Drive
drive (French: Trieb, pulsion)
Contents
Sigmund Freud
Drive and Sexuality
Sigmund Freud's concept of the drive (French: Trieb, pulsion) is central to his theory of human sexuality.
Human sexuality consists of a number of partial drives (German: Partieltrieb) arising from the different erogenous zones.
At first these component drives function anarchically and independently (the 'polymorphous perversity' of children), but in puberty they become organised and fused together under the primacy of the genital organs.[1]
Drive and Instinct
According to Freud, human sexuality is not regulated by instincts but by drives.
Lacan follows Freud's distinction between drive (Trieb and instinct (Instinkt).[2]
Instincts are relatively fixed and innate.
Instinct denotes a mythical pre-linguistic need.
Drives are variable, and develop in ways that are contingent on the life history of the subject.
Drive is separate from the realm of biology.
The drive does not refer to "some ultimate given, something archaic, primordial."[3]
The drive is a thoroughly cultural and symbolic construct.
Partial
Lacan argues that the drives are partial.
The drives are partial (in that they represent sexuality partially) (not in the sense that they are parts of a whole).
Drives do not represent the reproductive function of sexuality (but only the dimension of enjoyment).[4]
Lacan rejects the idea that the partial drives can ever attain any complete organisation or fusion.
Lacan identifies four partial drives:
Each of these drives is specified by a different partial object and a different erogenous zone.
Lacan emphasizes the partial nature of all drives, but differs from Freud on two points.
Movement of the Drive
The drive originates in an erogenous zone, circles round the object, and then returns to the erogenous zone.
The drives do not aim at an object but rather circle perpetually round it.
Lacan argues that the purpose of the drive is not to reach a goal (a final destination) but to follow its aim (the way itself), which is to circle round the object.[5]
The function of the drive is not to attain full satisfaction but to return to its circular path.
The real source of enjoyment is the repetitive movement of this closed circuit.
Drive and Desire
The drive is not merely another name for desire: they are the partial aspects in which desire is realised.
Desire is one and undivided, whereas the drives are partial manifestations of desire.
The circuit of the drive is the only way for the subject to transgress the pleasure principle.
Dualism
Freud conceived the dualism of the drives in terms of an opposition between the life drives (Lebenstriebe) ((both the pleasure principle and the reality principle) and the death drives (Todestriebe).
Lacan retains the the basic dualism of Freud's theory of the drives (against the monism of Jung, who argued that all psychic forces could be reduced to one single concept of psychic energy).[6]
Lacan prefers to reconceptualise this dualism in terms of an opposition between the symbolic and the imaginary, and not in terms of an opposition between different kinds of drives.
For Lacan, all drives are sexual drives, and every drive is a death drive.
Since every drive is excessive, repetitive, and ultimately destructive.[7]
Formula
In 1957, in the context of the graph of desire, Lacan proposes the formula (SO D) as the matheme for the drive.
This formula is to be read: the barred subject in relation to demand, the fading of the subject before the insistence of a demand that persists without any conscious intention to sustain it.
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The Drive
The drive for Lacan is not a biological phenomenon but a more complex force with a more subtle role in psychological explanation (Marks, Glowinski, and Murphy 2001, 104). Because words and images are the key to the psyche and we live in a state where our natural engagement with the world, unconstrained by order and responsive to jouissance, has (following the mirror phase) been displaced in favor of a sense of self in relation to others, we are no longer merely ciphers of biology and instincts (albeit at a complex level). The world is a world that has taught me that I too have an image and that I (and mother) live under the name of the father, the absent–present logos arising from the preeminence of the phallus (itself not fully understood). I can never be the phallus and I can never grasp my own imago. For that reason my desire as a human being is always a product of self, the world, and language or signification. The self I want to be I can never be because I cannot know what it is and it is nothing until I make it so (to a plan I do not fully understand). It is in the light of these multiple uncertainties, shifts in signification and reality, and discontinuities, that human psychology articulates itself.
See Also
References
- ↑ Freud, Sigmund. 1905d
- ↑ Lacan, Jacques. Écrits: A Selection. Trans. Alan Sheridan. London: Tavistock Publications, 1977. p.301
- ↑ Lacan, Jacques. The Seminar. Book XI. The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, 1964. Trans. Alan Sheridan. London: Hogarth Press and Institute of Psycho-Analysis, 1977. p. 162
- ↑ Lacan, Jacques. The Seminar. Book XI. The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, 1964. Trans. Alan Sheridan. London: Hogarth Press and Institute of Psycho-Analysis, 1977. p.204
- ↑ Lacan, Jacques. The Seminar. Book XI. The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, 1964. Trans. Alan Sheridan. London: Hogarth Press and Institute of Psycho-Analysis, 1977. p.168
- ↑ Lacan, Jacques. The Seminar. Book I. Freud's Papers on Technique, 1953-54. Trans. John Forrester. New York: Nortion; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. l18-20).
- ↑ Lacan, Jacques. Écrits. Paris: Seuil, 1966. p.848)
