Drives, part 1 - Freud's Drive Theory with Dr. Aleksandar Dimitrijevic

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one of the basic concepts, especially of Freud's theory that many people even recognize his theory by is at the same time, a suggestion by at least one of our followers. For a topic that we should cover and that's drives, uh, basic concept, basic clinical problem for several decades. Every psycho analyst thought about questions that it started with are not Freud's the, they are present at many places in 19th century, but Freud introduced them into the medical practice.

And made whole school of psychotherapy that revolved around them. We will start now with one general exposition of what Freud thought drives were and a little bit about other people's opinions. And then we'll try to see how he and understood which drives existed, how they functioned and so on. and finally, we'll try to say something about contemporary controversies and how we are trying to, to address this issue today.

So when it comes to Freud, we should actually begin one step before the drives. And that is with Freud's option with his belief that the core effect about our mental life. His conflict Freud. Couldn't think about human mind. That is conflict free. And throughout his intellectual career, he was looking for different answers to the question.

What is it? That is in conflict in the human mind, but there was never any, when it came to this feeling, there's always conflict and there had to be two forces. of approximately equal power that were fighting all the time.

So then the next question was more or less immediately resolved by Freud. He believed that these forces that were in conflict word drives were more of a biological nature than of a psychological nature. and he never believed that the psychological makeup of humans was strong enough to really resist the drives and really at any occasion defend.

So there was something coming up from the biological makeup, from the necessities of life, from life forces. and then you could give it different names, but it was something that you could postpone with. Great difficulty. If at all, that, if not satisfied, you would either physiologically or psychologically suffer.

And so on these biological forces. that just by the way, even English should be called drives, not instincts. Freud believed had several elements that can be distinguished very easily and should be, uh, carefully observed all drives head sources and the source of the drive is somewhere deep. In our organism, it's not a psychological, it's a biological thing.

We are craving for water. We are craving for sleep and so on and so on. And it's not our decision whether we will, or we want at the time. And Freud wrote his papers, his met as psychological papers. So roughly the time of the world war, I. medicine, biology and certain, uh, similar sciences didn't know much about this.

We know a little bit more now, and we can say something about the places in the organism, anatomically physiologically, where this happens in Freud times, these were more, uh, attempts to figure things out that were quite. Uh, still in the dark. The second element of the, of the drive is that it ex exerts pressure.

We recognize drives in our psychological world very clearly because after a certain time there is pressure and we feel discomfort. Um, For instance, the more I'm talking now, as we are recording this, the thirsty I'm getting and with minute and then 10 minutes and half an hour, this thirst is going to become very uncomfortable and will influence my concentration.

I will still be trying to formulate smart sentences in the language that for me is foreign. So requires double, double concentration. but over time, this will be more and more difficult because the drive will be exerting pressure and requiring of me to do something about it. The same with hunger, the same with sleep, the same with sexuality and so on

this pressure, most usually. functions in some sort of a rhythm. So there is some sort of a cycle. Usually people over time get trained that they are hungry a couple of times per day, then we have a meal and then the hunger rises, rises, rise, rises, exerts more and more pressure. Then you have a meal and you return to the zero level where you were before that.

And then over time, it again, starts rising and then again, it declines and so on. And we can recognize this with most people in a very easy way. Most people sleep more or less the same amount of time. And when we meet someone who sleeps four hours every night or not at all, we are puzzled. If not concerned, if meet someone who sleeps 12 hours or six hours per night in six hours in the middle of the day, we are again, concerned.

And similarly with all other drives, there is. we think with every drive its object. So if I'm thirsty, I will not be craving for a book that would be completely ridiculous because books are not objects for thirst with Freud. It's very interesting that he thinks the objects are unimportant. Any object that can satisfy the drive wish is equally good.

So whether I will now drink water or milk or whiskey or whatever for Freud is completely real the same with his belief that the sexual drive does not have a natural object. So any part of the body and any person that can lead to the satisfaction of my drive is equally good. And the same with Rod's belief that babies actually love their mothers because mothers provide the satisfaction of the hunger drive, but which person is going to provide this.

And in what way is completely relevant. only when it repeats and repeats and repeats, the baby starts connecting the satisfaction of the hunger drive and the pleasure that comes with it with a certain person, and this person becomes important. This will change completely in what is called the object relations theory.

Uh, wild Freud was still living.