ABSTRACT
The transferability of the libido is, perhaps, the most important principle of our mental life. Everything that comprises “Freudian mechanisms” is based upon it. That towards which the libido is directed becomes bright and congenial, and that from which the libido is withdrawn grows dark. It even flows out of the otherwise circumscribed individual, flows afar, and conquers the world. It returns from afar, laden with experiences like the bee laden with honey; is reabsorbed; becomes the ego, that fiction which in primitive philosophy was taken for reality.
