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drive has been part of many central debates and controversies. First, there was the question of motivation : what sets the human subject going, and what is he/she searching for? Is the starting point bodily cravings and attempts to handle them, or is the search for certain feelings in relation to other persons the most important motivating force? This is the question of basic human strife : drive release or object search. Even if there is no contradiction between the two (as drive always seeks for an object), the question remains: is the object the most contingent, replaceable part of the ‘drive chain’ or is the object actually constructing the drive, its centrality as motivation, and the experience of it? It was precisely on the grounds of such controversies that British Object Relations Theories and perspectives were born. With the early roots in Freud’s paper on Narcissism, various strands of Object Relations theories have contributed immensely to both psychoanalytic theory and clinical practice. Their impact reaches across the board of psychoanalytic orientations and across all continents. Yet, the contemporary approaches coming out of Europe raise the possibility that the ‘controversial discussions’ can be transformed into fruitful ‘discussion of controversies’: French psychoanalysis, as well as many contemporary Post-Freudian strands of Object Relations, Field and Relational approaches, in addition to a rich array of synthetic, integrative and hybrid conceptualizations coming from Europe and the Americas, demonstrate that the importance of object relations and relations to ‘the other’ is not in opposition to drive theory, but that the possibility of a vital dialectic connection where one constitutes (or ‘leans on’, shapes) the other (sometimes while negating it), exists. This may translate into individualized clinical approaches where a variously formulated two-person perspective can be integrated into drive theory. Contemporary integrations of drive and object relations theory by inclusive post- Freudian authors who employ post-Kleinian and multi-theoretical approaches exploring the unique utility of death drive on a phenomenological level, and contemporary approaches coming out of French tradition in Europe exemplify this very point. Common to these approaches is the area of working at the limits of symbolic representation. In Latin America , the contemporary discourse about drive starts usually as a dialogue with Freud and ‘each other’. Such dialogue covers a wide range of hypotheses, including theory development, methodology, as well as their implications for the clinical analytic process. Diverse challenging points of view involve theoretical and clinical contributions, especially regarding the concept of the Death drive . In the context of theory development, starting with the debate concerning the translation of the word Trieb as instinct instead of drive, there has also been a search for a more accurate scientific basis for the concept and its psychoanalytic scientific position. To that end, Latin American theoreticians explore especially how such notions as the somatic source of the drive and its representation in the psyche, and the dualism of the concept - including the dualism of the Life and Death drives - relate to Freud, his medical training and his classical education. Specifically, they inquire what is the relative weight of Freud’s scientific training in biology, physics and chemistry, and as a doctor, compared to Freud as a thinker, intellectually nurtured by his readings in philosophy, anthropology, sociology, and mythology.
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