a-general-introduction-to-psychoanalysis-sigmund-freud

existing before the genitals had attained their primacy. Of the two libido
regressions, the regression to a former stage of sexual organization is by far
the more conspicuous. Since it is lacking in hysteria and our entire conception
of the neuroses is still too much dominated by the study of hysteria which
preceded it in point of time, the meaning of libido regression became clearer
to us much later than that of repression. Let us be prepared to widen and
change our attitude still more when we consider other narcistic neuroses
besides compulsion-neurosis and hysteria in our discussion.
In contrast to this, regression of libido in compulsion-neurosis turns back most
conspicuously to the earlier sadistico-anal organization, which accordingly
becomes the most significant factor expressed by the symptoms. Under these
conditions the love impulse must mask itself as a sadistic impulse. The
compulsion idea must therefore be reinterpreted. Isolated from other
superimposed factors, which though they are not accidental are also
indispensable, it no longer reads: "I want to murder you"; rather it says "I
want to enjoy you in love." Add to this, that simultaneously regression of the
object has also set in, so that this impulse is invariably directed toward the
nearest and dearest persons, and you can imagine with what horror the
patient thinks of these compulsion ideas and how alien they appear to his
conscious perception. In the mechanism of these neuroses, suppression, too,
assumes an important part, which it is not easy to explain in a superficial
discussion of this sort. Regression of the libido without suppression would
never result in neurosis but would finally end in perversion. This makes it
obvious that suppression is the process most characteristic of neurosis, and
typifies it most perfectly. Perhaps I shall at some future time have the
opportunity of presenting to you our knowledge of the mechanism of
perversions and then you will see that here also things do not work
themselves out as simply as we should best like to construe them.
You will most readily reconcile yourself with these elucidations of fixation and
regression, when you consider them as a preface to the investigation of the
etiology of neuroses. Towards this I have only advanced a single fact: that
people become neurotically ill when the possibility of satisfying their libido is
removed, ill with "denial," as I expressed myself, and that their symptoms are
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