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j The libido didn’t start with Freud.

Freud borrowed the term from others.

It was used originally to describe the sexual urge, sex drive.

Freud placed the libido in the id.

The id is a part of the personality that is primitive, unrestrained, not in touch with reality, and so on and so forth.

So in this sense, the libido is feral.

In other words, the libido is antisocial.

The libido is, in this sense, reckless.

And not aware of consequences. Only present, no future, and so on and so forth.

And Freud had a dim view, a bad view of libido in the beginning.

Because they thought the id was very dangerous. And he was very happy that we develop an ego which controls the id and mediates between the id and reality. He thought it was a good thing, otherwise we would all end up being criminals and rape each other and I don’t know what.

So he had a very negative view of the libido.

It was Jung, actually, who made the libido into a positive thing.

Jung suggested that the libido is not merely sex, but anything to do with life, anything to do with creation, creativity, inventiveness.

And later on Bergson used the elan vitan and so on and so on.

Libido is the force of life.

Freud grudgingly and gradually accepted Jung’s view.

And in his much later writings, the libido is described as the force of life.

As I said in the beginning, narcissists in this sense, technically, have no libido.

It’s not that they sublimate the libido, because Freud also described the situation, the process, where people have libido, it is socially unacceptable to express the libido, so they find socially acceptable ways to express the libido.

They go to politics, they write a book, socially acceptable ways.

It’s not the case with the narcissists. It’s not that the narcissist transforms his libido into something asexual or is only libidinal and is only into sex, no?

That’s not the case at all.

Even the somatic narcissist who is constantly preoccupied with sex is preoccupied with sex. His sex is with essentially dead objects. Even he masturbates with the bodies of women. It’s autoerotic. The woman is not there. He uses a body like he would use a sex doll. And the woman also is a part of the narcissistic supply chain. So she is utterly objectified and commodified. That’s why the somatic has no problem to switch from woman one to woman two to woman three within an hour.

Because they are all commodities like grains of rice. They are all indistinguishable and they are all objects. And they are all part of a supply chain.

Like when we finally have an iPhone, we don’t go into the details which components are in the iPhone. This is part of a hidden, hidden, obscure supply chain.

Same with woman. She is hidden. She is occult. The woman in the dynamic, in the psychodynamic of the somatic narcissist is hidden part. She is occult.

There is the beginning which is the need for supply and the end which is the supply. And the woman is just an instrument of some kind. So even then, even with the somatic, the woman is converted into a mummy, into a dead object, into a sex doll. Or dehumanized so she becomes a sex slave. Or a fetish.

So the cerebral of course doesn’t have even this. The cerebral doesn’t have even this. The cerebral objectifies people for functional reasons because he needs some services. Or he needs attention. Or he needs adulation and so on.

Once he gets this input, he loses all interest in the source. And the interest that he has in the source is utterly one dimensional.

How can I extract the supply?

So narcissists are fanatic. I think narcissists, not psychopaths, by the way, narcissists. I think narcissists are the only group of people on earth whose libido was replaced by Thanatos at a very early age.

And it also would make sense because they had been abused horribly as children and they were killed. They were murdered as children.

The true self was murdered. The child was murdered at a very early age and had become a zombie. Had become a lifeless animated form. Had become a doll. Had become a robot. An automaton.

You know, in the 17th, 16th, 16th, 17th, 18th century there were automatons of human beings, human shaped automatons in the courts of kings. And they were moving around and delivering drinks and so on.

Ironically, robotics then was probably more developed than today.

And this is the narcissist.

So it would be inaccurate to discuss the libido of the narcissist because he has none.

Because the narcissist has no life force, he focuses on maintenance only.

Narcissistic supply is maintenance.

Think of the metaphor of a car.

You have a car, you take the car, you drive from point A to point B.

That is the aim of the car.

The narcissist has a car and all he does is put fuel in the car.

But he never uses the car. He just puts fuel all the time in the car.

But he never uses it.

And this is the difference between you and the narcissist, between healthy person and narcissist.

Now, gradually, libido is transformed. It has transformations in healthy people. And these transformations are absent in the narcissist.

So the narcissist’s relationship with many significant others, the narcissist’s relationship with his children, for example, if he has children, they are not the same at all, like healthy people, because the libido aspect is missing. The narcissist’s children are not expression of life as healthy people’s children are.

But the narcissist’s children are investment in future supply, future sources of supply. It’s a transactional approach to life.

What can you give me? Can you give me supply?

You’re interesting. You cannot give me supply. Go away. Never mind if you’re my child.

Narciss doesn’t convey his life or create life or erupt in life. Even when narcissists write beautiful poetry, I’m a poet, I don’t know if my poetry is beautiful, but I write poetry. Even when they write poetry, it’s much more intended to impress than to communicate or to convey or to…

And it doesn’t reflect an inner landscape. Everything on the narcissist is surface and shallow because there’s no life there.

It’s simulacrum. It’s a simulation.

If I have to use computer terms, the narcissist is a simulation.

Some simulations are very impressive and can deceive people into believing that they’re not simulations, but they’re still simulations.

So all this conversation of what happens to the libido, is it sublimated, is it tantra-like?

It has place with healthy people who undergo stressful situations or dysfunctional relationships or abuse.

This question will be pertinent and relevant.

But the critical essence of narcissism is non-existence.

Narcissism…

The narcissist is not in an existentialist state like Sartre or Kierkegaard are saying. He’s not in an existential…

The narcissist is a non-being. A non-entity.

It’s a little like Heidegger or like Sartre or Sartre, all being and nothingness.

The narcissist is nothingness. It’s a non-being, non-entity.

I think this is the horror at the core of narcissism, this non-existence.

So of course, no sex, no nothing.

So many good.