ABSTRACT
In keeping with the structure set out in the general introduction, this chapter covers Freud’s writings from 1900 until 1920. New concepts appear with little introduction while others are left behind without mention, and familiar concepts change their meanings unnoticed, intermingled with seemingly contradictory notions—often within the same texts. In keeping with the aforementioned strategy of “psychoanalytic reading”, the complexity of narcissism shall therefore be elaborated at some length in the chapter insofar as it defines the nature of the I. Due to the importance of the notion of the drive for the works of the period discussed in this chapter, a quick survey of the nature of the drive, primarily as depicted in Essays, is initially called for. The metonymic scheme implied an I as a substantially displaced representative of what one might call the subject of the organism.
