Turning Around Upon the Subject's Own Self

The notion of turning around upon the subject's own self refers to the process that substitutes the subject's own self in place of the external object of an instinct. This term appeared in Sigmund Freud's writings in "Instincts and Their Vicissitudes" (1915c), where it is discussed as one of the four vicissitudes of the instincts: repression, sublimation, reversal into the opposite, or "turning round upon the subject's own self" (p. 126). Freud described this latter process as being closely linked to reversal into the opposite and used...