The current status of the psychoanalytic theory of instinctual drives. II: The relation of the drive concept to structures, regulatory principles, and objects

There has been and continues to be some degree of failure to recognize the effects of the introduction of the ego-id-superego model on the drive construct. In particular, some of the criticisms of drive theory fail to take cognizance of the structural position of drives. Drives, as an aspect of id, are more clearly separated from behavior conceptually than many discussions imply. Drive energy is a different concept from drive. Especially in the area of the governance of drives by the regulatory principles of mental functioning some improvement in clarity and utility seems possible through the use of different, more sophisticated models. Difficulties in the concept of objects appear to underlie considerable controversy in psychoanalysis today. I have here attempted to clarify the concept of drive objects, as a step in resolving the broader issues.     

Creative venture and regression. On the films of Andrej Tarkowski

Tarkowski's films are examples of "elliptical" presentation -- a mode originated by Orson Welles' Citizen Kane. The author clarifies the internal dynamics of these film creations.     

On presence in the psychoanalytic relation

This paper discusses presence in the psychoanalytic relation, the analysand’s and the analyst’s. Clinical situations with different qualities of presence will be considered focusing on what kind of interplay between analysand and analyst they may lead to. As examples, I have chosen three different clinical situations: In the first there is an interplay between the analysand’s free associations and the analyst’s ‘evenly suspended attention’. In connection with this I will discuss Bion’s concepts of ‘reverie’ and of ‘O’. In the second there is where the interaction is characterised by what Meltzer calls ‘geographical confusion’. In the third there is a ‘transference delusion’ in the psychoanalysis of breakdown as Winnicott describes it.     

On the form of the relation between response rates in a multiple schedule

Three pigeons received training on multiple variable-interval schedules with brief alternating components, concurrently with a fixed-interval schedule of food reinforcement on a second key. Fixed-interval performance exhibited typical increases in rate within the interval, and was independent of multiple-schedule responding. Responding on the multiple-schedule key decreased as a function of proximity to reinforcement on the fixed-interval key. The overall relative rate of responding in one component of the multiple schedule roughly matched the overall relative rate of reinforcement. Within the fixed interval, response rate during one multiple-schedule component was a monotonic, negatively accelerated function of response rate during the other component. To a first approximation, the data were described by a power function, where the exponent depended on the relative rate of reinforcement obtained in the two components. The relative rate of responding in one component of the multiple schedule increased as a function of proximity to fixed-interval reinforcement, and often exceeded the overall obtained relative rate of reinforcement. The form of the function relating response rates is discussed in relation to findings on rate-dependent effects of drugs, chaining, and the relation between response rate and reinforcement rate in single-schedule conditions.     

Life and death in Freudian metapsychology: A reappraisal of the second instinctual dualism1

In this paper we re‐examine the second instinctual dualism hypothesis introduced by Freud in Beyond the Pleasure Principle. We suggest that the life instinct hypothesis as something opposed to the death instinct does not seem to fit into this theory easily. On the other hand, death instinct turns out to be an internal necessity of Freudian metapsychological theory from the beginning of Freud ’s metapsychological writing. We shall argue, based on the ideas formulated in Beyond the Pleasure Principle and in later metapsychological texts, that Freud could not wholly justify the existence of an opposition and a symmetry between the two classes of instincts. Even though up to his last works Freud held on to this instinctual dualism, again and again his arguments lead to the idea that the life instincts should be regarded, ultimately, as death instincts.     

On the form of learning curves

In a wide variety of learning experiments, cumulated measures of performance turn out to be a power function of practice time or number trials, typically with an exponent between 1 and 2. The effects of various conditions on the course of learning can frequently be described in terms of the two constants of the function.     

Pictures of you: Dot stimuli cause motor contagion in presence of a still human form

In this study, we investigate which visual cues induce participants to encode a non-human motion stimulus in their motor system. Participants performed reach-to-grasp actions to a target after observing a dot moving in a direct or higher-arcing path across a screen. Dot motion occurred in the presence of a meaningless (scrambled human model) stimulus, a still human model, or a human model performing a direct or exaggeratedly curved reach to a target. Our results show that observing the dot displacement causes motor contagion (changes in the height of the observer’s hand trajectory) when a human form was visually present in the background (either moving or still). No contagion was evident, however, when this human context was absent (i.e., human image scrambled and not identifiable). This indicates that visual cues suggestive of human agency can determine whether or not moving stimuli are encoded in the motor system.     

The current status of the psychoanalytic theory of instinctual drives. I: Drive concept, classification, and development

The evolution of Freud's theory of instinctual drives, with the accompanying models of a mental apparatus, is remarkable for its tenacious adherence to addressing the fundamental problems of human psychology, here phrased as the problems of body-mind-environment relationships. The concept of instinctual drives continues to be one of the most pervasive concepts of psychoanalysis, weathering considerable attack over the last several decades, although losing some clarity in the process. I have cited and discussed as basic issues of the concept of instinctual drives: the relationship of observational data and theoretical constructs in psychology; whether our construct of drives is or should be or can be purely psychological; the problem of conceptualizing the ontogenetic origin of mind; the issues of the "force-meaning conjunction" and the problem of psychic energy in psychoanalytic constructs; and the relation of our concept of instinctual drives to the concept of instincts in general. It seems that progress with these fundamental issues might be made by utilizing models that are more homologous with present knowledge in related fields than is Freud's reflex arc model of the nervous system, in order to build a better drive construct within the framework of psychoanalysis. The classification of instinctual drives remains a problem. Clinically, aggression seems to be a factor in conflict, very much like sexuality. Despite widespread acceptance of the idea of aggression as simply parallel to sexuality in all respects, there are major discrepancies. Perhaps aggression cannot be viewed as a drive after all; perhaps our drive construct needs to be modified to accommodate aggression. Certainly, controversy in this area has interfered with the production of good clinical studies which could begin to increase our understanding of aggression and its place in the human personality. The psychoanalytic theory of drive development has probably undergone less change in the last forty years than other aspects of drive theory, although careful observational work has led to alterations of our views of the age of onset of genital awareness, of female sexual development and function, and of the latency period. This is the conclusion of the first of two papers examining the post-Freud development of the theory of instinctual drives in psychoanalysis. The companion paper follows on p. 402 of this issue of The Psychoanalytic Quarterly.