An Introduction, 1998supporting
the energic view of psychic phenomena is a valuable one because it enables us to recognize just those quantitative relations whose existence in the psyche cannot possibly be denied but which are easily overlooked from a purely qualitative standpoint.
Jung defends the energic standpoint as epistemologically necessary for psychology, since quantitative relations in the psyche — the very domain of libido — are otherwise invisible.
, The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, 1960supporting
A complex collects new psychic energy to itself in two ways: from new traumas that become associated with it and enrich it with more material, and from the magnetic power of its archetypal core.
Stein describes the mechanism by which complexes accumulate libido, linking energic theory to both traumatic etiology and archetypal magnetism.
, Jung's Map of the Soul: An Introduction, 1998supporting
Freud asks himself the question whether the loss of reality in schizophrenia... is due entirely to the withdrawal of erotic interest, or whether this coincides with objective interest in general.
Jung records the moment at which Freud himself began to question whether libidinal withdrawal as a strictly erotic phenomenon could explain the global loss of reality contact in psychosis.
, Collected Works Volume 1: Psychiatric Studies, 1902supporting
modern depth psychology also makes use of an energy concept, which, however, rests on more archaic foundations. This concept is used to designate psychic intensity, which, though it is not measurable with instruments, can indeed be gauged by feeling.
Von Franz situates depth psychology's energy concept — libido — against physical energy, arguing that psychic intensity, though unmeasurable instrumentally, is accessible through the feeling function.
, Psyche and Matter, 2014aside
We now need to complete our description of the process of recovery by expressing it in terms of the libido theory.
Freud signals that the libido theory provides the metapsychological grammar through which analytic cure must ultimately be understood.
, Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis, 1917aside
exact measurement of quantities is replaced by an approximate determination of intensities, for which purpose, in strictest contrast to physics, we enlist the function of feeling (valuation). The latter takes the place, in psychology, of concrete measurement in physics.
Jung articulates how psychic energy quantities are assessed through feeling-valuation rather than instrument, establishing the epistemological limit of libido measurement.
, The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, 1960aside