idea of still calling them sexual, even though their development was a growth originally out of the sexual. Sexuality and its various manifestations Jung sees as most important channels occupied by libido, but not the exclusive ones through which libido flows.
This is an energic concept of life; and from this viewpoint this hypothetical energy of life or libido is a living power used instinctively by man in all the automatic processes of his functioning; such very processes being but different manifestations of this energy. By virtue of its quality of mobility and change man, through his understanding and intelligence, has the power consciously to direct and use his libido in definite and desired ways.
In this conception of Jung will be seen an analogy to Bergson, who speaks of “this change, this movement and becoming, this self-creation, call it what you will, as the very stuff and reality of our being.”[1]
In developing the energic conception of libido and separating it from Freud’s sexual definition, Jung makes possible the explanation of interest in general, and provides a working concept by which not only the specifically sexual, but the general activities and reactions of man can be understood.
If a person complains of no longer having interest in his work or of losing interest in his surroundings, then one understands that his libido is withdrawn from this object and that in consequence the object itself seems no longer attractive, whereas, as a matter of fact, the object itself is exactly the same as formerly. In other words, it is
