Epistemophilic instinct

The urge to know and explore. Freud named it the Wisstrieb, the instinct for knowledge, and linked it to children's sexual researches into where babies come from and how the sexes differ. Melanie Klein made it central to early development. In her account it awakens with the early Oedipus conflict, near the end of the first year, and is aimed first at the inside of the mother's body and what the child imagines it holds: the father's penis, babies, excrement. Because it is fused with sadism and with phantasies of forcing a way in, it soon becomes a source of anxiety and guilt. Too much anxiety about what has been attacked or hidden inside can inhibit curiosity, learning and the capacity to think. When the anxiety is worked through, the drive can be sublimated into intellectual interests. Klein set this out in "Early Stages of the Oedipus Conflict" (1928) and her paper on intellectual inhibition (1931).