Back to Table of Contents
IV. B. METAPSYCHOLOGICAL MODIFICATION: CHARLES BRENNER AND CONFLICT THEORY Jacob Arlow’s and Charles Brenner’s (1964) “Psychoanalytic Concepts and the Structural Theory” revealed a radical reconstruction of the concept of the unconscious and the drives. At the core of this reorganization is the relationship between anxiety and conflict. Anxiety for Arlow and Brenner became the crucial factor in the development of conflict between ego and id, and in the ability of the ego to oppose the instinctual drives. Depicting the prominence of preoedipal conflicts and aggressive drive in psychoses, Arlow and Brenner (1969) contend that the psychotic patient has a special need to protect the object from his own aggression. This may lead to serious disruption in the patient’s relationship with external objects and the environment. In “Defense and Defense Mechanisms”, Brenner (1981) adds to Freud’s definition of the ego in reference to the drives, when he states that the ego is that part of the mind which is concerned with the environment for the purpose of achieving a maximum of gratification of drive derivatives. The ego is the executant of the drives. In the language of the structural theory then, the ego is the executant of the id. Control of drive derivatives and opposition to them begins early in life. In childhood one or another drive derivative inevitably comes to be associated with affects sufficiently unpleasurable to result in defense. “Unpleasure and conflict associated with drive derivatives are not mere accidents that might be avoided if parents were sufficiently loving, conscientious, and knowledgeable…The calamities of childhood are part of humanity’s fate…” (Brenner 1981, p. 568). The function of defense is the reduction of the unpleasure aroused by a drive derivative or by some aspect of superego functioning. The following year Brenner (1982) reformulated the superego as a cluster of compromise formations, composition of which with both libido and aggression prominently participate. Exemplifying the central position of compromise formation and the drives in psychic life, Brenner states: “Everything in psychic life…is a compromise formation…a combination of the gratification of drive derivatives (an instinctual wish originating in childhood), of unpleasure in the form of anxiety and depressive affect associated with the drive derivative, of defenses [that] function…to minimize unpleasure, and of…superego functioning (guilt, self-punishment, atonement, etc.) …” (Brenner 1991, pp. 39-40). Further, Brenner postulates the principle of exchangeability of psychic elements, as the contemporary version of Waelder’s (1930, 1936) principle of multiple function, which is itself a restatement of Freud’s principle of overdeterminism. The contemporary principle of interchangeability of psychic elements states that anything can be instinctualized, anything can be used for defense, and anything can be used as self-punishment. In “Aspects of Psychoanalytic Theory: Drives, Defense, and the Pleasure-Unpleasure Principle” Brenner (2008), sets infantile sexuality within the context of his revised Freudian drive theory and postulates a central role of the ‘pleasure -unpleasure principle’:
158
Made with FlippingBook - professional solution for displaying marketing and sales documents online