The Regression of Libido
This utilization of reminiscences to put on the stage any illness, or an apparent etiology, is called a regression of the libido. The libido goes back to reminiscences, and makes them actual, so that an apparent etiology is produced. In this case, by the old theory, the fright from the horses would seem to be based on a former shock. The resemblance between the two scenes is unmistakable, and in both cases the patient’s fright is absolutely real. At any rate, we have no reason to doubt her assertions in this respect, as they are in full harmony with all other experiences. The nervous asthma, the hysterical anxiety, the psychogenic depressions and exaltations, the pains, the convulsions—they are all very real, and that physician who has himself suffered from a psychogenic symptom knows that it feels absolutely real. Regressively re-lived reminiscences, even if they were but phantasies, are as real as remembrances of events that have once been real.
As the term “regression of libido” shows, we understand by this retrograde mode of application of the libido, a retreat of the libido to former stages. In our example, we are able to recognize clearly the way the process of regression is carried on. At that farewell party, which proved a good opportunity to be alone with the host, the patient shrank from the idea of turning this opportunity to her advantage, and yet was overpowered by her desires, which she had never consciously realized up to that moment. The libido was not used consciously for that definite purpose, nor was this purpose ever acknowledged. The libido had to carry it out through the unconscious, and through the pretext of the fright caused by an apparently terrible danger. Her feeling at the moment when the horses approached illustrates our formula most clearly; she felt as if something inevitable had now to happen.
The process of regression is beautifully demonstrated in an illustration already used by Freud. The libido can be compared with a stream which is dammed up as soon as its course meets any impediment, whence arises an inundation. If this stream has previously, in its upper reaches, excavated other channels, then these channels will be filled up again by reason of the damming below. To a certain extent they would appear to be real river beds, filled with water as before, but at the same time, they only have a temporary existence. It is not that the stream has permanently chosen the old channels, but only for as long as the impediment endures in the main stream. The affluents do not always carry water, because they were from the first, as it were, not independent streams, but only former stages of development of the main river, or passing possibilities, to which an inundation has given the opportunity for fresh existence. This illustration can directly be transferred to the development of the application of the libido. The definite direction, the main river, is not yet found during the childish development of sexuality. The libido goes instead into all possible by-paths, and only gradually does the definite form develop. But the more the stream follows out its main channel, the more the affluents will dry up and lose their importance, leaving only traces of former activity. Similarly, the importance of the childish precursors of sexuality disappears completely as a rule, only leaving behind certain traces.
If in later life an impediment arises, so that the damming of the libido reanimates the old by-paths, the condition thus excited is properly a new one, and something abnormal.
The former condition of the child is normal usage of the libido, whilst the return of the libido towards the childish past is something abnormal. Therefore, in my opinion, it is an erroneous terminology to call the infantile sexual manifestations “perversions,” for it is not permissible to give normal manifestations pathological terms. This erroneous usage seems to be responsible for the confusion of the scientific public. The terms employed in neurotic psychology have been misapplied here, under the assumption that the abnormal by-paths of the libido discovered in neurotic people are the same phenomena as are to be found in children.