Libidinal investment (Besetzung in Freud, often translated as cathexis) is the attachment of psychic energy or desire to an object, idea, person, or social structure. In psychoanalysis, the concept explains why people are bound to things that may not serve their interests — the attachment is not rational but driven by desire.
Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari reworked the concept in Anti-Oedipus, arguing that libidinal investment operates at the social level, not just the individual. People do not merely submit to oppressive social arrangements — they desire them, invest in them libidinally. Fascism, for Deleuze and Guattari, is not a matter of false consciousness but of genuine desire directed toward repressive structures. The question is not why people are deceived but why they actively desire their own repression.
This reframing shifts the political question from ideology (what do people believe?) to desire (what are people invested in?). A libidinal economy describes the distribution and circulation of these investments across a social field — which structures attract desire, which repel it, and how these attachments are produced and maintained.