Drive theory, redux: a history and reconsideration of the drives

ABSTRACT

A large and significant portion of contemporary psychoanalytic theory has given up on the drives. The shift toward object relations in the 1940s and 50s, the scepticism about metapsychology in the latter half of the twentieth century, and a general confusion about the coherence of Freud’s drive theory have all contributed to their slow decline in prominence. There are legitimate criticisms of the drives that deserve attention but the drives themselves require a careful examination before any successful defence of their place in the metapsychology may be mounted. The current paper provides an account of the drives informed by the intellectual history of German and English thought related to the drives and instincts as they came to Freud. This history allows us to clearly distinguish between “drive” (or Trieb) and its conceptual neighbour “instinct” (or Instinkt).

Une part importante et significative de la théorie psychanalytique contemporaine a abandonné la réflexion sur les pulsions. L'infléchissement vers les relations d'objet dans les années quarante et cinquante, le scepticisme à l'égard de la métapsychologie dans la seconde moitié du vingtième siècle, ainsi qu'une confusion générale à propos de la cohérence de la théorie des pulsions de Freud, tout cela aura contribué à un lent déclin de leur importance. Il existe des critiques légitimes des pulsions qui méritent notre attention ; cependant, les pulsions en tant que telles nécessitent un examen minutieux avant de pouvoir monter une défense en bonne et due forme de leur place dans la métapsychologie. L'auteur de cet article fournit une explication des pulsions, éclairée par l'histoire intellectuelle de la pensée allemande et anglaise relative aux pulsions et instincts tels qu'ils sont apparus chez Freud. Cette histoire nous permet d'établir une distinction précise entre la « pulsion » (ou Trieb) et son voisin conceptuel, l' « instinct » (ou Instinkt).

Ein großer und wesentlicher Teil der psychoanalytischen Theorie der Gegenwart hat das Nachdenken über die Triebe aufgegeben. Die Hinwendung zu Objektbeziehungen in den 1940er und 1950er Jahren, die Skepsis gegenüber der Metapsychologie in der zweiten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts sowie eine allgemeine Unklarheit hinsichtlich der Kohärenz von Freuds Triebtheorie haben alle dazu beigetragen, dass sie in einem langsamen Prozess an Bedeutung verloren haben. Es gibt legitime, unsere Aufmerksamkeit verdienende Kritikpunkte an den Trieben, aber die Triebe selbst müssen sorgfältig untersucht werden, bevor irgendeine Erfolg versprechende Verteidigung ihres Platzes in der Metapsychologie erfolgen kann. Der vorliegende Beitrag Geprägt schildert – geprägt von der Geistesgeschichte des deutschen und englischen Denkens über Triebe – die verschiedenen Triebe und Instinkte nach Freud. Diese Geschichte gestattet uns, eine klare Unterscheidung zwischen „Trieb“ und dem begrifflichen Nachbarn „Instinkt“ zu treffen.

La teoria psicoanalitica contemporanea ha in larga parte cessato di occuparsi delle pulsioni. Il passaggio al paradigma delle relazioni oggettuali verificatosi negli Anni '40 e '50, lo scetticismo con cui alla fine del XX secolo si guardava alla metapsicologia e un più generale senso di confusione circa la coerenza stessa della teoria pulsionale di Freud sono stati fattori che, messi insieme, hanno tutti contribuito al graduale declino di questo concetto. Sebbene alcune delle critiche rivolte alla teoria pulsionale meritino seria considerazione, per poter difendere in modo sensato il posto delle pulsioni all'interno della metapsicologia è necessario che le si esaminino attentamente per ciò che esse sono. Il presente lavoro ripercorre il concetto di pulsione muovendo dalla storia intellettuale del pensiero tedesco e inglese sulle pulsioni e sugli istinti, e da come essi appaiono nell'opera di Freud. Questo percorso storico permette tra l'altro di operare una chiara distinzione tra il concetto di “pulsione” (Trieb) e la nozione ad esso limitrofa di “istinto” (Instinkt).

Una parte grande y significativa de la teoría psicoanalítica contemporánea ha dejado de pensar en las pulsiones. Contribuyó al gradual descenso de su prominencia el desplazamiento hacia las relaciones objetales ocurrido en las décadas de 1940 y 1950, así como el escepticismo respecto a la metapsicología en la segunda mitad del siglo pasado, más una confusión general respecto a la coherencia de la teoría pulsional de Freud. Hay críticas legítimas a las pulsiones que merecen atención, pero, antes de montar una defensa exitosa de su lugar en la metapsicología, se requiere un examen cuidadoso de ellas mismas. El presente artículo brinda un recuento de las pulsiones basado en la historia intelectual del pensamiento alemán e inglés relativo a ellas y los instintos, tal como aparecieron en Freud. Esta historia nos permite distinguir claramente entre “pulsión” (o Trieb) y su vecino conceptual “instinto” (o Instinkt).

KEYWORDS:

• Freudian theory
• history of psychoanalysis
• metapsychology
• philosophy
• conceptual research
• historical research
• psychic structures
• unconscious

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 Timothy Lenoir notes:

At least half of the major contributors to German biological science during the early nineteenth century were his students or at least claimed to have been inspired by the man. Among his most notable students were Alexander von Humboldt, Carl Friedrich Kielmeyer, Georg Reinhold Treviranus, Heinrich Friedrich Link, Johann Friedrich Meckel, Johannes Illiger, Rudolph Wagner, and many others. (Lenoir 1982, 17)

2 Hume, for instance, claimed that animals could experience complex emotions, including sympathy (Treatise, 2.2.12) and Kant believed that animals could experience pleasure and displeasure in accordance with a “faculty of desire” (Metaphysics of Morals, 6:211), both of which would be incompatible with Descartes’s view.

3 This view has since been supported by neuroscientific research (Panksepp 2010; Solms 2018).

4 That affects include an evaluative component is well understood among the scientific, philosophical, and psychoanalytic communities. Neuroscientist, Jaak Panksepp (1999), for instance, writes:

The notion that various types of affect are intrinsic value-coding functions of the nervous systems is, in my estimation, a view that needs to be incorporated into modern neuroscience, both computational and biologic, as well as into the emerging field of consciousness studies. (20)

Philosopher Peter Poellner (2011) echoes this view, explaining:

“Affects experienced as one’s own, as expressing what one is, would on this construal be those one understands, often pre-reflectively, as being appropriate, as answerable to and thus as actively relating oneself to, the world”. (164)

Philosopher and psychoanalytic scholar Jonathan Lear (2005) similarly writes that “fear makes an implicit claim that it is an appropriate response to the situation” (39). Of course, this is not modern knowledge; the Ancient Greeks had discerned this as well:

When people are feeling friendly and placable, they think one sort of thing; when they are feeling angry or hostile, they think either something totally different or the same thing with a different intensity: when they feel friendly to the man who comes before them for judgment, they regard him as having done little wrong, if any; when they feel hostile, they take the opposite view. Again, if they are eager for, and have good hopes of, a thing that will be pleasant if it happens, they think it certainly will happen and be good for them: whereas if they are indifferent or annoyed, they do not think so. (Aristotle, Rhetoric, II.1, 1377b31–1378a5)

5 Indeed, Freud distanced himself from Adler’s aggressive drive because it seemed to run foul of this point:

It appears to me that Adler has mistakenly promoted into a special and self-subsisting instinct what is in reality a universal and indispensable attribute of all instincts [Triebe]—their instinctual [Triebhafte] and “pressing” character, what might be described as their capacity for initiating movement.. ([1909] 1955, 140–141)

Freud holds to this view in his later theorizing, as evidenced by a footnote to this comment added in 1923:

The above passage was written at a time when Adler seemed still to be taking his stand upon the ground of psycho-analysis … Since then I have myself been obliged to assert the existence of an “aggressive instinct” [Aggressionstrieb], but it is different from Adler’s. I prefer to call it the “destructive” or “death instinct” [“Destruktions“ oder “Todestrieb”]. … My disagreement with Adler's view, which [as explained later in the paragraph] results in a universal characteristic of instincts [Trieben] in general being reduced to be the property of a single one of them, remains unaltered.. ([1909] 1955, 140–141)

6 Indeed, where the connection between a drive and its object becomes inflexible, it is called a fixation (Freud [1915a] 2001).

7 In the former case, consider a patient’s use of rationalization to justify an object’s desirability when the object clearly does not cohere with previously expressed core values and desires. In the latter, consider an individual who, unable to satisfy the libidinal drive through a romantic relationship or familial love, experiences a type of libidinal satisfaction from the therapeutic relationship.

8 Notably, and against Modell (1990), this view of the drives as mental phenomena that represent somatic processes (see below) and generating affective orientations has been supported by recent neuroscience: “Freud’s insights on the nature of affect are consonant with the most advanced contemporary neuroscience views” (Damasio 1999, 38).

9 Schiller, for instance, employed three different drives: the sense drive [Sachtrieb], the form drive [Formtrieb] and the play drive [Spieltrieb] (Moland 2017). Nietzsche employed dozens: the “drive for knowledge” ([1886] 2014, 6); the “tyrannical drive” ([1886] 2014, 9); “the drive to appropriate and the drive to submit” ([1887] 2001, 118); “our drives of tenderness or humorousness or adventurousness” as well as “of annoyance or combativeness or reflection or benevolence” ([1881] 2003, 119); the Dionysian and Apollonian drives (BT); the “drive for the preservation of the species” ([1887] 2001, 49); “the drive to seek relief for weariness of mind” ([1881] 2003, 542); “the drive to … justice” (HL6); the “drive to doubt, his drive to deny, his drive to prevaricate (his ‘ephectic’ drive), his drive to analyse, his drive to research, investigate, dare, his drive to compare and counter-balance” ([1887] 2013, III:9); the “artistic drive” and the “drive towards truth or injustice” (UM:II, 6) as well as the “historical drive” and the “drive to construct” (UM:II, 7), as well as many others.

10 I note in passing that it is possible Freud was influenced to represent a paucity of drives by Darwin who wrote, in The Descent of Man (1875), of “The fewness and the comparative simplicity of the instincts in the higher animals are remarkable in contrast with those in the lower animals” (67).

11 Some, rejecting the perceived reductionism of Freud’s drive theory, have argued for additional primitive elements of the psyche. Holt (1976), for example, argues that:

It is clinically obvious that sex and aggression, in their many manifestations, are overridingly important; but fear, anxiety, dependence, self-esteem, curiosity, and group belongingness (to name only an obvious handful) cannot validly be reduced to sex and aggression, and are motivational themes the therapist cannot afford to ignore. (169–170)

Alhough Holt’s account is directly opposed to my own in nearly every regard, one may agree that these forces (which Holt refers to as motivations or motivational themes) are primitively intelligible and potentially eligible as “basic” drives.