CriticaLink | Freud: On Narcissism | Terms

Although not strictly a psychoanalytic term, the word vicissitude, usually in plural form, crops up frequently in Freud's discussions of the libido and appears in the title of an important essay "Instincts and their Vicissitudes," published in 1915 (one year after the publication of "On Narcissism"). A vicissitude is a change or shift; the word vicissitudes is often used to mean "changeablility." Psychical properties and functions such as libido and instinct can manifest themselves in a wide variety of forms of experience, taking different directions in the psychic lives of different individuals. For this reason, Freud frequently refers to the vicissitudes of these phenonema.

• Adler, Alfred
• Bleuler, Eugen
• Busch, Wilhelm
• Ferenczi, Sándor
• Heine, Heinrich
• Jung, Carl Gustav
• Kraepelin, Emil

• anaclitic object choice
• anxiety neurosis
• cathexis
• Cogito
• dementia praecox
• erotogenicity
• hypochondria
• hysteria
• idealization
• instinct
• introversion
• libido
• narcissism
• narcissistic object choice
• neurasthenia
• neurosis
• Oedipus complex
• paraphrenia
• primary narcissism
• retrogression
• schizophrenia
• sublimation
• superego
• transference neuroses
• Umwelt
• vicissitude