ABSTRACT
This chapter offers a critical reading of Sigmund Freud's essay, focusing on the fate of the ideas it contains, especially on how these ideas have since been supplemented or modified. Bringing together indirect evidence from the study of human sexual development, schizophrenia, the neuroses, the perversions, and primitive cultures, Freud extends his libido theory. The libidinal investment of the self evolves in parallel with the libidinal investment in objects and their psychic representations, which constitute object-libido. Freud proposes that libido evolves from a stage of primary narcissism to investment of objects with the tendency of later withdrawal of object-invested libido onto the ego in the form of secondary narcissism. Freud examines the decrease of self-esteem that results from an inability to love: when, because of severe repressions, erotic love becomes impossible, self-esteem diminishes. The actualization of the ego-ideal in the love relationship raises self-esteem.
