Libido

Libido (from the Latin libīdo 'desire, drive' and in the strict sense 'lust') is a term used in medicine and psychoanalysis in a general way to refer to to a person's sexual desire. As sexual behavior, libido would occupy the appetitive phase in which an individual tries to access a potential partner through the development of certain ethological patterns. However, there are more technical definitions of the concept, such as those found in the works of Sigmund Freud and Carl Gustav Jung that refer to force or psychic energy. These authors link libidinal energy, respectively, to drives and their eminently sexual nature as a primary goal (Freud) or to an indeterminate mental energy that drives personal development general of an individual (Jung). Sigmund Freud, in turn, would have taken the term from A. Moll, who used it in 1898 in the work Untersuchungen über die Libido sexualis [“Investigations about the Libido sexualis»].^{[citation required]}

In medicine

In medicine, the term libido is applied to specifically designate sexual desire. Most doctors, psychologists, and psychiatrists consider a lower than "normal" libido level to represent pathology. The most commonly applied criterion is to attribute the decrease in libido to some emotional disorder, frequently considering it a symptom of affective disorders of a depressive nature.^{[citation required]}

In psychoanalysis and analytical psychology

According to Freud

Libido is also a concept described in the psychoanalytic theory of Sigmund Freud. The original goal would always be sexual (although it could be secondarily "desexualized," which would inexorably imply renunciation or commitment and an effort to channel it in a different way). The mind is a system whose equilibrium results from the conflict between opposing tendencies or instances: it is about forces or drives ('deep psychic energy that guides behavior towards an end and is discharged upon achieving it'). This energy that operates in the internal dialectic of the psyche is called libido.

From the Freudian perspective (of classical psychoanalysis), libido is the affect that is linked to a certain drive: in the first theoretical framework that governed until 1914, the energy of the sexual drives; after 1915, but still within the framework of the "first topic" (until 1920), it is the energy of both the sexual drives and the ego drives; and in the third theoretical framework (the second topic, from 1920), this term is transformed into Eros. Although Freud's initial work defined from a solely sexual point of view, his latest works reconsidered this concept and expanded it, applying it not only to that area, but also to the productive and vital energy of every human being.^{[ citation required]}

In Outline of Psychoanalysis (1940 [1938]), Freud argues that the libido, the entire amount of which is initially concentrated on the ego, is then used to invest or cathectize object representations, thereby which supposes an overcoming of the narcissistic stage and the transposition of narcissistic libido into object libido. However, the ego will continue to fulfill the function of storing it: the new object cathexis will start from it and they will return to it when an object is resigned or disinvested. The deepest infatuation will be required for the object component to gain for itself most of this energy to the detriment of the ego. Freud highlights the mobile nature of the libido, which is transferred from one object to another and even to one's own self, considered by psychoanalysis as one more object. Such mobility, however, is far from being absolute since the libido shows a contrary tendency to remain fixed to certain objects, establishing fixations that can last a lifetime.

For Freud, the libido has a somatic origin and is redirected to the ego from numerous parts of the body, which can be more easily appreciated in the case of that portion of the libido that is externalized as sexual arousal. Although the author acknowledges the existence of somatic regions whose libidinal contribution is more important ―and which are called erogenous zones―, no part of it is excluded from the property of erogeneity: “in truth the whole body is such an erogenous zone.” The sexual function ―which in psychoanalysis does not coincide with Eros, but is subsumed to it as one of its elements― would have made it possible to make the main discoveries on which the libido theory was developed, which establishes that a sexual drive more or less integrated would have as its ancestor in individual ontogeny a certain number of fragmentary instinctual tendencies, each of them attached to one or another erogenous zone.

According to Jung

For the psychiatrist and psychologist Carl Gustav Jung the nature of the libido represented one of the first points of his disagreements with Freud. In disagreement with the eminently sexual character, he emphasized a broad and undifferentiated vital energy, it would be an "undifferentiated psychic energy", Bergson's "élan vital", not tied to a biologist substrate (Freud).

When explaining how psychic energy works, he will propose three basic ideas derived from physics:

• Principle of opposites. An omnipresent principle throughout the Jewish system, in the same way that there are opposites or polarities in physical energy (heat/cold, height/profoundity, creation/deterior), the same happens with psychic energy. It is precisely this conflict between polarities the main motivator of the behavior and generator of energy. In other words, to a greater conflict between opposites greater psychic energy, there is no energy without opposition.

• Principle of equivalence. Jung will apply to every psychic happening the physical principle of energy conservation, that is, energy cannot be created or destroyed, can only be changed one way to another. As you describe it by quoting Ludwig Busse,

The total amount of energy does not vary and cannot increase or decrease.

Therefore, there is always a continuous redistribution of energy within the personality. If the energy spent or invested in causing a condition weakens or disappears, it is not lost, but transferred to another part of the psyche.

Any energy invested or consumed to achieve a particular effect causes the appearance of the same amount of that or other form of energy at another point.

Thus, the loss of interest in a person causes the psychic energy previously invested in that area to change to a new one, or an energetic exchange occurs between the conscious activity of wakefulness and the unconscious dream activity when sleeping. Said new area must have an equivalent psychic value, otherwise the excess energy will flow to the unconscious.

• Principle of entropy. In physics the principle of entropy alludes to the equalization of energy differences. For example, a tendency to thermal balance by uniting two bodies at different temperatures. Applying identical law to psychic energy Jung proposed the existence of a tendency to balance or balance within the personality. Thus, if there are two desires of different intensity or psychic value, the energy will flow from the most intense to the weakest.

According to the physical law of entropy, energy flows from higher levels to lower levels to more likely intensity states.

The equitable distribution of psychic energy throughout the personality is never achieved, since if it were so, this third principle, the principle of entropy, would contradict the first principle, or principle of opposites. An excessive balance would avoid the conflict between opposites, the source of energy.

The terms regression and progression of libido are also of vital importance, referring to the direction of movement of energy, as well as the function of the symbol, emerged from the archetypal base of the personality, that is, the collective unconscious, as a great organizer and transformer of the libido, unlike the psychoanalytic concept of substitutive sublimation.

Common mistakes

According to the dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy, the word must be pronounced as flat (li bi do) and not as esdrújula (lí bido) because it derives from the Latin libido, with i: long. The extended pronunciation, although incorrect libido, is probably due to the influence of the word livid (which has no semantic relationship with the concept and means "purple" or "pale »).

Equally erroneous is the masculine singular article el («the libido»), since it is a noun of the feminine gender, the correct thing is «la libido».