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Eros
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'''Eros''' is the [[Greek language|Greek]] [[word ]] for (especially) romantic or "[[Human sexual behavior|sexual love]]". The term ''[[erotic]]'' is derived from ''eros''.
In [[Sigmund Freud|Freudian]] [[psychology]], '''Eros''', also referred to in [[terms ]] of [[libido]] , [[libidinal ]] [[energy ]] or love, is the [[life ]] [[instinct ]] innate in all [[humans]]. It is the [[desire ]] to create life and favours productivity and [[construction]]. Eros battles against the destructive [[death ]] instinct of [[Thanatos (Freud)|Thanatos]] (death instinct or [[death drive]]). ==def=In ancient Greece the word Eros referred to love and the god of love. In his final theory of the drives, Sigmund Freud made Eros a fundamental concept referring to the life instincts (narcissism and object libido), whose goals were the preservation, binding, and union of the organism into increasingly larger units.
In [[ancient Greece]] the word <i>Eros</i> referred to [[love]] and the [[god]] of [[love]].
In his final [[theory]] of the [[drive]]s, [[Sigmund Freud]] made [[Eros]] a fundamental [[concept]] referring to the [[life instinct]]s ([[narcissism]] and [[object libido]]), whose goals were the [[preservation]], [[binding]], and [[union]] of the [[organism]] into increasingly larger units.
[[Eros]] the unifier is opposed to, and yet was blended into, the [[death instinct]], an [[antagonism|antagonistic]] force leading to the [[destruction]], [[disintegration]], and [[dissolution]] of everything that [[existence|exists]].
"In this way the libido of our [[sexual]] [[instincts]] would coincide with the Eros of the poets and [[philosophers]] which holds all [[living]] things together." <ref>Freud, 1920g, p. 50</ref>
The term <i>[[Eros]]</i>, [[understood]] as a [[life instinct]] [[antagonism|antagonistic]] to the [[death instinct]], appeared for the first [[time]] in <i>Beyond the [[Pleasure]] [[Principle]]</i>, <ref>1920g</ref> where [[Freud]] used it to establish a [[dynamic]] polarity that would define a new [[instinctual]] [[dualism]].
[[Freud]] wrote:
<blockquote>Our speculations have suggested that Eros operates from the beginning of life and appears as a 'life instinct' in opposition to the 'death instinct' which was brought into [[being]] by the coming to life of inorganic substance. These speculations seek to solve the riddle of life by supposing that these two instincts were struggling with each [[other]] from the very first.<ref>p. 61</ref></blockquote>
In this essay Freud refers to the [[doctrine]] of the Greek physician and [[philosopher]] Empedocles of Agrigento (c. 490-430 B.C.E.), for whom the production of all things results from the interplay of two forces, Love and Discord, conceived of as the impersonal forces of attraction and repulsion.
Yet Freud's [[theoretical]] innovation is more than the pure speculations of [[philosophy]], [[biology]], or [[physics]]. Revision of his [[concepts]] was called for by his [[experience]] in [[psychoanalytic]] [[practice]]. He posited within the organism a [[primal]] [[masochism]] derived from the [[action]] of the death instinct to account for certain [[clinical]] problems: [[ambivalence]] in [[affective]] life, nightmares associated with [[traumatic]] [[neurosis]], masochism, and [[negative]] therapeutic reactions.
Freud's uses of the term <i>Eros</i> (86 of 88 occurrences, according to Guttman's <i>Concordance</i>) is contemporary with his final theory of the instincts developed after 1920. The word itself, with its multiple [[meanings]], enabled Freud to combine many things that he had previously separated and contrasted: love between the [[sexes]], [[self]]-love, love for one's [[parents]] or [[children]], "[[friendship]] and love among mankind in general," "devotion to [[concrete]] [[objects]] and abstract [[ideas]]," and [[partial]] sexual [[drives]] (component instincts). This expanded concept of love led Freud to evoke, on several occasions (1920g, 1921c, 1924c, 1925e [1924]), "the all-inclusive and all-preserving Eros of [[Plato]]'s <i>[[Symposium]]</i>."<ref>1925e, p. 218</ref>
Although the concept of Eros, properly [[speaking]], emerged late in Freud's [[work]], this did not prevent him from claiming that all his earlier discoveries [[about]] sexuality can be seen in terms of Eros. [[Psychoanalysis]] showed that sexuality did not conceal "impulsion towards a union of the two sexes or towards producing a pleasurable [[sensation]] in the genitals,"<ref>1925e, p. 218</ref> and that sexuality was thus different from genitality.
Though the term <i>Eros</i> does not appear in the original [[texts]], two [[notes]], one from 1925 in <i>The [[Interpretation]] of [[Dreams]]</i> (1900a) and the other from 1920 in <i>[[Three]] Essays on the Theory of Sexuality</i> (1905d), reinforce the use of "Eros" as a synonym for "sexual" in the discovery of psychoanalysis: "The [[situation]] would be different if 'sexual' was being used by my critics in the [[sense]] in which it is now commonly employed in psychoanalysts—in the sense of 'Eros"' (1900a, note 1925, p. 161). Freud even justified his failure to use the word earlier: "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 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]], then little by little in substance too" (1921c, p. 91). Occurrences of the terms "Eros" (after 1920) and "[[eroticism]]" (after 1894) overlap in Freud's writings without ever leaving the field of sexuality.
Freud early on recognized the erotic [[character]] of [[repressed]] representations that lie at the heart of [[neurotic]] [[symptoms]]. He cites "the [[case]] of a [[girl]], who blamed herself because, while she was nursing her sick [[father]], she had [[thought]] about a young man who made a slight erotic impression on her" (1894a, p. 48), and who is then constrained to treat this unwanted [[representation]] of a sexual nature as if it had "never occurred." Freud conceived [[mental]] [[conflict]] as a [[moral]] conflict in which the troublemaker Eros stirs up trouble in the [[form]] of a [[symptom]]. He saw sexuality as a [[trauma]] that goes far beyond the well-known scenes of sexual [[seduction]]. Eros forces the ego to [[defend]] itself and thus participates in the [[division]] and [[fragmentation]] of the [[psyche]]. Repressed erotic representations later [[return]] in the form of symptoms or compromise [[formations]] that [[substitute]] for sexual [[activity]] or "precipitates of earlier experiences in the sphere of love" (1910a, p. 51). Such instances of deferred or aborted love are remote from sexual attraction and [[genital]] activity. Sexuality [[exists]] from infancy, is fundamentally [[perverse]] and polymorphous, and consists of a bundle of partial sexual drives that seek [[satisfaction]] independently of one [[another]], in autoerotic fashion. The [[oral]] drive, for example, is seen as a mouth that kisses itself.
The 1920 footnote in <i>[[Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality]]</i> [[retroactively]] referring to Eros (1905d, p. 266n) serves Freud's theoretical interests: to recognize [[infantile]] sexuality as something distinct from genitality, to emphasize the diphasic nature of [[sexual life]], and to provide the concept of the drives with a [[mythical]] status, infantile in [[appearance]] and dominated by an ongoing and [[insatiable]] quest. Here Eros appears to conflict with the ego's instinct for self-preservation. The [[Oedipus]] [[complex]] determines the outcome of this conflict through the possibilities it offers for orienting the libido toward a sexual [[object]] (one that is no longer only sexual) by means of the [[phallus]]. The [[Oedipus complex]] is [[responsible]] for ensuring that the [[subject]] becomes [[satisfied]] in love after the reorganization at [[puberty]], when the partial drives (component instincts) are enlisted in the service of an organized genital [[apparatus]]. Failing this, the subject will fall ill unless an alternative object is found through [[sublimation]].
Eros is not only a [[cause]] of symptoms but can also become the means for their relief. The theoretical [[model]] of Eros as healer is beautifully illustrated in <i>[[Delusions]] and Dreams in Jensen's "Gradiva"</i> (1907a [1906]).
Love was also at the center of the psychoanalytic experiment from the time of its initial discovery via [[transference]]. In the middle period of the [[development]] of psychoanalysis (1912-1915), the homage to love in <i>Delusions and Dreams</i> would butt up against its limitations in a theory of transference, which shows love to support [[resistance]] to [[remembering]], and hence to [[analysis]]. Moreover, Freud discovered in cases of sexual [[impotence]] of [[psychological]] origin that a conflict exists between the "affectionate current" and the "sexual current": "Where they love they do not [[desire,]] and where they desire they cannot love" (1912d, p. 183). This [[text]] anticipates Freud's comments in "[[On Narcissism]]: An Introduction" (1914c). In this text, Freud saw the [[narcissistic]] libido as conflicting with erotic love of the object: [[Narcissus]] versus Eros. The ego claims a [[place]] among the sexual objects, and the self-preservation instincts have a libidinal nature. What distinguishes Eros is its link with objects: "A strong egoism is a protection against falling ill, but in the last resort we must begin to love in [[order]] not to fall ill, and we are bound to fall ill, if, in consequence of [[frustration]], we are unable to love" (1914c, p. 85).
<i>Beyond the [[Pleasure Principle]]</i> (Freud, 1920g) overturned these earlier constructions. The theory of a death instinct, which worked in [[silence]], [[forced]] Freud to combine the ego instincts and sexual instincts directed at objects, grouping [[them]] under the umbrella of a single force whose [[goal]] was union: Eros. Such an Eros is no longer a troublemaker, a divisive [[agent]] that disturbs the mental apparatus. It is the [[power]] of creation, of reproduction; it makes [[existence]] possible and postpones the return to an inorganic [[state]]. When discussing the life-preserving sexual instincts (object libido and ego), Freud explicitly refers to the myth of Eros recounted by [[Aristophanes]] in Plato's <i>Symposium</i>. But the life and death instincts rarely come into play in [[isolation]]: They form various amalgams in which each attempts to make use of the other's strength to its own advantage. Freud shows that moral masochism, for example, "becomes a classical piece of evidence for the existence of fusion of instinct. Its [[danger]] lies in the fact that it originates from the death instinct and corresponds to the part of that instinct which has escaped being turned outwards as an instinct of destruction. But since, on the other hand, it has the [[significance]] of an erotic component, even the subject's destruction of himself cannot take place without libidinal satisfaction" (1924a).
In Freud's last work, it is as if the scandal of the discovery of sexuality was [[displaced]] in favor of the theoretical innovation of the death instinct. Eros as the embodiment of Aristophanes' myth or Empedocles' theories appears to get the better of Eros as the embodiment of desire, an Eros whose [[birth]] is given in the myth recounted by Diotima in <i>[[The Symposium]]</i>.
Jacques [[Lacan]] distances, without completely separating, love and desire (Eros). Love is the mirage in which desire is caught. The phallus is the fulcrum between the object that gives rise to desire and the part of the subject, minus [[language]], that is forever lost. "Therefore, to love is to give what one does not have, and we can only love by acting as if we don't have, even if we do" (Lacan, 1991).
==See Also==
* [[Animus-Anima (analytical psychology)]]
* [[Beyond the Pleasure Principle]]
* [[Binding/unbinding of the instincts]]
* [[Civilization and Its Discontents]]
* [[Drive/instinct]]
* [[Genital love]]
* [[German romanticism and psychoanalysis]]
* [[Libido]]
* [[Life instinct (Eros)]]
* [[Marcuse, Herbert]]
* [[Myth]]
* [[Sexuality]]
==References==
<references/>
# [[Freud, Sigmund]]. (1894a). The neuro-[[psychoses]] of [[defence]]. SE, 3: 41-61.
# ——. (1900a). The [[interpretation of dreams]]. SE, 4: 1-338]]
* [[5: 339-625.
# ——. (1905d). Three essays on the theory of sexuality. SE, 7: 123-243.
# ——. (1907a [1906]). Delusions and dreams in Jensen's "Gradiva." SE, 9: 1-95.
# ——. (1914c). On narcissism: An introduction. SE, 14: 67-102.
# ——. (1920g). Beyond the pleasure principle. SE, 18: 1-64.
# ——. (1921c). Group psychology and the analysis of the ego. SE, 18: 65-143.
# ——. (1924a). Letter to Le Disque Vert. SE, 19: 290-290.
# ——. (1924b [1923]). Neurosis and psychosis. SE, 19: 147-153.
# ——. (1924c). The economic problem of masochism. SE, 19: 155-170.
# ——. (1925e [1924]). The resistances to psycho-analysis. SE, 19: 211-222.
# Lacan, Jacques. (1991). Le séminaire. Book 8: Le transfert. Paris: Seuil.
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[[Category:Freudian psychology]]
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