Glossary: Libido

Psychological energy; from the Latin meaning “desire,” or “love.” Unlike Freud, for Jung libido was not limited to sexual energy but was all mental and emotional energy. Where the libido goes, there goes one’s fascination and attention. This psychic energy manifests as drives, aspirations, compulsions, etc.

As Jung believed that the psyche is a self regulating system, he felt that a person’s libido “knew” where it needed to go for one’s growth. Our job is to figure out where that is. You can’t control or decide this because one’s libido is governed by something larger than the ego, namely, the Self. When there is intense activity in the unconscious the Self pulls libido out of consciousness resulting in the feeling of depression, or a general lack of energy.

Libido can be blocked, in which case it will find another channel, or change direction. Because of psyche’s tendency to balance itself out, it will often do this naturally when the conscious self has gone too far in one direction, often changing into its complete opposite (compensation, enantiodromia).

[Libido] denotes a desire or impulse which is unchecked by any kind of authority, moral or otherwise. Libido is appetite in its natural state. From the genetic point of view it is bodily needs like hunger, thirst, sleep, and sex, and emotional states or affects, which constitute the essence of libido.

- Jung "The Concept of Libido," CW 5, par. 194

For Jung, the hero is a symbol of the developing ego's libido. By libido, Jung means not simply desire or psychological energy but psychological purpose as well. For him, the hero myth expresses the ego's desire to replace dependency upon the unconscious with self-direction - a purpose that necessitates an ambivalent struggle with the mother, who symbolizes the unconscious

- Beebe, Aspects of the Masculine (p. 9)

Libido can never be apprehended except in a definite form; that is to say, it is identical with fantasy-images. And we can only release it from the grip of the unconscious by bringing up the corresponding fantasy-images.

- Jung, "The Technique of Differentiation," CW 7, par. 345

Always in advance of consciousness, calling us into new activity. Libido in turn is a part of the life energy that drives all organisms to grow and develop. Its first expression is in the energy of growth that causes cell division, budding, etc. (so it IS sexual at first). As you climb the phylogenetic ladder, libido used for sexuality loses its sexual character and flows into other forms.

Libido contains two opposite urges or instincts (see ambivalence/ambitendency): to live and to die, to go forwards and backwards (death drive) into instinctuality/womb/uncon. The libido contains both or no movement could happen.

- Craig Chalquist, PhD, A Glossary of Jungian Terms

It does not lie in our power to transfer "disposable" energy at will to a rationally chosen object. The same is true in general of the apparently disposable energy which is disengaged when we have destroyed its unserviceable forms through the corrosive of reductive analysis. [It] can at best be applied voluntarily for only a short time. But in most cases it refuses to seize hold, for any length of time, of the possibilities rationally presented to it. Psychic energy is a very fastidious thing which insists on fulfilment of its own conditions. However much energy may be present, we cannot make it serviceable until we have succeeded in finding the right gradient.

- Jung, "The Problem of the Attitude-Type," CW 7, par. 76

What is it, at this moment and in this individual, that represents the natural urge of life? That is the question.

- Jung, "The Structure of the Unconscious," CW 7, par. 488


Jung quotes from: Daryl Sharp's "Jung Lexicon"



See also:
Compensation
Enantiodromia
Hero