- tion to reality. As a part of the phenomenon, the lack of sociability
or emotional rapport will be well known to you all, this representing a striking disturbance of the function of reality. Through considerable psychological study of these patients we discovered, that this lack of adaptation to reality is compensated by a progressive increase in the creation of phantasies. This goes so far that the dream-world is for the patient more real than external reality. The patient Schreber, described by Freud, found for this phenomenon an excellent figurative description in his delusion of the "end of the world." His loss of reality is thus very concretely represented. The dynamic conception of this phenomenon is very clear. We say that the libido withdrew itself more and more from the external world, consequently entered the inner world, the world of phantasies, and had there to create, as a compensation for the lost external world, a so-called equivalent of reality. This compensation is built up piece by piece, and it is most interesting to observe the psychological materials of which this inner world is composed. This way of conceiving the transposition and displacement of the libido has been made by the every-day use of the term, its original pure sexual meaning being very rarely recalled. In general, the word "libido" is used practically in so harmless a sense that Claparède, in a conversation, once remarked that we could as well use the word "interest."
The manner in which this expression is generally used has given rise to a way of using the term that made it possible to explain Schreber's "end of the world" by withdrawal of the libido. On this occasion, Freud recalled his original sexual definition of the libido, and tried to arrive at an understanding with the change which in the meantime had taken place. In his article on Schreber, he discusses the question, whether what the psychoanalytic school calls libido, and conceives of as "interest from erotic sources" coincides with interest generally speaking. You see that, putting the problem in this way, Freud asks the question which Claparède practically answered. Freud discusses the question here, whether the loss of reality noticed in dementia præcox, to which I drew attention in my book,[1] "The Psychology of Dementia Præcox," is due entirely to the withdrawal of erotic
- ↑ No. 3 of this Monograph Series.
