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Vicissitudes/transformations Overall, Freud (pp. 122, 133, 139) defines the drives’ vicissitudes/transformations as the subjection of the instinctual impulses to the influences of the three polarities that dominate mental life: activity—passivity (the biological polarity), ego/self/subject—external world/object (the real polarity), and pleasure—unpleasure (the economic polarity). Reversal of an instinct into its opposite (reversal of aim) encompasses two different processes: a change from activity to passivity, and a reversal of its content . The first process are the two pairs of opposites: sadism —masochism and scopophilia—exhibitionism. The active aim (to torture, to look at) is replaced by the passive aim (to be tortured, to be looked at). Reversal of content is found in the single instance of the transformation of love into hate. The turning round of an instinct upon the subject's own self (change of the object) is in line with the theoretical reflection that masochism is actually sadism turned round upon the subject's own ego/self, and that exhibitionism includes looking at his own body. In these examples the turning round upon the subject's self and the transformation from activity to passivity converge or coincide. While in both cases (sadism transformed into masochism and scophophilia into exhibitionism), the active aim appears before the passive one, there is a difference: in case of a scopophilic instinct, there is yet an earlier auto-erotic stage, when the object is part of the subject’s own body. In sadism-masochism, there is not such a stage. In the pair of sadism-masochism, Freud pays special attention to the fact that while sadism is associated with not only with aim of exercising violence and power/mastery over the object, but also with inflcting pain, “the infliction of pain plays no part among the original purposive actions of the instinct” (p.127). It is only when the transformation into masochism has taken place, the sexual excitation produces a pleasurable condition. The change of the content [cf. p. 127] of an instinct into its opposite is observed in the transformation of love into hate. As they are frequently directed towards the same object, they provide an exquisite example of ambivalence. In the genesis of love, Freud describes three antitheses: ‘loving—hating’, ‘loving—being loved’; and ‘loving and hating together as the opposite of indifference’. Freud explains how, in genesis of loving throughout the life of the individual and life of the instinct, the three polarities of the mind (active-passive; subject/ego-external world/objects; pleasure-unpleasure) are connected with one another in various highly complex ways, in the context of the dualism between sexual drives and ego drives. Below is the abbreviated account of some of the main theses on the subject on pp. 133-139: There is a primal psychical situation in which love and hate coincide. Originally, at the very beginning of mental life, the ego is cathected with instincts and is to some extent capable of satisfying them on itself. Freud calls this condition ‘narcissism’ and this way of obtaining satisfaction ‘auto-erotic’. During this period, the ego-subject coincides with what is pleasurable and the external world with what is indifferent (or possibly unpleasurable, as a source of stimulation). In so far as the ego is auto-erotic, it has no need of the external world. When,
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