Chapter 4 - Drives
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 September 2023
Summary
After the biological turn of the Fliess years, the key word in psychoanalysis is no longer “trauma” but “drive.” The ultimate cause of neurotic disorders is no longer to be found in an external accident but in internal, hereditary instincts that repeat, in a compulsive and reflex way, the history of life and the species. As a result, everything that was previously described in terms of neuro-physio-psychological conflicts (desire/defense, will/counter-will, repression/return of the repressed, etc.) is henceforth interpreted as expressing conflicts between biological drives: sexual drive (reproductive instinct)/ego drive (self-preservation instinct); object (erotic) libido/ego (narcissistic) libido; and finally, life drive/death drive, Eros/Thanatos. Freud’s metapsychology is a speculative metabiology.
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- Freud's ThinkingAn Introduction, pp. 90 - 123Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2023