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during development and as a result of illness and trauma are considered a crucial impetus to, and limitation of, psychic development and articulation. Theoretical conceptualizations of ‘non-metabolized trauma’ presenting as ‘eternal repetitions of what was never experienced as pleasurable’, configurations of ‘zero process drive-zero process defenses’, and various conceptualizations of ‘death drive’, a force of destruction in psychic life that resists both evolution and taming in individual and societal context, are among many examples. The evolving multiple dualities of formulations of the concept marks a theoretical acceptance of the limits of psychoanalytic understanding. At the border between the somatic and the psychic, concept of drive implies a view of the mind that is not unitary. A border concept, it drives a ‘movement’ towards the limits of psychoanalytic theories and definitions. Ancient and yet more than modern, the concept of drive, at the edge of the knowable, not only marks the continuity between theory and clinical practice, it also breaks this continuity open and exposes gaps and disjunction between them, which drives the continuing push for ongoing elaboration to close the very gap. The human subject’s radical dependence on others, particularly in early childhood but partially throughout life as well, is appreciated by psychoanalysts of all theoretical orientations. But the particular articulation and weight between constitutional factors/potentialities, drives and their expressions, and the human environment in the structuring of the psychic apparatus and their technical implications in the analytic process remain hotly contested and lie, depending upon the theorist, all along the “complemental series”, outlined by Freud.
See also: CONFLICT COUNTERTRANSFERENCE EGO PSYCHOLOGY ENACTMENT INTERSUBJECTIVITY OBJECT RELATIONS THEORIES TRANSFORMATIONS TRANSFERENCE THE UNCONSCIOUS
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