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described in terms of the infant’s attempt to recreate the situation of libido in foetal life, with its intense cathexis of the (as of yet undifferentiated) environment. The earliest phase of extra-uterine life is not seen as narcissistic, but oriented towards objects on the basis of pre-natal experience. Primary object-love “is not linked to any of the erotogenic zones; it is not oral, oral-sucking, anal, genital, etc., love, but is something on its own” (Balint 1937, p. 101). As Balint sought to extend the experiential range of early, primitive human life in addition to the ‘oral sphere’, he did not break with classical drive theory. He maintained that the libido is both pleasure-seeking and object-seeking (Balint 1956). Mature, active object-love, as Balint describes it, involves a recapitulation of primordial satisfaction of need along many developmental pathways: “The successive stages of development…anal-sadistic, phallic and finally genital object-relations – have not a biological but a cultural basis” (1935, p. 63). Here, primary phenomena of Freudian drive theory are understood in terms of early environmental failure resulting in a ‘basic fault’. Consequently, aggression is understood as a reaction to frustration rather than an aim in itself; accordingly, for Balint (1951) hate is always a reactive, secondary phenomenon and not one of the manifestations of basic primary drives of the individual. Similarly, primary narcissism is redefined in terms of a libidinal investment in auto-erotism, precisely where the child has been ‘given too little’. The distinction between ‘benign’ and ‘malignant’ types of regression (Balint 1968, p.146) may be viewed in terms of a clearly defined ‘mixed model’. The former is seen as manifest in the therapeutic relationship on the basis of primary relational needs; the latter, on the basis of infantile instinctual pleasure. Accordingly, Balint treated the therapeutic aspects of regression in the context of his revised object-relations psychopathology (See also the separate entry REGRESSION and OBJECT RELATIONS THEORIES). Ferenczi (and Balint) have been regarded by many North American Relational theoreticians as a forerunner of the Relational thought and technique. However, in Relational theorizing the regression and the drive aspect of human motivation has been minimized.
III. Bc. Further and Contemporary Developments in Europe
III. Bca. Integration Of Drive Theory with Object Related Concepts: The Question of Motivation From the 80´s, the place of drive became (especially in the English-speaking psychoanalysis) part of the discussion on human motivation . Motivation is evidently one of the basic dimensions of psychoanalysis (as analysts try to look for what makes people think, feel and act as they do; what drives people?). Moving to modern times, object relations have taken central stage in the psychoanalytic theory of motivation.
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