Instincts / Drves

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Instincts / Drves
Civilization/Happiness
Nature of Happiness
Paths to Happiness
Civilization / Aggression
Civilization/Eros

 

  1. As he admits in Civilization and Its Discontents, Freud’s theory of the instincts is both indispensable to his overall theory and yet also was problematic for him. He revised this theory from time to time.
    1. We can somewhat artificially distinguish between his early and late theory.
    2. Freud was aware of one dramatic change in his theory over time, the replacement of the hunger (later renamed ego-instincts) with the death (or aggressive) instinct.
    3. Yet, along with this change, I would suggest that Freud also revises his understanding of the sex or erotic instinct.
      1. However he was not quite aware of how dramatically he might have revised this aspect of his theory.
      2. I suggest some reasons for Freud’s reluctance to recognize this below.
  2. Freud’s Earlier Theory
    1. Freud posits two instincts:
      1. Hunger
        1. Desire to live.
        2. Expressed in efforts to gain material goods necessary to live.
      2. Sex
        1. Desire to reproduce life.
        2. Expressed also love.
    2. The instincts are conceived of as primarily bodily in nature. This is attractive to Freud for a number of reasons.
      1. Bodily desires are universal in human beings and higher animals.
      2. Bodily desires seem more amenable to scientific understanding than higher desires.
    3. Problems with earlier theory: can we understand the transformations of sexual desire?
      1. Sublimation
        1. Sublimation, or intellectual and creative work is supposed to satisfy our sexual desire.
        2. But it is difficult to see how intellectual and creative can satisfy a desire for bodily pleasure.
      2. Love
        1. While sexuality is often a main expression of love, it is also difficult to see why love is a way to satisfy bodily desire.
        2. While we sometimes think of sex and love as intrinsically connected, we also know that:
          1. People can love others in a non-sexual way.
          2. People can have sexual pleasure with those they do not love.
      3. The oedipal complex
        1. As we shall in other parts of these notes, Freud supposes that young children have desires for an exclusive relationship with their opposite sex parent.
        2. Yet, while there is undoubtedly a physical component to this relationship, that is not the only or main way in which children express their oedipal desires.
        3. This suggests that erotic desires are not fundamentally bodily in nature.
  3. Freud’s Later Theory
    1. Death / aggression replaces hunger/ the ego-instincts
      1. This is a desire for separation and distinction.
        1. This is a desire to be separate from world
          1. Too be an individual, distinct from the rest of the world
          2. To be invulnerable to the world
        2. How is this instinct expressed
          1. To be withdrawn from the world so that it cannot hurt us.
          2. To be in control of the world, to master the world.
            1. Even to destroy the world.
        3. Why does Freud call this the death instinct
          1. The death instinct most commonly seen when it is expressed outwards as an aggressive or destructive instinct.
          2. Psychoanalysts since Freud have had trouble making much sense of the death instinct and think of it as mainly a aggressive instinct. But there may well be some justification for it.
            1. Death makes us distinct as much or more than our individual souls or minds.
              1. If we lived forever, we would not have to choose to become one kind of person or another.
              2. That we are mortal guarantees the distinctness of our lives.
            2. To become separate from the world is product of consciousness without which we would not know that we would die.
              1. Animals don’t fear death
              2. Animals don’t conceive of themselves as separate from nature.
                1. Indeed, they don’t conceive of themselves as anything.
    2. Life / eros
      1. This drive is a desire for unity
        1. For union with the world
          1. Merging with the world
        2. How is this drive expressed? In
          1. seeking to be loved
          2. seeking to be protected
          3. seeking to feel at home
          4. seeking to be satisfied
    3. On the new theory of the drives, human drives are not primarily bodily in nature but aim at creating a certain relationship between an individual and the world around him.
      1. Freud seeks to understand these two drives as two fundamental biological processes.
        1. Although it is difficult to understand how a biological instinct to death would arise through an evolutionary process.
        2. We can certainly
      2. We might understand the two drives as resulting, in part, both from the uncertainty and anxiety that arises as a human being comes to recognize that he or she is distinct from the world.
        1. One reaction is to try to cling to the world, to join with the world so as to continued to be cared for by the world (or by the mother and father.) This is the erotic drive.
        2. Another reaction is to try to gain power over the world, to master it. This is the aggressive drive.
          1. How can we understand this as a death instinct?
      3. Drive for unity with and control over the world have their analogues in higher animals, who may seek to be cared for by a parent or who seek control over part of their world.
        1. But the importance of these aims is much greater for human beings, since we recognize our tenuous state in the world.
    4. How the new theory of instincts solves problems of the old theory.
      1. Why sublimation satisfies instincts?
        1. If we understand the drives in this new way, then creative artistic and intellectual work can be seen to satisfy our drives.
          1. When we create art works or scientific theories, we gain some power over the world.
            1. We manipulate aspects of the world in our artworks.
            2. We interrogate nature and invent ways of account for it in our scientific theories.
              1. And we sometimes use these theories to change the world.
          2. When we create art works or scientific theories, we also create a sense of wholeness or unity with the world.
            1. We draw upon familiar objects and patterns in the world in making art. And we imbue these objects and patterns with our own ideas and goals. Artistic creativity draws upon features of the world that are admired and that win our gratitude. And we make the world more attractive to us, more of a home to us, by creative art work.
            2. We discover and come to understand the world through scientific activity. Understanding gives a sense of connection to something beyond us and a sense of comfort in gaining such understanding.
      2. Why sexuality satisfies instincts.
        1. Sexuality satisfies the erotic desire by giving a sense of closeness and connection to the world. Sexual pleasure makes the world seem good, attractive, welcoming, caring.
        2. Sexuality satisfies the aggressive desire as well. This is most obvious in sadism and masochism. But it is evident, as well, when we try to give others sexual pleasure.
      3. Why is sexuality so important to us on this second theory?
        1. If, on the first theory of the instincts, the importance of sexuality is obvious and its transformation unclear, on the second theory the importance of sexuality is not quite so clear.
        2. However, on Freud’s second theory, we can understand why Sexuality is likely to be a central way for us to satisfy our instincts / drives.
          1. The first pleasures we get, and try to attain, are bodily pleasures.
            1. These experiences provides a model, for us, of ways of satisfying our instincts.
          2. The great pleasures of sexuality, including but not limited to orgasm, are powerful ways of satisfying our instincts as adults.
    5. Reasons to support the second theory over the first one.
      1. While our instincts can be satisfied through sexuality, the second theory makes it easier to understand why sexual desire is highly various from one person to another and from one time to another.
        1. This is more difficult to understand on the first theory.
          1. For, on that first theory, sexuality is a dominant, pressing desire leading, directly or indirectly, to most of our actions. But it does not seem to be the case for all or even most human beings. Rather, our experience suggests that the desire for physical sexual pleasure is more limited and more variable than Freud sometimes recognizes.
            1. The desire for sex does not seem to be nearly as recurrent or as powerful, for example, as the desire for food.
              1. There is reason to believe that sexual activity was much more limited in other times and places in human history.
            2. Human beings do things to stimulate sexual desire, such as dress in certain ways, fantasize, look at pornography.
              1. If sexuality were as powerful as Freud says, it is hard to believe this is necessary.
            3. If the desire for physical pleasure were the primary aim of human beings, why is sexuality so bound up with our other feelings for human beings?
              1. Why do people generally fantasize about other people when they masturbate if physical pleasure were the main aim of sexuality?
          2. Freud would have to explain the variation in sexual mainly in terms of repression.
            1. But such repression should have negative repercussions for human happiness.
              1. And it is by no means obvious that the extent of human happiness very closely varies with how much sex people have.
        2. On the second theory, we can more easily understand variation in sexual desire and action because sexuality is not the sole or only way in which the erotic and aggressive desires can be expressed.
          1. How sexual we are would depend upon the extent to which we direct our instinctual satisfaction towards sexuality.
          2. And that would vary
            1. with the desires and beliefs we have been socialized to hold as well as the practices of our community.
            2. With our personal circumstances.
              1. Whether we have available sexual partners
              2. Whether we are in love.
                1. There does seem to be a close connection between falling in love and an increase in sexual desires.
    6. Freud’s ambivalence between the two theories.
      1. While he supports the second theory rather than the first, it is not clear that Freud recognized that, on the second theory, sexuality is not as important as he had imagine.
      2. My guess is that, to recognize this feature of his own theory, Freud would have had to qualify two other ideas that were important to him.
        1. That sexual dissatisfaction is the main source of neurosis
        2. That restrictions on sexuality as a main source of dissatisfaction in civilization.
      3. Both of the ideas can be supported, in a fashion, with the second theory of the instincts. (We explore the second idea in other parts of these notes.) But they do not quite have the same force as they would if Freud’s first theory were true.
  4. A note on the libido (plumbing) theory of human energy.
    1. Freud sometimes assumes that there is a fixed quantity of erotic energy, which he calls, libido.
      1. Given that there is a fixed amount of this libido in the "reservoir", then to send it off in one direction—or through one pipe out of the reservoir—is to have less libido to go in other directions.
      2. So far, this is an elaborate metaphor and a plausible one. Presumably, we can satisfy our various drives in one or another way and, having done so, are less likely to try to satisfy them in other ways.
      3. On occasions, however, Freud seems to assume that all of the energy that we bring to our everyday activities is drawn from this same reservoir.
        1. This claim is usually advanced in conjunction with Freud’s first theory of the instincts and with what I call his pressure-valve theory of happiness. Libido, on this view, is initially directed towards sexual satisfaction but may be redirected elsewhere.
          1. On this view, we do not do anything unless libido is directed in one way or the other. Libido gives us the energy to engage in one action or another.
          2. The alternative view is simply that the time and energy we have for different activities is entirely independent of our instincts.
            1. But what actions we do will more or less satisfy our instincts or not.
            2. I defend this second reading of Freud in a book manuscript entitled, Nature and Culture.
              1. Click here for an abstract.
        2. These claims becomes important in his second and third arguments for the importance of sexual restraint for civilization: those concerning work and political and social unity.
          1. These arguments hold that libido must be drawn from sexuality and directed towards work or erotic ties to other members of our political community in order for us to work or take on community responsibilities.
          2. As I suggest below, it is difficult to believe that taking on these responsibilities actually is a way to satisfy libido.
          3. So, while Freud may plausibly argue that the
  5. A note on infantile sexuality
    1. Infantile sexuality is sometimes difficult for people to accept. Freud’s justification for saying that infants and children are sexual beings is that
      1. Infants and children seek pleasure from manipulating or rubbing parts of their body.
      2. These pleasures are particularly found in the anal, oral and genital parts of the body.
      3. These parts of the body play an important role in adult sexuality.
        1. Some or all of these parts of the body play some role in the normal sexuality activity of most adults.
        2. The anal and oral parts of the body become the exclusive sexuality activity of some adults whose sexual lives are somewhat abnormal.
      4. There is a connection between childhood experiences of satisfaction and pleasure in certain parts of the body with adult sexual desires.