Drive, Overview 487 D

Domestic violence around the world: http://www. in the way of a purely natural aptitude, Hegel someplacesafe.org/DV01.htm reformulates the drive as “quest for reason”; Domestic violence resource center: http://www.dvrc-or. org/domestic/violence/resources/C61/ Schopenhauer and Nietzsche then again interpret The Duluth model: http://www.theduluthmodel.org/about/ the drive towards the end of the nineteenth index.html century as the “dark side of human nature.” National online resource center on violence against The concept is introduced into medical discourse women: http://www.vawnet.org/research/ Healy, K., Smith, C., & O’Sullivan, C. (1998). Batterer by leading sexologists, whereas the conceptuali- intervention: Program approaches and criminal justice zation of a “sex drive” goes back to Albert Moll strategies. National Institute of Justice. Retrieved Feb- (1897). D ruary 20, 2013, from https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles/ 168638.pdf Klein, A. R. (2009). Practical implications of current domestic violence research: For law enforcement, Definition prosecutors and judges. National Institute of Justice. Retrieved February 20, 2013, from http://www.nij. The drive is one of the central concepts of Freud- gov/topics/crime/intimate-partner-violence/practical- implications-research/welcome.htm ian psychoanalysis. It is often – and not least because of the false translation in the first stan- dard edition by Strachey – mistaken for instinct. However, the reference of the drive to the biolog- ical is rather unclear. The drive seems to be more Drive, Overview of a heuristic device that accounts for both the corporeality of human experiences and impulses Markus Brunner1 and Julia Konig€ 2 and, when focusing specific “drive fates,” their 1Sigmund Freud University, Vienna, Austria biographical emergence. In the interweaving of 2Department of Education, Goethe University, nature and life history in the drive concept, psy- Frankfurt a.M., Germany choanalytically oriented critical (social) psychol- ogists saw the opportunity to engage with the concrete mediation of nature and society in the Introduction (bourgeois) subject.

The notion of the drive has a long history, even though it is nowadays mostly identified as Keywords a psychoanalytic concept. In politika Aristotle speaks of two basic drives – one for procreation Psychoanalysis; metapsychology; Freud; sexuality and another aiming for self-preservation (ca. 335 BC, I 2, 1252a27–30) – to explain the order and development of human social groups in relation Traditional Debates to the family/household (oikos) and to slavery. This figure is picked up by medieval clerics in the In Freud’s work the drive concept first appears in discussion of sexual practice and the meaning of the Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality marriage. While sexual lust as an end in itself (1905). In his seduction theory, developed in would clearly lead into peril, as Thomas Aquinas Studies on Hysteria (Freud/Breuer, 1895), Freud argues in Summa Theologiae, the longing for traced the symptoms of his patients to memories begetting children is enrooted within a natural of early childhood sexual abuse that were aroused human drive and therefore to be endorsed in puberty and, in the light of blossoming sexual- (written 1265–1274, II-I, q. 94, a. 2). In German ity, were then reinterpreted and thereby taking Idealism the notion of the drive becomes up a horrifying meaning, subsequently leading a contested concept: While Kant discusses deter- to illness. In 1897 he retracted this model of minants and motives of human agency as drives trauma theory, not only since he doubted the D 488 Drive, Overview prevalence of sexual violations of children, but the specific “drive fates” – that is, the object moreover because he realized that in the uncon- relations developed during the course of life as scious “one cannot distinguish between truth and well as the fantasies, wishes, and fears captured fiction that has been cathected with affect” and efficacious within. (Freud, 1985, p. 264). Thus, he developed the Freud’s drive theory can be divided into three conception of unconscious fantasies and wishes phases, each of which centers on a dualism of the (see esp. Freud, 1900), which from 1905 on he drive. At the beginning, the ego- or self- placed in the context of his new theory of infan- preservation drive embodied by the reality prin- tile sexuality, inextricably linked with drive the- ciple is opposed to the sexual drive. The latter is ory. From then on, Freud focused on the conflicts described as “polymorphously perverse” (1905, of drives, which arose in individual psychosexual p. 191) – that is, it strives at unlimited forms of development and were seen as a causal force of pleasure – and its energy is called “libido.” symptoms. With the introduction of narcissism (1914), inex- Predecessors of the drive concept are, on the tricably linked to the idea of the ego-drive arising one hand, “inner stimulations” that the “psycho- via a libidinous “cathexis” (libidinal investment) logical apparatus” has to manage or “bind” (see of the ego, the former antipode dissolves. Drive Freud 1895) and, on the other hand, the theory in this phase tends towards monism, as the concept of unconscious wishes emphasized in new dualism between narcissistic and object The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), which func- libido is false insofar as the two poles can tion as the distinguishing “[driving] force[s] of the morph into one another. Ultimately, Freud estab- dream” (p. 561). The drive is not simply a somatic lishes a new polarity between the life-drive or force. Rather, Freud periodically reconceptualizes Eros that strives for bonding and the death-drive the relationship between somatic and psychic or Thanatos aiming at the destruction of bonds moments of the drive: at times it is imputed to (see 1920). In fact the latter turns against the ego biology and merely represented in the psychic itself, yet it can also be led outwards and express (1915a, p. 109); at times it is itself the psychic itself as “destructive drive.” representative of a somatic source of stimulus Laplanche and Pontalis (1967) point out that (1905, p. 167); and ultimately it is articulated as some contradictions in the drive concept can be “a concept on the frontier between the mental and resolved through the basic distinction between the somatic” (1915b, 121f). the dynamics of the bodily needs Freud termed In Instincts and Their Vicissitudes (1915b), “self-preservation drive” and the “actual” drive, Freud differentiates between the drive’s source, “sexual” in the broad Freudian sense, operating in pressure, aim, and object. The source is the mode of pleasure and unpleasure. The former a bodily situation of tension that imposes has a clear goal and rather corresponds to an a “demand for work” (p. 122) on the mind, instinct, whereas the latter arises, according to whereby a quantitative, economic moment – or Freud, from “anaclisis” (attachment) on the rather a pressure – is introduced. As opposed to relief of bodily urges – so to speak, as their the notion of instinct, for which an aim and object “by-product” (1905, p. 233) – and is tremen- are pregiven, Freud shows how variably and arbi- dously variable with respect to goal and object. trarily the choice of object proceeds. Accord- All his life Freud came back to the question of ingly, the aim, which is sometimes articulated the drive’s somatic foundation, hereby often refer- statically as “the removal [or rather: sublation] ring to physiological and biological discourses, as of this organic stimulus” (1905, p. 167), can the attempt to biologically root the new dualism of always change along with the chosen object and drives in Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920) the relation towards it. Thus, in his case analyses shows. But then, Freud himself stressed the spec- and considerations on the emergence of symp- ulative moment and depicted the theory of drives toms, character structures, or slips, Freud does self-critically as “our mythology”: Drives “are not deal with the “drive” as such but rather with mythical entities, magnificent in their Drive, Overview 489 D indefiniteness” (Freud, 1933, p. 94). This again individualize and theoretically subjectivize social justifies a reading of the Freudian drive as conflicts, it is strikingly often Freud’s sophisti- a heuristic instrument to explore the secrets of cated definition of the drive – as concept on the the soul. frontier between the mental and the somatic – that The development of Freudian theory and is dropped in favor of a simplistic endogenic or, especially the narcissism concept cannot be con- more often, an entirely exogenic approach to ceived without the great conflicts with his (sexual) socialization. followers and colleagues Alfred Adler and Carl One of these attacks questions Freud’s dis- Gustav Jung that led to factions and the founding avowal of the early seduction theory that had D of new schools. While the rivals inspired Freud’s exclusively built upon the assumption of early thinking with their criticism, his new concepts experiences of sexual abuse and had later been were concurrently directed decisively against revised, as Freud was more interested in “abbreviations” and “adulteration” of Freudian the transformative power of infantile and adult knowledge. Adler criticized Freud’s concentra- fantasies. In the 1920s Sandor Ferenczi deci- tion on the sexual and his theory of the sively returned to the idea of neurotic symptoms unconscious. According to Adler’s ego psychol- being the outcomes of early experiences of abuse ogy, the sexual is a secondary phenomenon: (see esp. 1932) and implicitly accused Freud of pivotal instead is an innate physical inferiority having underestimated these due to his focus on of the human being that is compensated by drive dynamics. The consequent conflict between a drive for power, which takes the sexual into its Freud and Ferenczi was rediscovered half service. Jung goes another way. He adheres to a century later by Jeffrey Masson (1984), Alice the concept of libido, which he extends and Miller (1981) and others, who then pled to dis- desexualizes at the same time: for him, the libido card the theory of infantile sexuality in favor of is “the psychic energy” in general and encom- a pure trauma theory. Against their polemic – passes everything that grows out of biological Freud would have denied and thereby concealed needs. As opposed to Freud’s extension of the the reality of sexual abuse by reframing the concept of sexuality to a general principle of existing sexual violence as mere phantasy – can lust, Jung limits the sexual to the moment of be emphasized that, firstly, Freud never denied procreation. He rejects the idea of an infantile the influence of traumatic events but rather saw sexuality, which he understands as a retrojection these as one moment in a complementary series of adult sexuality onto a presexual phase. This that led to symptoms. Secondly, Ferenczi saw his extended libido is supported by a whole range of own analyses as a supplement to the Freudian “natural needs” that are ultimately founded in an knowledge of infantile fantasy activity and esoteric idea of the unconscious embedded in certainly not as a replacement. what he called “ethnic souls” [“Volkerseelen”]€ Another critique, brought on by the protago- and archetypes as part of human nature. nists of Freudo-Marxism, was directed against naturalizing and ontologizing tendencies in Freudian theory, which, they held, should be his- Critical Debates toricized. Otto Gross traced the gender-specific inner-psychological conflicts back to repressive Since Freud’s establishment of the drive concept bourgeois sexual morality and patriarchal family in psychoanalytic theory and the first schisms structures. In the context of a Marxist class following the contentions with Adler and Jung, analysis, Wilhelm Reich also located the nuclear this pivotal concept has been criticized from sev- family and the individual socialized within as the eral theoretical as well as political perspectives. historical product of bourgeois-capitalist society. In the early feminist critique of the patriarchal Both proclaimed that the various forms of per- bias in Freud’s concept of the bourgeois family as verse, chaotic, and threatening sexual drives dis- in Leftist critiques of Freud’s tendency to covered by Freud were the effects of a repressive D 490 Drive, Overview society, covering primordial “drives of self-devel- of the Freudian concept of the drive in his opment.” Yet, via this conception of a conflict- Koje`ve-inspired Hegelian reformulation of drive free, fundamentally “good” human nature, these theory. Lacan philosophically reconfigures the proponents ensnared themselves in even stronger drive as a both cultural and symbolic construct. ontologies or biologism than Freud himself. In this concept the drive does not aim at its object, A development into this direction can be found which can never be reached anyway, because in Erich Fromm’s work, too. While he captured it is always constituted in the mode of the authority-bound personality structures as spe- “afterwardness.” Instead the desired object is end- cific “drive fates” brought forth by authoritarian lessly encircled. Among the feminist philosophers family structure in his early work, he later turned and psychoanalysts who followed Lacan in his from drive theory and replaced it with the concep- Hegelian reformulation of drive theory, Luce tion of general human needs to which a society Irigaray extrapolated the problem of Lacan still should adjust itself. It is this abandonment of drive ontologizing sex differences with special verve. theory by Fromm and other so-called Neo- One of the most recent debates on the subject Freudians such as Karen Horney or Harry Stack was instigated by Axel Honneth’s effort to revive Sullivan that led to the so-called culturism debate the relation between psychoanalysis and the between them and the representatives of critical Frankfurt School, which Habermas had theory, first and foremost Theodor W. Adorno and dismissed. But then, Honneth’s revision of psy- Herbert Marcuse. choanalysis included to – again – discard drive From a feminist perspective, Horney theory altogether by proposing a “primary inter- especially criticizes the privileging of the male subjectivity” instead of the Freudian “primary sexual development in Freudian theory and narcissism” and by arguing that object relations develops a concept of an innate femininity theory would be intermediated best with his instead. With this she is paying a high price, as Hegelian approach of a theory of recognition. she drops back behind Freud’s insight into human This intersubjective turn was criticized sharply bisexuality with its arbitrariness concerning the by Joel Whitebook (2001), who insisted on the sex drive’s aim and object. Nevertheless she is antagonistic relation of (first) nature and social shedding light upon the implicit phallocentrism forms of interaction. inherent on the psychoanalytic theory of feminin- All in all it can be observed that similar figures ity. Similar to tendencies observed in Freudo- have reappeared in the debates on the psychoan- Marxist arguments, the debate around the ques- alytic concept of the drive during the last century. tion: “Is woman born or made?” (Ernest Jones) Recurring arguments have been revised, eventually slid at this early stage into biologism processed, and refined, while the question still by stressing innate (gender) dispositions, as Juliet circles around the problem of how to understand Mitchell (1974) points out. The question is later the relationship between the mental and the famously addressed by Simone de Beauvoir in somatic in Freudian drive concept. While the The Second Sex (1949), though she gets to a most first critiques of Jung and Adler took two funda- different conclusion than the enquirer. mentally different directions (folksy esotericism In the following phase of discussion on drive of the ontologized archetypes on the one side and theory, its biologist tendencies are on the other an ego psychology stressing the problematized. The two most prominent critics conscious abilities and as consequential effects in this regard are Jurgen€ Habermas and Jacques an extended social agency of the ego at cost of Lacan. While the former interprets psychoanaly- the recognition of unconscious dynamics), the sis as reflexive methodology, thereby emptying following criticism is staged between the poles psychoanalytic theory of its content matter – of biologizing and sociologizing arguments. while still adhering to an impulsive basis on Representatives of Critical Theory have instead human nature – the latter maintains the centrality stressed the dialectics of nature and society, Drive, Overview 491 D which Adorno, Marcuse up to Whitebook see “General Theory of Seduction,” which is based represented within the constitutional maladjust- on the following idea: in the interaction with an ment of the human subject. As natural human infant the adult care takers also address it with potentials never fully merge within the social unconscious fantasies. Thereby, they implant order – especially in the given one – Adorno “enigmatic messages” into the child, which pro- (1952, 1955) criticized Neo-Freudian thinkers voke a “translation,” a psychic bond, that can as Fromm, Horney, and Sullivan for taking only ever partially succeed, because of the infants the critical sting from psychoanalysis by inadequate translation codes but also because the excommunicating the drive from their neo- messages (as compromise structures of conscious D conventional sociologized psychoanalysis. and unconscious wishes) are themselves contra- At last we would like to point out two dictory. The parts of the message that remain reformulations of drive theory that seem to untranslated constitute the unconscious still address its core in a promising way for further aiming for further translations. New translations research: we hereby refer to the work of Alfred continually arise in the course of psychic devel- Lorenzer and Jean Laplanche. opment – with the aid of new translation codes. Lorenzer fully recognizes the potential of In Laplanche’s theory the “demand for work” Freud’s concept of the drive on the frontier on the psychical no longer comes from somatic between the mental and the somatic and strives sources within but rather from without, as the to critically acknowledge the Freudian biologism enigmatic message from another person. The dia- instead of leaving it aside. To decipher the con- lectic of enigmatic message and subsequent stitution of the drive as both social and natural, he translation/repression always already takes delineates a historic-materialist theory of social- place in the cultural field that forms the message ization (see esp. Lorenzer, 1972, 1981)by itself and above all the process of translation. retracing how the experience of the infant consti- tutes itself in a bodily mediated process of inter- action, starting as an intrauterine interplay of two References organisms. These concrete, individual but also culturally mediated interactions leave “memory Adorno, T. W. (1952). Die revidierte Psychoanalyse. In traces” (Freud), which Lorenzer theoretically Gesammelte Schriften (Vol. 8, pp. 20–41). Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp. reformulates as “interactionforms.” They ini- Adorno, T. W. (1955). Sociology and psychology I. New tially manifest themselves pre-symbolically, Left Review, 46 (1967), 67–80 & Sociology and namely, “sensual-organismically,” as body, but psychology II. New Left Review, 47(1966), 79–97. also function as “concepts of life” and are even- Aquinas, T. (written 1265–1274). Summa Theologiae. London: Blackfriars 1966–1974. tually complemented by “sensual-symbolic” and Aristotle (ca. 335 BC): Politika [Politics]. In J. Barnes “symbolic linguistic” interactionforms, whereas (Ed.), The complete works of Aristotle. The revised the former represent pre-linguistically symboli- Oxford translation (Bollingen Series) (Vol. 2). zations (e.g., the Freudian cotton reel) and the Princeton: Princeton University Press. de Beauvoir, S. (1949). The second sex. New York: Alfred latter signify language. A. Knopf, 1954. Thus, in Lorenzers theory the drive is Ferenczi, S. (1932). The confusion of tongues between deciphered as structure of interactionforms, adults and children. The language of tenderness and of more specifically, as “matrix” of sensual practice passion. International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 30, 225–230. 1949. always encompassing the “already realized inner Freud, S. (1900). The interpretation of dreams. In Stan- nature” of the subject, which then belongs no dard edition (Vol. IV & V). London: The Hogart Press more to an “historical beyond” of an archaic and the Institute of Psychoanalysis. nature anymore (see Lorenzer 1980, p. 332 f.). Freud, S. (1905). Three essays on the theory of sexuality. In Standard edition (Vol. VII, Laplanche (1999, 2007) takes up a radical pp. 125–245). London: The Hogart Press and the decentering of the concept of drive in his Institute of Psychoanalysis. D 492 Drug Prevention

Freud, S. (1914). On Narcissism. In Standard edition (Vol. XIV, pp. 67–102). London: The Hogart Press Drug Prevention and the Institute of Psychoanalysis. Freud, S. (1915a). Repression. In Standard edition (Vol. XIV, pp. 146–158). London: The Hogart Press Daniel Sanin and the Institute of Psychoanalysis. Clinical Psychologist and Drug Prevention Freud, S. (1915b). Instincts and their Vicissitudes. In Professional, Vienna, Austria Standard edition (Vol. XIV, pp. 111–140). London: The Hogart Press and the Institute of Psychoanalysis. Freud, S. (1920). Beyond the pleasure principle. In Stan- dard Edition (Vol. XVIII, pp. 7–64). London: The Introduction Hogart Press and the Institute of Psychoanalysis. Freud, S. (1933). New introductory lectures. In Standard Edition (Vol. XXII). London: The Hogart Press and “Truly meaningful prevention means building the Institute of Psychoanalysis. a just society. It means reducing poverty, the Freud, S. (1895). Project for a scientific psychology. stresses of injustice, the loneliness in a society In Standard edition (Vol. I, pp. 281–391). London: based on consumerism,” says George Albee The Hogart Press and the Institute of Psychoanalysis. Freud, S. (1985 [1887–1904]). The complete letters of (2010: 99). This is a rather radical notion of pre- Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess, 1887–1904. vention. The reality looks quite otherwise, alas. In Cambridge: Belknap/Harvard University Press. general, prevention is seen as something benign Freud, S., & Breuer, J. (1895). Studies on hysteria. In and innocent, only wanting something good to Standard edition (Vol. II). Laplanche, J. (1999). Essays on otherness. London/New happen or develop. But from a critical perspective York: Routledge. prevention must also be seen as a regulating and Laplanche, J. (2007). Freud and the sexual. Essays disciplining strategy that ensures that the subjects 2000–2006. New York: International Psychoanalytic monitor themselves and others according to Books, 2011. Laplanche, J., & Pontalis, J.-B. (1967). The language of established and dominant categories. psychoanalysis. London: The Hogarth Press, 1973. Lorenzer, A. (1972). Zur Begrundung€ einer materialistischen Sozialisationstheorie. Frankfurt am Main, Germany: Suhrkamp. Definition Lorenzer, A. (1981). Das Konzil der Buchhalter. Die Zerstorung€ der Sinnlichkeit. Eine Religionskritik. “Prevention” means the forestalling of something € Frankfurt am Main, Germany: Europaische unwanted: a defined problem should not even Verlagsgesellschaft. Lorenzer, A., & Gorlich,€ B. (1980). Die Sozialit€at der occur. In order to avoid the realization of the Natur und die Naturlichkeit€ des Sozialen. Zur unwanted event (e.g., addiction, accidents, dis- Interpretation der psychoanalytischen Erfahrung eases, calamities, etc.), certain measures have to jenseits von Biologismus und Soziologismus. In Id & be taken. These measures can target people or A. Schmidt (Eds.), Der Stachel Freud. Beitr€age und Dokumente zur Kulturismus-Kritik (pp. 297–349). structures (e.g., urban planning, architecture, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1980. social services, employment). When measures Masson, J. (1984). The Assault on truth. Freud’s suppres- target people, they could target entire sion of the seduction theory. New York: Farrar Straus populations, certain groups, or individuals. In & Giroux. Miller, A. (1981). Thou shalt not be aware. Society’s the case of drug prevention, classic measures betrayal of the child (p., 1984). New York: Farrar are the information about postulated risks of Straus Giroux. drug use, the promotion of social skills (e.g., Mitchell, J. (1974). Psychoanalysis and feminism. Freud, communication), and the promotion of psycho- Reich, Laing and women. New York: Pantheon. Moll, A. (1897). Untersuchungen uber€ Libido sexualis. logical skills (e.g., empathy) (cf. EMCDDA, Berlin, Germany: Fischer’s Medizinische 2008: 24 ff). Buchhandlung. H. Kornfeld. The term “drugs” comes from the Dutch word Whitebook, J. (2001). Mutual recognition and the work of “droog” which means dry or dried. Originally the the negative. In W. Rehg & J. Bohman (Eds.), Plural- ism and the pragmatic turn: The transformation of word was used to refer to dried substances, which critical theory. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2011. were used as medical powders. Today, in the