Concept
Drive
In Freud's theory, a constant force arising within the body that presses on the mind for satisfaction, a concept on the frontier between the mental and the somatic. In Triebe und Triebschicksale (1915) Freud gave it four features: a pressure, an aim (satisfaction by removing the stimulation at its source), an object, which is the most variable element, and a bodily source. His classifications changed: first ego drives against sexual drives, and from 1920 life drives against death drives. Strachey's Standard Edition rendered Trieb as 'instinct', a choice later translators and critics have disputed.
- Narrower concepts
- Introduced by
- Sigmund Freud
- Key works
- 2
introduced by
- Sigmund Freud 1905 In the Three Essays Freud introduces the drive (Trieb) as a concept on the frontier between the mental and the somatic, whose object is not fixed in advance. Triebe und Triebschicksale (1915) gives it its classic definition, as a constant pressure with a source, an aim and an object, and lists its vicissitudes.