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where these factors vary inversely to one another. This may be a very important point to consider with respect to post-Freudian and contemporary developments. Contemporary European dictionaries (Mijolla 2003/2005) stress that any psychoanalytic concept depends, in the final instance, on the theory of the drives. “Thus, it is consistent that the first ontogenesis of the purified ego appeared in ‘Instincts and Their Vicissitudes’. Moreover, it was necessary that this paper opened the metapsychology and preceded the essays on repression, the unconscious, dreams, and mourning and melancholia. Like- wise, it was necessary to propose the theory of life- drives and death-drives in order to construct the second topography [structural theory]. The pleasure principle itself depends on the death-drive. The constant updating of the Three Essays makes it obvious that the theory of the drive is at the basis of the entire theoretical edifice” (p.445). In addition, Edinburgh Psychoanalytic Encyclopedia (Skelton 2006) also carries Carl Jung’s (1919/1960) definition of drive as a body based source of psychic energy, whose aim and form are affected by ‘archetypal images’ which the psyche produces. Five main groups of instinctive factors are described – hunger, sexuality, activity, reflection and creativity. Their similarity with multiple innate survival mechanisms described 80 years later by contemporary North American Self Psychologist Joseph Lichtenberg (1989) as part of his Motivational Systems Theory: psychic regulation of physiological requirements, attachment, affiliation, exploration and assertion, antagonism, sexual excitement and enjoyment, is noteworthy. In contemporary North American psychoanalytic dictionaries (Auchincloss and Samberg 2012), drive, or instinctual drive is presented as “the mental representation of an endogenous motivational force, a constant pressure…that stimulates mental activity and therefore all human experience…As a cornerstone of Freud’s theory of mind, drive theory refers to the basic forces that motivate human behavior. In various dynamic models of the mind, human behavior is, accordingly, conceptualized as reflecting the operation of libidinal or aggressive drives, under the modulating influence of a combination of intrapsychic and relational experience” (p. 65). In Post-Freudian North American psychoanalytic theorizing, in maintained an important role in various currents of contemporary Freudian (including Ego Psychology and Modern Conflict theory), Object Relations and French tradition perspectives, although the specific conceptualizations may vary. While traditionally Self and Relational approaches minimize drive endowment as playing an important part in development, motivation and analytical therapeutic process, some contemporary Relational theorists propose various recontextualizations of drives as biologically mediated pre-wired ‘multiple dualities’ or ‘aversive networks’, in response to environmental frustration, within relational and intersubjective contexts. Argentinian Psychoanalytic Dictionary (Borenzstein 2013) carries an entry ‘Libidinal and Thanatic Narcissism’ (pp.419-422), which is a synthetic conceptualization of Freud’s 1914 and 1920 drive theory, and of contemporary authors like Andre Green and Willy Baranger. At its core is a libidinal investment in destruction of Ego (‘killing the ego’).
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