1. op. cit., p. 90.

2. Cp. Psycho-Analysis and the War Neuroses, by Ferenczi, Abraham, Simmel and Ernest Jones; No. 2 of the International Psycho-Analytical Library, 1921.

3. 1919, Bd. V, S. 243.

4. This interpretation was fully established by a further observation. One day when the mother had been out for some hours she was greeted on her return by the information ‘Baby o-o-o-o’ which at first remained unintelligible. It soon proved that during his long lonely hours he had found a method of bringing about his own disappearance. He had discovered his reflection in the long mirror which nearly reached to the ground and had then crouched down in front of it, so that the reflection was ‘fort’.

5. When the child was five and three-quarter years old his mother died. Now, when she was really ‘gone’ (o-o-o), the boy showed no grief for her. A second child had, it is true, been born in the meantime and had aroused his strongest jealousy.

6. Cp. ‘Eine Kindheitserinnerung aus “Dichtung und Wahrheit”.’ Imago, 1917, Bd. V, S. 49.

7. See ‘Zur Technik der Psychoanalyse. II. Erinnern, Wiederholen und Durcharbeiten.’ Sammlung kleiner Schriften zur Neurosenlehre. IV. Folge, 1918, S. 441.

8. Marcinowski: ‘Die erotischen Quellen der Minderwertigkeitsgefühle’, Zeitschrift für Sexualwissenschaft, 1918, IV.

9. Cp. the pertinent observations of C. G. Jung in his article ‘Die Bedeutung des Vaters für das Schicksal des Einzelnen’. Jahrbuch für psychoanalytische und psychopathologische Forschungen, 1901, Bd. I.

10. Thus named after the German words Wahrnehmung (= perception) and Bewußtsein (= consciousness).

11. Here I follow throughout J. Breuer’s exposition in the theoretical section of the ‘Studien über Hysterie’, 1895.

12. J. Breuer and S. Freud: Studien über Hysterie.

13. Cp. ‘Triebe und Triebschicksale’, Sammlung kleiner Schriften zur Neurosenlehre. IV. Folge, 1918.

14. Psycho-Analysis and the War Neuroses. Introduction. International Psycho-Analytical Library. No. 2, 1921.

15. Cp. Section VII, ‘Psychology of the Dream-Processes’ in my ‘Traumdeutung’.

16. I have little doubt that similar conjectures about the nature of instinct have been already repeatedly put forward.

17. Compare the subsequent criticism of this extreme view of the self-preservative instincts.

18. By a different route Ferenczi has arrived at the possibility of this conception. (‘Stages of Development in the Sense of Reality’. Ch. VIII of his Contributions to Psycho-Analysis, 1916.) He writes: ‘By following through this process of thought logically one is obliged to gain familiarity with the idea of a tendency to persistence or regression governing organic life also, while the tendency to progress in development, adaptation, etc. is manifested only as against external stimuli.’

19. Über die Dauer des Lebens, 1882; Über Leben und Tod, 2. Aufl., 1892; Das Keimplasma, 1892, etc.

20. Über Leben und Tod, 2. Aufl., S. 20.

21. Über die Dauer des Lebens, S. 38.

22. Über Leben und Tod, 2. Aufl., S. 67.

23. Über die Dauer des Lebens, S. 33.

24. Über Leben und Tod. Conclusion.

25. Cp. Max Hartmann: Tod und Fortpflanzung, 1906; Alex. Lipschütz: ‘Warum wir sterben’, Kosmosbücher, 1914; Franz Doflein: Das Problem des Todes und der Unsterblichkeit bei den Pflanzen und Tieren, 1919.

26. Hartmann: loc. cit., S. 29.

27. For this and what follows see Lipschütz: Loc. cit., S. 26 and 52 ff.

28. ‘Über die anscheinende Absichtlichkeit im Schicksale des Einzelnen’. Großherzog Wilhelm Ernst Auflage, Bd. IV, S. 268.

29. ‘Zur Einführung des Narzissmus’, Jahrbuch der Psychoanalyse, Bd. VI, 1914, and Sammlung kleiner Schriften zur Neurosenlehre, IV. Folge, 1918.

30. Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie, from the First Edition, 1905, onwards.

31. See Sexualtheorie, 4. Aufl., 1920, and ‘Triebe und Triebschicksale’ in Sammlung kleiner Schriften, IV. Folge.

32. A considerable part of this speculation has been anticipated in a work which is full of valuable matter and ideas but is unfortunately not entirely clear to me: (Sabina Spielrein: ‘Die Destruktion als Ursache des Werdens’, Jahrbuch für Psychoanalyse, IV, 1912). She designates the sadistic component as ‘destructive’. In still another way A. Stärcke (Inleiding by de vertaling von S. Freud, De sexuele beschavingsmoral etc., 1914) has attempted to identify the libido concept itself with the biological concept of an impulsion towards death which is to be assumed on theoretical grounds (Cp. also Rank: ‘Der Künstler’). All these attempts, as the one in the text, indicate how much the need is felt for a clarification in the theory of instinct which we do not yet possess.

33. loc. cit.

34. Although Weismann (Das Keimplasma, 1892) denies even this advantage: ‘Fertilisation in no way signifies a rejuvenation or renewing of life,—it is in no way necessary for the prolongation of life; it is nothing but a device for making possible the blending of two different inheritance tendencies.’ Still, he considers an increase of variability in living organisms to be the result of such blending.

35. I am indebted to Prof. Heinrich Gomperz of Vienna for the following indications as to the origin of the Platonic myth, which I repeat partly in his own words: I should like to call attention to the fact that essentially the same theory is also to be found in the Upanishads. The Brihad-Aranyaka Upanishad 1, 4, 3 (Deussen, 60 Upanishads des Veda, S. 393), where the creation of the world from the Âtman (the self or ego) is described, has the following passage ‘Nor did he (the Âtman, the self or ego) experience any joy, and for that reason no one has joy when he is alone. So he longed for a partner. He was as big as a woman and a man together when they embrace. He divided himself into two parts, which made a husband and a wife. This body is therefore one half of the self, according to Yajnavalkya. And for the same reason this empty space here becomes filled by the woman.’

The Brihad-Aranyaka Upanishad is the oldest of all the Upanishads, and no expert authority would date it later than 800 B.C. In opposition to the prevailing opinion I should not like definitely to deny the possibility of Plato having been dependent, even though very indirectly, on these Indian thoughts, for this possibility cannot be absolutely put aside even for the doctrine of re-incarnation. A dependence of this sort, first conveyed through Pythagoras, would scarcely detract from the significance of the coincidence in thought, for Plato would not have adopted any such story conveyed in some way from Oriental traditions, let alone have given it such an important place, had he not himself felt the truth contained in it to be illuminating.

In an article by K. Ziegler (‘Menschen- und Weltwerden’, Neue Fahrbücher für das klassische Altertum, 1913, Band XXXI), which contains a systematic investigation of the thought in question, it is traced back to Babylonian ideas.

36. I would here subjoin a few words to clarify our nomenclature, one which has undergone a certain development in the course of our discussion. What ‘sexual instincts’ are, we knew through their relation to the sexes and to the function of propagation. We then retained this term when the findings of psycho-analysis compelled us to regard its relation to propagation as less close. With the discovery of narcissistic libido, and the extension of the libido concept to the individual cells, the sexual instinct became for us transformed into the Eros that endeavours to impel the separate parts of living matter to one another and to hold them together; what is commonly called the sexual instinct appears as that part of the Eros that is turned towards the object. Our speculation then supposes that this Eros is at work from the beginnings of life, manifesting itself as the ‘life-instinct’ in contradistinction to the ‘death-instinct’ which developed through the animation of the inorganic. It endeavours to solve the riddle of life by the hypothesis of these two instincts striving with each other from the very beginning. The transformation which the concept of the ‘ego-instincts’ has undergone is perhaps harder to review. Originally we applied this term to all those instinct-directions—not better known to us—which can be distinguished from the sexual instincts that have the object as their aim, thus contrasting the ego-instincts with the sexual ones, the expression of which is the libido. Later on we approached the analysis of the ego and saw that a part also of the ‘ego-instincts’ is of a libidinous nature, having taken its own self as an object. These narcissistic instincts of self-preservation therefore had now to be reckoned to the libidinous sexual instincts. The contrast between egoistic and sexual instincts was now converted into one between egoistic and object-instincts, both libidinous in nature. In its place, however, arose a new contrast between libidinous (ego and object) instincts and others whose existence can be determined in the ego and can perhaps be detected in the destruction-instincts. Speculation transforms this contrast into that of life-instincts (Eros) and death-instincts.

37. Rückert in the ‘Makamen des Hariri.’