ABSTRACT
Freud, in his paper “On Narcissism” in 1914, and the other papers on instincts following that, codified the idea of a differential in “cathexis”: in other words, the intensity of emotional investment one human being makes in another. From a quantitative standpoint, how much bezetzung (oomph, or interest) do people direct toward somebody else versus how much toward their own body and their own mental functioning? Lastly, have they regressed-turned all their attention to themselves-if they originally had the capacity to think about others?
