Article
Instincts and Their Vicissitudes
Triebe und Triebschicksale
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.
What it shows
- 1905
Sigmund Freud introduced Drive
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.