Libido: How Did Sigmund Freud Define This Concept?
Currently The term “libido” is very widespread in colloquial language ; In this context, this concept is understood as a synonym for sexual desire or impulses.
However, the definition of libido created by Sigmund Freud It does not refer only to sexuality but is broader and is essential to understand the rest of his theory.
According to the definition proposed by Sigmund Freud, Libido is the energy of drives or instincts that directs all forms of behavior. She initially stated that libido always had a sexual nature and that the rest of the drives were secondary to reproduction; However, as he developed his theory Freud included other types of energy in this concept.
In classical Freudian psychoanalysis the term “libido” is generally used to refer to an affect (or emotion) linked to a specific drive, which can be associated with the It or the I. Later this author went on to call the impulses of these classes the “life drive” or “Eros”, and added another different type of drive: the death drive or Thanatos.
The amount of libido available to the psyche of a given individual is limited. Therefore, mental processes compete among themselves in order to occur, and some have a very high cost, and may interfere with others; For example, Freud stated that the defense mechanism known as repression is especially costly to the mind.
Carl Gustav Jung, founder of the school of analytical psychology, identified the concept of libido with psychic energy in general. It would be the manifestation of vital processes, which often takes the form of a desire. Its origin would be the opposition between dualities in the mind, such as the one we have mentioned between the Id and the Superego.
Although the definitions of both authors are similar, the Jungian conception of Libido is one of the main points of collision between Jung and Freud: While for the father of psychoanalysis, libidinal energy is basically sexual, Jung and the authors who followed in his footsteps believed that libido has a much broader and undifferentiated character.
Jung also did not agree with Freud in the conception of the mind as a product of the biological substrate of the organism. Therefore, we can say that the ideas of the most famous of his disciples are characterized by an even more marked mentalism; In this sense it is important to take into account the great influence that religion had on Jung.
The Id, libido and the pleasure principle
The libido is contained in the Id, one of the three structures of the mind described by this author. While the Id represents the most basic and primitive part of our being, the Ego and the Superego emerge throughout development to satisfy the demands of the organism and the environment and to provide us with a moral conscience, respectively.
The It is governed by the pleasure principle; This means that it directs behavior towards obtaining immediate pleasure. Furthermore, this part of the psyche depends on unconscious processes, so we often do not know what impulses motivate our behavior.
For its part, the Ego is responsible for obtaining gratification taking into account the reality principle. This means that The Ego contains the libidinal energy of the It so that their instincts can be satisfied in an appropriate way in relation to the rules and demands of the environment, which includes aspects such as long-term reasoning and social judgment.
The Superego serves as a behavioral model for the Ego. Within this structure reside social norms and values internalized through interaction with other members of the same social group, particularly parents and other authority figures. Thus, the libido of the Id pushes the Ego to obtain pleasure while the Superego prioritizes morality.
The stages of psychosexual development
According to Freud’s theory, libido is expressed in different ways depending on the stage of development in which the individual is at a given moment. Thus, this author described a series of evolutionary phases that would be common to all human beings; each of them is related to a specific erogenous zone on which libido would be focused.
Freud described 5 stages of psychosexual development: the oral phase, in which pleasure is obtained through the mouth; the anal phase; the phallic phase, characterized by the Oedipus complex; the latency period, in which libido is redirected to non-sexual activities through sublimation; and the genital phase, which corresponds to the arrival of puberty and sexual maturity.
Sometimes libidinal energy stagnates at an earlier stage of development to the current one; Freud referred to this as “fixation.” This phenomenon, the origin of discomfort and psychopathology, could derive both from the frustration of libidinal needs at the stage in question and from their excessive satisfaction, which can be equally problematic.
