Changes

In sadism there is a manifestation of aggression toward another person, who is treated as an object. If the object of the instinct becomes the subject's own self, the initial instinctual aim simultaneously changes from active to passive, because the sadism is then directed against the subject. Turning against the self is demonstrably at work even though the subject has not yet subjugated himself to another person. Obsessional neurosis is representative of this intermediary stage, which Freud described as self-punitive rather than masochistic. A final stage consists in the search for another person to play the active role that the subject renounces, thereby submitting to masochistic control. One can see how, over the entire trajectory from sadism to masochism, turning around upon the subject's own self occurs alongside the transformation of activity into passivity, in this inversion of roles between the person who exercises sadism and the person subjected to it.

Another pair of opposites, voyeurism-exhibitionism, provides a clear example of the same mechanisms. The three successive stages played out in the previous example can be found again here. Thus, there is initially "looking" as an activity that the subject directs against an unknown object, followed by the subject's submission to a turning around of the scopic drive onto a part of his or her own body. Finally, the introduction of a third element allows the subject to become the object of another person's gaze.

Freud emphasized that these operations as a whole do not exhaust all the energy of the instinct and that once again, the psyche prefers to work upon small quantities of energy. Moreover, it seems that the three stages previously described as unfolding in a linear fashion are in fact all present in varying degrees and that they develop in conjunction with one another.