Hans Loewald, “On the Therapeutic Action of Psycho-Analysis” (1960) (IV)
The article’s second section contains an excursus on Freud’s concept of drive (Trieb), which — Loewald insists — underwent substantial, largely unacknowledged revisions between the early “Drives and their Fates,” and later accounts, inter alia in Beyond the Pleasure Principle and Outline of Psychoanalysis. Loewald indicates that ego-psychology, the latest iteration of psychoanalytic theory, has failed to assimilate these revisions, which has in turn hampered its understanding of object-relations generally, and the analyst-patient relation, in particular.
Loewald begins by questioning a dichotomy to which the “structural point of view,” or the ego-psychology then dominant, has led, between
the ego, conceived as something in contact with, and adapted to the world, “a creature of and functioning in conjunction with external reality” (21), and
the id, treated by contrast as something purely internal and constitutional, an “area of the instinctual drives…unrelated to the external world” (21).
Accordingly, while the ego is in part shaped by experience, that is, contact with reality, the id appears to be unalterably itself, purely “immanent,” and unaffected — both at its origin and afterwards — by any such contact. This way of parsing things, Loewald suggests, has prevented ego psychology from assimilating a theory of drives. He makes use of a familiar, Freudian image to illustrate the position under review:
“To use Freud's archeological simile, it is as though the functional relationship between the deeper strata of an excavation and their external environment were denied because these deeper strata are not in a functional relationship with the present-day environment; as though it were maintained that the architectural structures of deeper, earlier strata are due to purely 'internal' processes, in contrast to the functional interrelatedness between present architectural structures (higher, later strata) and the external environment that we see and live in.” (21)
In other words, it is true that the adult id-unconscious, still governed by the pleasure principle and primary process, is older and in some respects more fundamental than the “late” ego; and, moreover, it is not now in direct contact with reality, for which the reality-responsive ego provides the necessary mediations. It does not follow, however, that simply because the id is not now in direct contact with reality — or shaped, without intermediary, by it — that it was never in such a state. So Loewald corrects the analogy and with it our picture of the id:
“The id, however—in the archeological analogy being comparable to a deeper, earlier stratum—as such integrates with its correlative ‘early’ external environment as much as the ego integrates with the ego's more ‘recent’ external reality. The id deals with and is a creature of ‘adaptation’ just as much as the ego—but on a very different level of organization.” (21)
The dichotomy at issue has more than theoretical interest, of course. Fortifying “the conception of the psychic apparatus as a closed system” (21) has practical consequences for the conduct of an analysis. Indeed, “the traditional notion of the analyst’s neutrality and of his function as a mirror” (21) is ultimately connected, for Loewald, with this conception.
It is just here that Loewald revisits the concept of “drive” and charts its developments in Freud’s writings. In doing so, we gather, Loewald hopes to rectify the untenable conception of id as an item totally “insulated” from both reality and its sequel, the ego. In particular, by appropriating from the mature Freud a concept of drive neglected in ego psychology, Loewald positions himself to describe the “psychic apparatus” in a way that does justice to the centrality of object-relations both in infancy and in the unique situation of an analysis.
What, Loewald now asks, is the “relation to objects” of the “instinctual drives” (21)? Our answer will depend, of course, on the concept of “drive” at our disposal. One such concept, and a traditionally hegemonic one, is introduced in Freud’s 1915 “Drives and Their Fates.” Before turning to the drive concept itself, though, Loewald quotes extensively from the piece’s opening section, where Freud comments on the essential provisionality, corrigibility, and fluidity of scientific concepts. While necessary for organizing the data of observation, these concepts develop, one definition giving place to another, in response to further investigation and reflection. It is faintly ironic that Freud introduces drive as one such “basic concept” — imprecise, tentative, “open to alterations in its content” (22) — in light of its stubborn resistance to revision in the history of psychoanalysis. The concept has remained permanently entombed, it seems, in these first formulations from 1915.
In any case, whatever the “relation to objects” of drives, according to these early remarks, we need not assume that this relation will hold constant in all possible iterations of the concept. Nor will it, in the event, according to the position reached in Freud’s own intellectual development. (This seems important to underscore straightaway, since so much of the ideological identity of more recent psychoanalysis is premised on discarding the drive concept as somehow incompatible with the “relational turn.” Yet here Loewald is insisting, in 1960, that the drive concept may be, and should be revised in a way that accommodates the facts of observation — very much including the constitutive “relationality” of mind.)
What concept of drive, then, emerges in Freud’s 1915 article? What concept, that is, has kept such a problematic grip on the psychoanalytic imagination? Here a drive is famously defined as an inner stimulus. Hence this stimulus, originating and operating continuously within the organism, is counterposed to any and all “external” stimuli. In fact, as Loewald documents, Freud offers the much less mysterious term “need” as a synonym for such an inner stimulus or drive. Entailed in this whole conception, Loewald observes, is a teleological, “functional” model of mind. He quotes Freud directly as follows: “[T]he nervous system is an apparatus which has the function of getting rid of the stimuli that reach it, or of reducing them to the lowest possible level” (22). The organism, and more specifically the “nervous system,” functions to “discharge” the internal stimuli that reach it, to “minimize” them. By contrast, the aim of a drive itself is, on one description, in every case the same: satisfaction. This satisfaction in turn requires an “object,” which is likewise defined — at a certain level of abstraction — as that which affords this satisfaction. (There is evidently some mutual-determination or circularity involved in these definitions: we know of particular “drives” by those “objects” upon which they satisfy themselves; while a particular “object” receives its meaning from that “drive” it happens to satisfy.)
Again, it is precisely this conception of the drive-object nexus or interface — the one canonized in “Drives and Their Fates” — which has had such decisive influence on later psychoanalytic thinking. For it is here that Freud characterizes the “relation” of drive to its object as something fungible, tactical, and in some important sense arbitrary. Loewald quotes Freud arguing that a drive’s object is “‘what is most variable about an instinct,’ ‘not originally connected with it,’ and as becoming ‘assigned to it only in consequence of being peculiarly fitted to make satisfaction possible’” (22). Loewald then summarizes: “It is here that we see instinctual drives being conceived of as ‘intrapsychic,’ or originally not related to objects” (22).
In other words, the “intrapsychic” picture of mind originates, at least in part, in this first, fateful definition of a drive as essentially, and in the first instance, independent of its object. Conversely, this definition tacitly excludes any “interpersonal” picture of mind. And indeed: if the concept of drive admits only of this sort of analysis — as something contingently related to its object — then it would appear to lead ineluctably to the instrapsychic picture, to the mind as a closed system, and to repel all attempts to establish “relations” as — somehow — irreducible and primary. Hence, whatever else “drives” are, or involve, at this stage of Freud’s thinking, they enjoy a kind of antecedent, independent existence “within” the organism. Only subsequently do they establish, or fail to establish, “relations” with objects.
Now, Loewald does not linger long with this early model of drives. But we may wish to press for more clarification, and enter a caveat or two. For even here, Freud seems to set limits to the variability, arbitrariness, and thus the “separability” of objects in relation to drives. After all, in allowing that the assignment of an object to a drive depends on its “being peculiar fitted to make satisfaction possible,” Freud recognizes some link between the two. The infant’s self-preserving drive of hunger can, and will, attach to a breast or a bottle; but it will not attach to a stone or piece of fabric. The sexual drive — libido — will perhaps admit of greater variability in its object-choice: from breast, to thumb, to other organs, to fetishes. But even here, as a matter of empirical observation, there seem to be limits to this sort of “infinite” extension.
Nor is it altogether precise to deny any kind of “dependence” of drive on object. A drive “depends” on its object for discharge, tension-reduction, or satisfaction. The admitted range of objects that can bear this function — the fact that drive does not depend on any particular object — does not alter the fact that it will depend on some object. True, I can get along well enough without any specific foodstuff — this sandwich — or even, within limits that are themselves unclear, entire food-types — say, dairy. But without some consistent nourishment I will not survive. Thus, whatever changes Freud’s concept undergoes, departing from the intrapsychic model of mind, the link between drive and object must surpass this “thin” sort of interdependence.
I will discuss these revisions in the next entry.