In this article about Primary Narcissism, Secondary Narcissism and Pulsion Theory The author Marcos Almeida relates these concepts of Freud, based on Freud's text On Narcissism.

The Theory of Pulsions and Narcissism Freud used to say that "the Pulse Theory is our Mythology " (Freud, ESB, Vol. XXII, p. 119.) The " mythical "is justified by its conceptual immateriality, its nebulous interface between structures studied by Psychoanalysis.

However, due to its complexity and centrality, this theoretical construct cannot be ignored by any psychoanalyst; such is its influence on the psychic life of any individual.

In his text On Narcissism - An Introduction (1914) (ESB, Vol. XIV, p. 89), Freud defines that the Primary Narcissism is a necessary stage of libido development between Self Eroticism and Object Love .

Table of Contents

• What is Primary Narcissism?
• What is Secondary Narcissism
• Origin of the Pulsions
• Drive types and relationship with Primary and Secondary Narcicism
• Desire, Narcissism and Pulsion
• Sexual Pulsions, Ego Pulsions and Primary Narcissism
  • Bibliographical references on Primary and Secondary Narcissism and Pulsion Theory

What is Primary Narcissism?

The child at birth is in a state of indifferentiation between itself and the world. All objects, including and especially its mother, are part of itself. This stage Auto Erotic It lasts a few weeks because soon he begins to realize, through his internal discomfort (hunger, cold, heat, light intensity, abrupt noises), that these unbearable stimuli are softened by something (actually someone) that comes to his rescue.

A awareness of the other (The welcome that is given to the child (lap, caress, satiety, etc.) gives him the perception of himself, that he has contours and skin, and that he is at the center of the world (his world). Primary Narcissism .

What is Secondary Narcissism

Before long, the drives of self-preservation (ego libido or narcissistic libido) and sexual drives (object libido) begin to differentiate. The child begins to desire the breast and other external objects that satisfy him/her and goes towards them.

A Object Libido This "Object Love" needs to reward the individual's Ego (narcissistic satisfaction).

And this is not always possible (as a matter of fact - almost never - life happens where something is missing), and when its objectives are frustrated, the drive is taken back to Ego (Secondary Narcissism).

Origin of the Pulsions

But where does the Pulsional energy that drives this "psychic machine" come from? Here it is convenient to point out that Freud, in his vast work prospecting the deep mind, used the word " Instinkt "; as "Instinct" in the animal biological sense, only on a few occasions.

The most commonly used term was " Trieb "(See "The Instincts and their Vicissitudes" (Freud, ESB, Vol. XIV, p. 137 - later translated as: "The Pulsions and their Destinies").

By an oversight, Freud's work, first translated from German into English, both Trieb like Instinkt This causes, to an already not simple reading of Freud, some additional interpretation and comprehension difficulties for Portuguese-speaking readers.

If " Instinct " is the elementary form given by the biological condition of any living being, Pulsion admits a finality to this instinct.

Drive types and relationship with Primary and Secondary Narcicism

Bodily based (hence the erogenicity of parts of the body such as the mouth and skin in the early developmental stages of the Ego) the Pulsion is subdivided into two major blocks:

• Self-conservation Pulse (which give birth to Narcissistic Libido) and
• Sexual Pulses (which establish the Object Libido).

The Pulsion brings the complexity of determining the effects of the direction and eventual fixation of Libido, or its symbolic representation, occurring since early childhood, which, sustained by (now yes) primitive instinctual elements, ends up being the force and energy in which this subject will return, or rather, will swim throughout life.

The Pulsion is the energy that moves the Desire .

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Desire is, so to speak, a search for satisfaction, which can be associated with concrete objects, but which is based on the unconscious drive, linked to this symbolic representation imprinted in the psyche.

Desire is never completely satisfied and is always associated with an original lack, an insoluble incompleteness to which the Pulsion gives its energy and transmutation, jumping from object to object throughout the subject's life.

The need for satisfaction imposed by Desire, based on the Pull, is not easily satisfied as we find in biological life, for example in the instinct of survival in the face of hunger.

Hunger triggers the subject's search for food, and its supply is the full satisfaction This is a temporary solution until a new hunger-food-society cycle is established.

Desire, Narcissism and Pulsion

According to Garcia-Roza, "This desire can only be thought of in its relation to the desire of the other, and that to which it points is not the object empirically considered, but its lack.

From object to object, desire slides as if in an endless series, in a satisfaction always postponed and never reached." (Garcia-Roza; Freud and the Unconscious; p. 139).

Freud pointed out in The Pulsions and their Destinies that the possible destinations, alone or in combination, of the Pulsions are:

• o Recalculation;
• the Reversal into its opposite;
• the Return towards the individual's own self; and
• the Sublimation.

It should be pointed out here that the fate of the Drive, is best indicated as the fate of the "ideative representative of the drive".

The Impulse never occurs in isolation, it only presents itself (unconsciously and always unconsciously) through its ideative representative, formed by Libido's fixations in primal stages of the constitution of Being.

This fixation or " primary recalcitrance "is nothing more than the first frustrations that the narcissistic baby has when he realizes that after all he doesn't have everything under his control as he omnipotently thought he did at first.

Freud also points out that Pulsion is "a concept situated on the border between the mental and the somatic, as the psychic representative of the stimuli which originate within the organism and reach the mind" (Freud, ESB, Vol. XIV, p. 142).

And that its elementary characteristics are:

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• a Pressure (motor factor and the amount of force / energy it mobilizes);
• a Purpose (which is always satisfaction by the elimination of the state of stimulation at its source);
• o Object (which is the thing in relation to which the Drive is capable of achieving its purpose and which may vary innumerable times throughout life); and
• a Source (invariably derived from a somatic process occurring in an organ or part of the body.) Also...

Sexual Pulsions, Ego Pulsions and Primary Narcissism

Furthermore, one can classify the Pulsions as

• Sexual Pulses e
• Ego Pulsions (self conservationists).

And, later on (in Beyond the Pleasure Principle - 1920), Freud classifies the Pulsions into Life Pulse and Death Pulse These concepts are not covered in this article.

From this, one can deduce the composition and interface that themes such as Primary and Secondary Narcissism Libido, Desire, Recalcitrance, the Unconscious, as well as the whole set of psychopathologies resulting from the deviated flow of these constituents.

Fundamental themes to Psychoanalysis, and among them is, "mythically", the Pulsion. An improbable, yet indelible phenomenon.

Bibliographical references on Primary and Secondary Narcissism and Pulsion Theory

FREUD; S. - On Narcissism - An Introduction (1914) Standard Brazilian Edition, Complete Works of Sigmund Freud - Vol. XIV. Imago. Rio de Janeiro - 1974

_________ - The Instincts and their Vicissitudes (1915), Standard Brazilian Edition, Complete Works of Sigmund Freud - Vol. XIV, Imago, Rio de Janeiro, 1974.

_________ - Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920), Standard Brazilian Edition, Collected Works of Sigmund Freud, Vol. XVIII, Imago, Rio de Janeiro, 1974

_________ - Conference XXXII - Anxiety and Instinctual Life (1932). Standard Brazilian Edition, Complete Works of Sigmund Freud - Vol. XXII. Imago. Rio de Janeiro - 1974

GARCIA-ROZA; LUIZ A. - FREUD and the Unconscious. Zahar Editores. Rio de Janeiro - 2016

The article on Primary Narcissism, Secondary Narcissism and Pulsion Theory was written by Marcos de Almeida (attendance: [email protected]), Psychologist (CRP 12/18.287), Clinical Psychoanalyst and Philosopher, Master in Cultural Heritage and Societies.