Well, drives in the Freudian view, are suppose to puss from inside. They dont just activate before certains stimuli but also seek them.

Yes, it is true. Freudian drives include an urge (DRANG) to the goal (ZIEL), which is the satisfaction (BEFRIEDIGUNG), through an object (OBJEKT) in the external environment. Without this object, however, the drive will not achieve its goal, except in the case of auto-erotic drives, the object of which is ego (ICH) or its physical boundaries. The drive also has its source (QUELLE), but it has basically somatic nature. It seems to me that all this can be described by neurobehavioral terminology. Endogenous motivational state (drive) is associated with a tendency to seek (nowadays also called "seeking urge") out specific object (specific to its motivational state, e.g. for hunger it is a source of food) in the external environment (UMWELT).

One of the best papers I've read addressing your question is by Robert Holt:

Article Drive or wish? A reconsideration of the psychoanalytic theor...

I agree with @Michal Patarak that freudian drive ( particularly libido ) can share some features with the neurobiologial formulations of SEEK system. The problem is how sexual arousal can share ( or not share )

some feature with the modern view of human motivation ? Freud believed that libido was a common "currency" of the motivation of a lot of beaviours. But does it happen that in some case there is a sexual arousal and in other cases not ?

@Michel Uebel : well the hydraulic model is difficult to accept and understand today. However there is still something that I feel true. Somewhat our motivations or drives switch their aims and object in the time.

BTW, Freud was one of my best students @ the Mount. However, given his psychosocial context of his day, he was way too preoccupied w/ sex. Did you know, for example, and i am not making this up, he had a long-term affair w/ a sister-in-law!

I believe that we are influenced by some genetic priming. However, I believe that socialization and enculturation are far more potent!

Please see attached article.

Rich

Dear Rich! Why should it not be useful. You have to understand psychoanalytic theory. Think of being hungry or thirsting of being loved...sometimes or NOW. There is a difference. In analytic theory it can and must be expressed. It is an important energetic quality, Especially when we are describing our view of the development of the mind during a therapy or in childhood we need this : DRIVE.

Marita,

Good point. However, as a clinician w/ over 40+ yrs. I treat those w/ serious, persisting/recurrent d/o's, and not the so-called "worried well". And I believe we are much more shaped by nurture. Most experienced clinicians I know use a customized and integrative approach.

I don't mean to be critical because psychoanalysis has its place in treatment and i appreciate your views.

Rich

Thank you Rich! I understand your point. Psychoanalysis is not a nurturing therapy as you now. Not so much a therapy at all as a method giving self understanding, which does the psyche stronger and psychic structures a new possibility to grow...at best. Marita

I'm not sure if this topic is still going, but it came up on my dashboard on Researchgate, and I felt I had something to add. I think that we do need to retain a concept of a quantitative motive force to understand behaviour, as Marita Torsti-Hagman stated above: "Think of being hungry or thirsting of being loved...sometimes or NOW. There is a difference. In analytic theory it can and must be expressed. It is an important energetic quality ..." I did my PhD as a conceptual analysis of Freud's energic theory, and I very much agree that a quantitative expression is unavoidable, though whether it is 'Drive' in the specific sense that Freud described it is more debatable. In my view, the fundamental drive in the mind is a tendency to maintain its organization which imposes a 'force' on the contents of the mind, to push it back towards its attractor states. This is built on the idea of the free energy principle from systems neuroscience, and I've written about this elsewhere.

Thank you for your reply!

Old concepts have their place in our science. And in discussing. Analysts discuss with their concepts therapists with their own, they don't represent the same or similar meaning or contains. There is place for finding the differences.

Thank you all for an interesting discussion

It could perhaps continue - ?

Well, I'll bite. An analogy: a drop of water falls on an uneven surface, and it distributes across that surface in some way. Is the way it distributes across the surface due to the structure of the surface, or due to the nature of the water that drops on it? Well it must be both acting on each other. The same holds true for the structure of a living system and the information that acts on it from its environment. The resulting behaviour of the system is a circular process that unfolds between the information that acts on that system and the structure of that system that acts on the information (this is in essence what the free energy principle says). Now, if I try to only look at one half of that interaction, if I look only at the living system (which is what we are doing), and I ask, how does it influence what the system does, the answer must be that its structure is imposing itself on the system's behaviour. And that is the 'drive' of all living systems, which is the expression of a circular process of self-making (what Humberto Maturana called 'autopoiesis'). And that is exactly what is happening in us - billions of cells each trying to maintain their own organization, each imposing their influence on the rest of the system's behaviour (which is just information to each cell), in a hierarchy, tissues expressing their organization, organs, and yes, SEEKING systems, LUST systems, and CARE systems, expressing their organization (though that is still just a particular level of that hierarchy) and so on. I think thats why we can see something like 'drive' in all living systems whose behaviour we can observe. Of course we might choose to limit our analysis to particular subsystems (which might be necessary) like affective command systems or subjective experiences of needing something intensely (and we always move away from reality to some extent when we do so), but the question still remains, how does that 'thing' (SEEKING, need, anything) drive behaviour or experience, and the answer must still be that the structure that constitutes that particular construct imposes itself on the activity of the whole system, to whatever extent. The tendency to maintain organization is the 'drive' of all living systems.

Yes! We have a construction : id,ego and superego...or do we? The table can become even..the constructions have to develop. The drive will also.

Otherwise: Freud and Minna did not have an affair. Have you seen Freud himself on the film from his home. That type of being...Marita

I'm a Freudian scholar and the drive cashes out in several different ways in Freud that capture important clinical nuances.

There are drives that relate to the id which will show up as idiosyncratic forms of aggression and affection that are found more generally behind emotions. For example, impulses to kill, to behead, to dismember, to cannibalize, to beat up, etc. can often be paired with anger or hatred that was repressed when someone had an ego injury (i.e. socially humiliated, cheated on in a relationship, backstabbed by a friend, etc.)

Then there are the ego and object drives that encompass work life, love life, and friendship. Freud (1913) mentions that “[t]he social instincts, however, are themselves derived from a combination of egoistic and erotic [altruistic] components into wholes of a special kind” (p. 73). These would follow the common language sense of having motivations through wanting to be admired, looked up to, be seen as nice, be seen as interesting, etc. which can be attributed to people. The ego and object drives have often been neglected behind the more straightforward aspects of the self-preservative drive (i.e. think about preserving one's reputation and not just literal hunger- hunger/lust for conquest )

"These instincts [drives] are not always compatible with one another; their interests often come into conflict. Opposition between ideas is only an expression of struggles between the various instincts [drives]. From the point of view of our attempted explanation, a quite specially important part is played by the undeniable opposition between the instincts which subserve sexuality, the attainment of sexual pleasure, and those other instincts which have as their aim the self-preservation of the individual—the ego-instincts [drives]. As the poet has said, all the organic instincts[drives] that operate in our mind may be classified as ‘hunger’ or ‘love’ (Freud, 1910, 213-5)

Then there is the drive as it is part of the repetition-compulsion and the unconscious need for punishment. The "death drive" here is how we repeat ego injuries, or a defensive variation of them, in relationships. For example, a woman can date or marry several men that are physically abusive and can be unconsciously drawn to abusers in order to repeat, a mentor can keep on finding ungrateful proteges, etc. There can also be behavior in which a person keeps on putting themselves into anxiety situations in which they almost die, for example, but get a rush from it, situations in which they procrastinate and get in trouble or lose a job or fail a class (or almost have this happen). These forms of self-sabotage that show up clinically are understood as drives 'beyond the pleasure principle.'

Also, it's important to remember that Freud's use of sexuality is very, very wide and he compares it himself to the Greek use of Eros.

"We are of opinion, then, that language has carried out an entirely justifiable piece of unification in creating the word ‘love’ with its numerous uses, and that we cannot do better than take it as the basis of our scientific discussions and expositions as well. By coming to this decision, psycho-analysis has let loose a storm of indignation, as though it had been guilty of an act of outrageous innovation. Yet it has done nothing original in taking love in this ‘wider’ sense. In its origin, function, and relation to sexual love, the ‘Eros’ of the philosopher Plato coincides exactly with the love-force, the libido of psychoanalysis, as has been shown in detail by Nachmansohn (1915)and Pfister (1921); and when the apostle Paul, in his famous epistle to the Corinthians, praises love above all else, he certainly understands it in the same ‘wider’ sense. But this only shows that men do not always take their great thinkers seriously, even when they profess most to admire them.

Psycho-analysis, then, gives these love instincts the name of sexual instincts, a potiori and by reason of their origin. The majority of ‘educated’ people have regarded this nomenclature as an insult, and have taken their revenge by retorting upon psycho-analysis with the reproach of ‘pan-sexualism’. Anyone who considers sex as something mortifying and humiliating to human nature is at liberty to make use of the more genteel expressions ‘Eros’ and ‘erotic’. I might have done so myself from the first and thus have spared myself much opposition. But I did not want to, for I like to avoid concessions to faintheartedness. One can never tell where that road may lead one; one gives way first in words, and then little by little in substance too. I cannot see any merit in being ashamed of sex; the Greek word ‘Eros’, which is to soften the affront, is in the end nothing more than a translation of our German word Liebe[love]; and finally, he who knows how to wait need make no concessions." (1921, p. 91)

I’ve read that the internet has a way of facilitating people to speak past one another, rather than to one another, and I thought something like that is happening here in this thread.

Since I think the question is important (actually I think it is central) to my understanding of psychoanalysis, I thought I would offer some responses to things people have said here. First, I’d like to summarize the key points offered so far, as I understand them:

-Is a drive a system of neurobehavioural states?

-Its used as a biological concept but is psychologically imperceptible

-Robert Holt said a wish is a more clinically relevant concept

-How is Libido a ‘common currency’?

-A ‘hydraulic model’ is wrong

-Freud had an affair with his sister-in-law

-We are more shaped by nurture (by implication, not our genetic inheritance, which I took to mean the brain one was born with)

-Quantitative terms are necessary

-Psychoanalysts and researchers/theorists (I thought psychotherapists was a typo) don’t need the same language or concepts

-Freudian concepts of drive offer unique perspectives and formulations not available outside of psychoanalysis (a rough summary, I realize)

The first question (Is a drive a system of neurobehavioural states?), seems to me to be a way that a more neuro-minded segment of the psychoanalytic community is moving, which is towards understanding the concept in terms of physiological systems. A good example would be Panksepp’s 7 affective systems, including the seeking system. Actually, this makes a lot of sense. But there are some limitations in looking at it that way.

The first limitation is, what about organisms that don’t have neurophysiological equivalents to the Pankseppian command systems? As I understand it, these are mammalian brain structures – but what about reptiles? In other words, why would it make sense to say that a rabbit has drive, but a lizard not? We could go down through lower and lower orders of living organisms, including for organisms without nervous systems, and argue that they all have ‘drive’ in the sense that inanimate objects definitely dont.

So there is an argument for saying that the concept of a ‘drive’ is in a sense the defining characteristic of all living beings, which Michael Uebel may have been implying by suggesting it has use as a biological concept. Again, I think that Maturana’s concept of autopoiesis and Friston’s free energy principle are the best formulations of drive in this biological sense, but I wont rehash that here. Is it important to understanding ourselves though? I think yes, it would be hard to think how the defining characteristic of life would not be relevant to our self-perception.

The second limitation with equating ‘drive’ with discrete biobehavioural systems such as a Pankseppian commands system is the obvious fact that the activation of these systems are not entirely deterministic over behaviour and subjective experience. They do push our behaviour and experience in particular directions, but clearly they can be distorted, repressed, and shaped, and so on.

This demands that we think of the human being (or organism!) as consisting of a hierarchy of organization, where the activity of a command system occupies a particular level of that organization, which is subject to the activities of ‘superordinate’ levels of organization, such as those which more closely shape conscious experience and our actual behaviour (and may be more clinical relevant as a result).

In this way, Robert Holt’s distinction between a drive and a wish might be understood as phenomena occurring at different levels of organization of the same complex system, which is the person. While I’m not sure, I’m relatively comfortable suggesting that lizards don’t in fact have ‘wishes’ in Holt’s sense, though they may well be said to have drive. Certainly, the command systems influence (and sets constraints upon) the wish, but is not the same thing. Such ‘superordinate’ organization which defines the expression of the drives (and wishes) must surely be largely influenced by ‘nurture’, or learning, Vygotsky’s ‘extracortical’ organization of the brain, to support Richard Kensinger’s point.

However, the ‘wish’ can’t be the common currency behind the variety of human motivation, only a more fundamental level of organization in the human system (such as free energy) could underlie the diversity of human motivation (though do check a very interesting paper on how lust can be a common currency in command systems, together with other Freudian drives – Kirsch, 2019, On the abilities of unconscious Freudian motivational drives to evoke conscious emotions).

And it is quantifiable in the sense suggested by Marita Torsti-Hagman (both intuitively and mathematically as Free Energy, an information theoretic quantity), that does seem to support Freud’s earliest ideas that were ‘hydraulic’ in a sense.

The challenge that is more difficult to answer is Marita Torsti-Hagman’s point that it may really not be necessary to incorporate all of this systems (or perhaps, neurological) thinking into the clinical theory of psychoanalysis, or rather as was suggested, that it is fine for there to be different sets of terms or concepts.

There were several decades over which some of the finest minds in the history of psychoanalysis debated and debated over whether Freud’s energic theory, or quantitative concepts were correct for psychoanalysis. I trawled through this literature for my doctorate, and this thread reminded me strongly of this. The point being offered, that psychoanalysts in practice, may not need the metatheoretical or general psychological theory such as that offered by the energic theory, or what I’m saying here about systems theory and drive, has been suggested strongly by a number of well-known theorists, I remember a paper by Merton Gill where he argued this point articulately.

In short, I must concede that this point of view is correct to a point. If I need a map to get me to my destination, it just needs the landmarks that I’m likely to see, not a faithful rendering of all sorts of extraneous detail. It also doesn’t need to be strictly correct. If my map shows a part labelled as ‘here be dragons’ which on a more accurate map is labelled ‘toxic waste dump’, I’m likely to avoid it either way, and so my map works. Certainly the Freudian map worked so well that people have kept right on using it despite ever more detailed and complex information becoming available over the years. Trevor Pederson wrote eloquently about the contributions the concept of Freudian drive can have, from within its own conceptual frame.

But, I’d like to take the other side of that debate that other psychoanalysts did, which could counter with many points, including the idea that the closer my mental map is to reality, the better I’ll negotiate the terrain, or the closer my interpretation is the complex physical reality of the person, the more likely it is to instigate change. Similarly, if psychoanalysis keeps on using the same concepts and ideas forever, despite the frantic pace of knowledge generation in neuroscience and other fields, it can get left behind, and I do indeed encounter that questions quite often, ‘but isn’t psychoanalysis dead?’

Finally, I don’t know if Freud did have an affair with his sister-in-law, but I will say that I watched a nature program tonight where a huge number of flamingos were doing exactly the same thing to make baby flamingos, so explain that behaviour without a concept of drive!