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Freud often used it in its composite form as in ‘ideational representative’ ( Vorstellungsrepräsentanz) , ‘drive representative’ ( Triebrepräsentanz) (drive representative), or ‘psychic representative’ ( psychische Repräsentanz ) above. Levels and modes of representations – specific ways in which drives manifest themselves – in terms of ideas and in terms of affect. Affects, as the drive´s body vicissitudes, may undergo their own transformations and displacements, especially if detached from the ideas and memory traces. There is an ‘ideational representation’ ( Vorstellung ), a general term, denoting mental images as well various methods of substitution, allusion, and psychic work connected with passing between systems Unconscious and Preconscious/Conscious, as in dreams and screen memories, or the unconscious conflict concealed under the formation of manifest symptomatology, dream, attitudes or behavior. “Ideational representations’ could be further specified as the thing-representations ( Dingvorstellungen ), which were mainly visually founded unconscious representations and/or word-representations ( Wortvorstellungen ), which were auditory memory traces found in the Preconscious system. The representational processes here again denote a relationship, and passing between different psychic systems, one dominated by the thing (re)presentation and the other by the word (re)presentation. The psychic representations of the drive, described by Freud, may be seen as a different “language”, a communication, a message. In this context, drive is viewed as having a ‘messenger function’. Seen this way, developmentally, drive is first the “messenger” force of the primitive communication, then of any communication. This aspect has become elaborated by Post-Freudian thinkers especially within French contemporary psychoanalysis on both sides of the Atlantic. Drive Derivations and Derivatives Relationship between drives and wishes can be also viewed according to Robert Waelder’s (1962) levels of abstraction in hierarchy of psychoanalytic conceptualization, described in an ascending order: 1. clinical observation and data (drive derivatives manifesting as conscious or unconscious wishes as manifested in dreams, fantasies), 2. clinical interpretation (interpreting unconsciously symbolized drive derivatives versus unconscious defense, etc.), 3. clinical theory/generalizations (libidinal or aggressive drive derivatives as components of psychic conflict); 4. metapsychology – abstract theorizing about the levels regarding origins of drives, their aims and objects, pertaining to a particular reiteration of successive drive theories (e.g., formulations of drive location in Structural theory/Second Topography in the Id, etc.). Early drive theories often focus on clinical theory of unconscious factors (Sandler and Sandler 1994) and metapsychological levels regarding origins. The term ‘drive derivatives’, referring to clinically observable data such as wishes, indicates that these are ‘derived’, arising from deeper layers of bio-psychological thrust of the psyche, the drives.
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