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metaphor of the capacity to represent” (ibid, p.48), the progression is from the immediacy of unmitigated drive, ‘discharged’ in the ‘language of corporeality’ in the Inferno, to the dreamlike focus on the internal processes, unfolding subjectively, giving rise to expanded symbolic and representational range in the Purgatorio, to the attempt to create a Love/Eros filled expanded “trans-representational” world of the Paradiso, deploying full range of motions, lights and colors of its creation. Viewed this way, the Comedy presents a proto-psychoanalytic insight into the complex role of regression, destruction, transgression, and conflict in generating growth, expansion, and creativity, within the context of the presubjective, intrasubjective, and intersubjective inquiry leading to psychic reorganization: “… Inferno is to allow troubled Dante to become aware, with the aid of the reliable protective soothing presence of Virgil, of the conundrum of the most primitive sexual and aggressive forces... Their verbal representation within the intrasubjective and intersubjective context begins the process of recognition of such forces as part of one’s own internal endowment, and their consequent integration, attenuation, sublimation, and mastery” (Papiasvili 2020, p. 41).
VIII. CONCLUSION-SUMMARY
Drive is one of the most complex and controversial concepts of psychoanalytic theory. There may be many reasons for this. Historically first among them may be Freud´s deep conviction that drives – sexual and aggressive - are the fundamental ‘building blocks’ of the human psyche and are present from birth, thus creating inherently incestual conflicts within the mother-infant earliest matrix. Second, the use of the concept as a bridge between the physical and the psychical realms. Third, drive has both metapsychological, at times almost mythical (described by Freud as the ‘mythology of psychoanalysis’) and clinical (calling for scientific research) dimensions, contributing to the theoretical concept and the phenomena it refers to still being viewed as somewhat enigmatic. Yet, the very same points opened the vista of far-reaching developments within psychoanalytic thought, with major clinical implications: Designating the drive as a frontier concept subverted the Cartesian mind-body dualism. It was on the grounds of the early stage of his drive theory that Freud articulated the radical notions of complemental series and a continuity between illness and health. Additionally, Freud’s ongoing evolution, expansion and reworking of his drive theory, may be (and fruitfully has been) approached as a ‘work in progress’, encouraging (opening rather than closing) further inquiry. In this vein, Freud’s ‘inter-disciplinary theorizing’ encouraged rather than discouraged interdisciplinary dialogue and cross-fertilization in regard to variously conceptualized drives and affects. As per the European perspective , controversies surrounding drive concept and drive theory have been an important ‘driving’ force of post-Freudian conceptual developments, as
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