so common in the hysteric, which simulate well known or severe organic affections.
All this clearly indicates that hysteria is characterised by a centrifugal tendency of the libido,[1] whilst in dementia præcox its tendency is centripetal. The reverse occurs, however, where the illness has fully established its compensatory effects. In the hysteric the libido is always hampered in its movements of expansion and forced to regress upon itself; one observes that such individuals cease to partake in the common life, are wrapped up in their phantasies, keep their beds, or are unable to live outside their sick-rooms, etc. The precocious dement, on the contrary, during the incubation of his illness turns away from the outer world in order to withdraw into himself; but when the period of morbid compensation arrives, he seems constrained to draw attention to himself, and to force himself upon the notice of those around him, by his extravagant, insupportable, or directly aggressive conduct.
I propose to use the terms “Extraversion” and “Introversion” to describe these two opposite directions of the libido, further qualifying them, however, as “regressive” in morbid cases where phantasies, fictions, or phantastic interpretations, inspired by emotivity, falsify the perceptions of the subject about things, or about himself. We say that he is extraverted when he gives his fundamental interest to the outer or objective world, and attributes an all-important and essential value to it: he is introverted, on the contrary, when the objective world suffers a sort of depreciation, or want of consideration, for the sake of the exaltation of the individual himself, who then monopolising all the interest, grows to believe no one but himself worthy of consideration. I will call “regressive extraversion” the phenomenon which Freud
- ↑ In Freud’s writings the term “libido” has always a sexual meaning. But it is well known that Jung has restored to this term its classical meaning of desire or passion in general. He has pointed out recently that we might, following Claparède’s proposal, translate it by the word “interest.” We have preferred in the present translation to keep to the term “libido” to express the instinctive psychological effort, the élan vital, the joy of living, the fundamental interest of the individual, etc. See page 231.
