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.
Development
1905
introduced by Sigmund Freud
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.
In Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905);Instincts and Their Vicissitudes (1915)
Relations
- 1905 introduced by Sigmund Freud
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.
Works
- 1905
Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality
Freud's three essays, published by Deuticke in 1905, deal with the sexual aberrations, with infantile sexuality and with the transformations of puberty. Together they argue that the sexual drive is present from infancy, that it is made up of component drives bound to erotogenic zones, and that it reaches its adult genital form only through a course of development. Later editions added an account of the pregenital organisations of the libido.
- 1915
Instincts and Their Vicissitudes
The first of Freud’s metapsychological papers of 1915. It defines the drive as a concept on the frontier between the mental and the somatic, the psychical representative of stimuli arising within the organism, and distinguishes its pressure, aim, object and source. Freud keeps the dualism of ego drives and sexual drives, and describes four vicissitudes the drives may undergo: reversal into the opposite, turning round upon the subject’s own self, repression and sublimation. He illustrates the first two with the pairs sadism and masochism and scopophilia and exhibitionism, and ends with a study of love and hate.
See also
People
References
- Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality1905Evidence for a relation
- Instincts and Their Vicissitudes1915Evidence for a relation