veniently accessible to psychoanalytic
study only when the psychic energy is employed on sexual objects, that
is when it becomes object libido. Then we see it as it concentrates and
fixes itself on objects, or as it leaves those objects and passes over
to others from which positions it directs the individual's sexual
activity, that is, it leads to partial and temporary extinction of the
libido. Psychoanalysis of the so-called transference neuroses (hysteria
and compulsion neurosis) offers us here a reliable insight.

Concerning the fates of the object libido we also state that it is
withdrawn from the object, that it is preserved floating in special
states of tension and is finally taken back into the ego, so that it
again becomes ego-libido. In contradistinction to the object-libido we
also call the ego-libido narcissistic libido. From psychoanalysis we
look over the boundary which we are not permitted to pass into the
activity of the narcissistic libido and thus form an idea of the
relations between the two. The narcissistic or ego-libido appears to us
as the great reservoir from which the energy for the investment of the
object is sent out and into which it is drawn back again, while the
narcissistic libido investment of the ego appears to us as the realized
primitive state in the first childhood, which only becomes hidden by the
later emissions of the libido, and is retained at the bottom behind
them.

The task of a theory of libido of neurotic and psychotic disturbances
would have for its object to express in terms of the libido-economy all
observed phenomena and disclosed processes. It is easy to divine that
the greater significance would attach thereby to the destinies of the
ego-libido, especially where it would be the question of explaining the
deeper psychotic disturbances. The difficulty then lies in the fact that
the means of our investigation, psychoanalysis, at present gives us
definite information only concerning the transformation of the
object-libido, but cannot distinguish without further study the
ego-libido from the other effective energies in the ego.[3]

DIFFERENTIATION BETWEEN MAN AND WOMAN

It is known that the sharp differentiation of the male and female
character originates at puberty, and it is the resulting difference
which, more than any other factor, decisively influences the later
development of personality. To be sure, the male and female dispositions
are easily recognizable even in