Dahl, H. (1968) - Psychoanalytic Theory of The Instinctual Drives in Relation To Recent Developments

SCIENTIFIC P R 0 C E E D I N G S-Panel Reports
PSYCHOANALYTIC THEORY OF i. -
T H E INSTINCTUAL DRIVES I N : reported by
RELATION T O RECENT i HARTVIG
DAHL,M.D.
DEVELOPMENTS :
I n 1915 Freud wrote that in considering “mental life from a biological point
of view, an ‘instinct’ appears to us as a concept on the frontier between the
mental and the somatic, as the psychical representative,of stimuli originating
from within the organism and reaching the mind, as a measure of the demand
made upon the mind for work in consequence of its connection with the
body.’’ Arthur Valenstein had proposed that the panel reionsider this concept
of psychoanalytic drive from the vantage point of 1967 and from a knowledge
of some developments in related fields. especially neurophysiology and ex-
perimental and physiological psychology.
Valenstcin briefly sketched the history of the instinctual drive concept
from the early pre-Project emphasis on childhood seduction and trauma and
the associated idea of a repressed affect seeking discharge to the later recog-
nition of the role of fantasies and unconscious wishes. The early view was
what Rapaport called the environmentalist-empiricist view, and from it fol-
lowed the idea that cure resulted from the abreaction of pent-up emotion.
This view, however, proved to be too simple and its revision eventually led
to an emphasis on intrapsychic determiners and the 1915 conception, which
focused on the mental representation and emphasized the distinction between
responses to inner and to outer stimuli. Valenstein said, “Freud saw it as
crucial that stimuli from the external world could be avoided by muscular
action whereas stimuli from the internal world which could not be readily
escaped stood as the signs, the evidence of instinctual needs.”
He described Freud’s “bias toward a qualitative dualism of instinctual
drives,” that is, ego vs. libidinal instincts, narcissistic versus object libido,
Held at the Fall Meeting of the American Psychoanalytic Association, New
York, December, 1967. Chairman: Arthur F. Valenstein, MD.
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614 SCIENTIFIC PROCEEDINGS
and life vs. death instincts. “It appears that this bias .. .
was in part a con-
sequence of the historical philosophical era in which Freud grew up. His ...
metapsychology, especially his approach to drivc theory. bears the hallmark
of his early orientation to physiological and neuropharmacological research.
.. .However, fifty years have gone by and many new contibutions have now
become available, not only from neuropliysiology and psychophysiology. but
..
from . systematic study of animal behavior. . . . A definitive ego psychology
had not yet been originated, much less developed as an elaborate and inclu-
sive theory of function to the point where it could, practically speaking,
replace the traditional psychoanalytic instinct theory with an extended ego
theory.” H e enjoined the panel to keep in mind “that the theory of in-
stinctual drive was a heuristic respnsc to empirical findings obtained through
the introspective, associative method of psychoanalysis, which gave prominence
first to two major motivating trends, those of sexuality and those of aggres-
.
sion. . . Even if we should conclude that we can hardly accommodate the
accruing neurophysiological data and findings to this essentially psychological
theory of instinctual drive, it may be that as a mental construct, not to be
taken literally or physiologized, the theory remains an important adjunct of
our clinical armamentarium. . ..
Psychoanalytic clinicians would find it very
.
difficult to do without it or without some .. frame of reference which admits
of a concept of motivation as being substantially innerdetermined.” He hoped
the panel would not be overly bcdeviled by the concept of psychic energy-
a concept which he preferred to take as a psychological construct which
has been useful in’ dealing with the quantitative, ”more-or-less’’ aspects of
behavior. Clinically useful as the concept may be, it seemed to him as though
it might be more “as if” than real.
Charles Fisher, absent from the panel, had prepared a paper in advance
which was read by the panel reporter. Fisher summarized much neurophysio-
logical and biochemical work bearing upon the somatic sources and con-
comitants of instinctual drive. H e emphasized that findings from motivational
physiology can only “give us additional information about motivation but
do not tell us about what motivation really is. Their significance arises from
the fact that a correlation is drawn, but attempts to define motives in terms
.
of central neurological processes are misdirected. . .” Such formulations arc
statements of some of the necessary conditions of motivated behavior, but
not a sufficient explanation of it. T h e concept of instinctual drive is a PSF
chologial one with the wish as its basic representation; thus, “instinctual
drives do not originate outside the organism in stimuli or interpersonal rcla-
tions. but have their sources within the organism.” He was “sympathetic to the
position that psychological theories of instinctual drives must be at least
consistent with what is known about the activities of the brain and physio-
logical processes.”
In Fisher’s view, “physiological investigation of the last decade has amply
confirmed” Freud’s susgestion in the Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality

THEORY OF INSTINCTUAL DRIVES 615
that “libido was generated by the action of the sex hormones upon ccrtain
specified parts of the brain.” Much work has now demonstrated that the
hypothalamus is the part of the brain that is especially implicated in the
neural activity related to the major consummatory responses of eating, drink-
ing, and sexual activity. H e dexribed the excitatory and inhibitory centers,
and the dual control, hormonal and sensory. affecting the activity of these
two types of centers. For example, sexual hormones, when directly injected
into certain regions of the hypothalamus, activate copulating and mating
behavior. Moreover, feedback such as genital sensations operates to excite
the inhibitory system. He emphasized the fact that the hypothalamus is also
influenced from the other parts of the brain, particularly the limbic system
and the cortex.
These findings and others do not support the concept of a central motive
state-a concept which Rapaport had accepted from Clifford T. Morgan and
Frank A. Beach. Instead, the model described involves specific neurochemical
activation of these hypothalamic regions typically leading to different specific
behavior patterns. hlorcover, these findings do not support the concept of
specific drive energies, but rather suggest that specificity lies in the pathways
and regions stimulated.
REhl periods, Fisher reported, scem to represent a condition of general
physiological activation of drives, as indicated by many physiological meas-
ures, including autonomic changes and increased blood flow, temperature and
oxygen consumption of the brain. H e felt that specific REM period behaviors
s u c h as sucking and mouthing activity in infants and penile erections in males
from birth to advanced age support the notion of physiological activation
of drives during REM states. “Penile erections d o not appear to be just an
epiphenomena1 hypothalamic overflow, but they enter into and interact with
dream content, anxiety dreams inhibiting, and dreams with erotic content
facilitating, erection.” H e reviewed REM deprivation experiments to show
that “drives prevented from discharge may find substitute outlets.” REMP-
deprived animals ‘‘show bizarre forms of compulsive hypersexuality, increased
.
appetite, and increased aggressiveness. . . Rats will cross an electric barrier
to obtain food, eating more and at a n increased rate. . . These results can .
be interpreted to mean that when the physiological drive discharge which
is the normal accompaniment of REAIPs is prevented from taking place,
there is substitute discharge during the daytime.” Nonetheless Fisher thought
that it was a moot point whether i t is always necessary to have physiological
drive activation for there to be some manifestation of instinctual drive and
affect processes. For example, “an elderly castrated male failed to show any
penile erections during his REAlPs, but nevertheless had a dream of nocturnal
emission, practically identical with the real thing, although no erection or
seminal emission occurred.” Thus, the experience of pleasure could occur
“in the absence of some of the physiological consummatory responses. How-
ever, i t is by no means ruled out that the central neural drive areas and

Circuits within the hypothalamus and limbic system may be activated during
such a dream.”
Fisher then reviewed some of the work on intracrmial self-stimulation
which began with the 1954 James Olds and P. hI. hlilne: discovery that rats
with electrodes implanted in the hypothalamus and other portions of the
limbic system would repeatedly press a bar that would give them an electrical
stimulus in these regions. “The animals behivcd as if the electric current was
rewarding, as if they were obtaining pleasure or gratification from the stimu-
lus.” This work is by now well known and it is understood that, in addition,
“normal drive cxcitation can summate with injccted drive excitation,” the
latter in the form of electrical stimulation. He agreed with the position
taken by J. A. Deutsch and Diana Deutxh that “the rewarding pathway is
the same central neural pathway that would be activated in the consumma-
tory responses involved in a taste of water, the feeling of satiety and the
sensations of the genitalia, etc., although in actuality nothing is going on
at the periphery. It is the sensory experiences that the animal finds reward-
ing or gratifying.” .
Next, Fisher discussed a fascinating experiment in which Joseph hfendel-
son electrically stimulated the hypothalamic thirst center of a completely
satiated rat, and found that the satiated animal continued to press a bar to
give itself stimulation in this center if water was available. Under these cir-
cumstances the animal pressed and then drank the water and continued this
cyde at rates as high as seventy times an hour, “making itself thirsty and
then drinking.” However, if water was not available, the animal did not
press the bar. This suggested to Fisher that the animal was ‘motivated on the
...
.. .
basis of a “memory of previous experience of gratification not by the
need but by what in psychic terms would be called a wish. These findings
are consonant with the psychoanalytic conception of instinctual drive as the
psychic representation of a physiological need.”
He then discussed certain problems with the conccpt of “discharge.” He
agreed that the dominant view agrees with Schur’s definition of the wish as the
functional unit of the id. REMP findings lend themselves to the interpreta-
tion that there is a discharge of rather large quantities of energy in consum-
matory behavior. Nonetheless, during much other behavior of a “peremptory
unconsciously motivated primary process” type, consummatory processes on a
physiological level are not involved and there is no evidence of large quanti-
ties of energy dixliargc. He reminded us that Rapaport had suggested “that
i t is ncither implied nor ruled out that biochemical energy exchanges may
eventually be discovered which correspond to exchanges of psychological
energy inferred from behavior in psychoanalysis. So far such a‘correspondence
has not been achieved. , ..
Some such mrrcspondence between the hypo-
thetic psycliic energy and physical cnergies may exist for the REM state and
the psychological behavior known as dreaming.” He pointed out, however,
that “for much of peremptory motivation .. .
we do not know much about

TIIEORY OF INSTINCTUAL DRIVES 617
the physiological energy processes involved.” He suggested that animals, too,

“may be largely motivated by wishes, anticipations and expectancies based
upon previous experiences of gratification,’’ citing again the implication of
hiendelson’s experiment that animals not in a state of deficiency or excess
stimulate themselves in order to obtain the gratification of drinking: they
seem to be motivated by exclusively “hedonistic considerations. . hfendel- ..
son’s cxperiment is not in accord with the constancy principle, since here
motivation does not imply tension reduction but the opposite. The animal
produces the state of drive tension, the thirst, in order to have the pleasure
of drinking.” Fisher went so far as to suggest that this is a reversal of Freud’s
definition of an instinctual drive as a demand for work on the psychic ap-
paratus, that it may imply “a kind of demand for work by the psychic ap-
paratus, as embodied in the wish, on the instinctual drives.”
H e then emphasized the importance of George Klein’s paper oh percmp-
tory ideation, pointing out that Klein’s model “can encompass those con-
summatory behaviors relating to hunger, thirst, and scx which involve inputs
to the psychic apparatus whose sources can best be studied physiologically.
T h e notion of a drive as a demand for work is retained and the energy
theory not completely abandoned. It can also elucidatc those types of be-
havior whose energy considerations are not 50 clear-cut, namely, those moti-
vated by certain imbalances in what Klein calls the ideomotor unit, which
corresponds to the wish, the cognitive format of the instinctual drive.”
Fisher discussed Klein’s idea of excitation beginning in a primary region of
imbalance (PRI) and leading to a train of thought conceived of as arising
from this area and returning to inhibit the excitatory process at such a hypo-
thetical region. Discharge is conceived of as inhibition of this excitatory
process, in other words, a “switch-off’ device. “Klein ch6oses to emphasize
other statements of Freud indicating that the attainment of pleasure is sec-
ondarily quantitative, but predominantly a qualitative matter, involving the
coming into relation with objects that sefve to effect a terminal stimulation or
switch-off by inhibitory excitation at the primary region of imbalance.” Klein
also emphasized that Freud’s ftmnulation of a wish “involved not only an
economic notion ... the cathexis of a memory trace of a missing object in
the previous experience of satisfaction, but the disposition to achieve a con-
dition of perceptual identity.” Intensities of motivation develop when these
sensory experiences whicli serve the purpose of switch-off are aborted, inhi-
bited or counteracted, especially in situations of conflict or when unpleasant
affect, anxiety or guilt are aroused in addition to the wish. Under these
circumstances “of aborted feedback, the arousal of negative affect, the ...
facilitations at the primary region of imbalance continue and lead to sub-
stitute and displacement activity in the form of symptoms or other pathologi-
cal sequences.”
Fisher concluded by questioning what he thought was Dahl’s assumption
that the hypothalamic drive centers provide the “outputs making the de-

mands for work on the psychic apparatus, e.g., provide the facilitations at the
PRI. . .. Aside from their role in consummatory drive behaviors we know
little about the neurochemical activities of these centers and the kind of
facilitations in terms of energy that they might introduce to the primary re-
gion of imbalance.”
Peter H. IVolff then discussed two topics. The first was the problem with
what he called the “relaxation-osullator model” and the second was the
question of the relevance of data from infant obsenation to the instinctual
drive theory in general and to the oscillator model in particular. He doubted
the usefulness of the hunger model-a specific formulation of the more
general relaxation-oscillator modcl in which the basic cycle is the repeated
slow accumulation of tension followed by discharge. \VolE suggested that this
model and probably that of the other physiological drives does not have thc
heuristic power of the psychoanalytic instinctual drive concept which allows
for conceptualization of “capacity for delay o r no delay. capacity for detour
or no dctour, and the capacity for displacement onto symbolic forms.” To
demonstrate the nature of the problem he said, “If there are any behavioral
represcntations of the partial oral drive, in the early months of life, . . then .
probably sucking should be one of them. I n the observations wc have made
..
with nonnutritive sucking . a salient point for this discussion is that non-
nutritive sucking seems to be inexhaustible. If the relaxation-oscillator model
..
is rclevant, . one should see some kind of evidence for a difference before
and after the baby has sucked on a pacifier.” He wondered whether one
really creates a state of satiety by nonnutritive sucking. Aforeover, in babies
with severe neurological damage, “there is almost a continuous stream of
endless sucking which suggests a kind of disinhibition.” He pointed to a
similar “release phenomenon,” namely, the prolonged or continuous priapism
in some infants with severe neurological damage, suggesting that this also
seemed to bc a disinhibition process rather than discharge of an amount of
anything. Penile erections of infants seem to substitute for the spontaneous
mouthings during sleep and vice versa. He proposed that a proccss of recipro-
cal mutual inhibition seems to occur; and he questioned. whether the prcs-
ence of erections during REhf periods in infants really supported the idea
that thcy reflect instinctual drive activity. “When we finally consider [P. D.]
hfacLean’s monkeys who, two days after birth, when they greet each other,
have erections, we get a totally different picture of the potential function of
the erections. hfy point is simply that in some instances erections may be
representations of some internal sexual excitations . . . but one cannot there-
fore equate the two.” He thought that what seemed to be missing from the
formulation was a consideration of “form-function relationship,” that is, of
the notion that the context in which behavior occurs is relevant to the inter-
pretation of its meaning.
WolfE then examined the inadequacies of the relaxation-oscillator model
for understanding sexual excitation. He proposed that it is comparable to

the U.S. hfarine’s view of the necessity to have his “ashes hauled periodically.”
With prolonged abstinence, is there really an increase in sexual excitation)
I n fact, he thought, one might be able to show that the more sexually active
a n individual is, the more sexually excited he becomes. And, on the con-
trary. the more he abstains, the less excited he typically is. The studies of
sexual interest of women during their lifetime support this view, despite the
obvious influences of the oestrous cycles over short periods of time. H e pointed
to a similar problem with aggression, saying, “there is the folklore, which is
used clinically, that it is good for you to discharge your aggressions and it’s
bad to keep them in . .. as if there were a buildup and a need for release.
But if one looks at the difference between people who are engaged in ag-
gressive activity as opposed to those who shy away from it, I think one can
.
see again . . that aggression (discharged) rather than leading to lessened need
for further aggression . .. stimulates further aggressive activity, whereas the
absence of aggression seems to make i t possible to remain unaggressive.”
Indeed, Wolff suggested that the same phenomenon, which seems to run
contrary to the simple relaxation-oscillator model, can even be seen in pro-
longed periods of abstinence from eating. U p to a certain point, “the longer
you go without eating, the hungrier you get,” but after some point people
who have not eaten for a long time become progressively less hungry, whereas
“those who eat a great deal can become increasingly hungry.” Therefore we
need to consider both “short-term cycling and long-term cycling as two op-
posing tendencies. ... One could profit by looking at the relationship be-
tween the activity already engaged in and the motivation for further activity
in that same direction.” In a motivational sense he proposed something
similar to Piaget’s view that “the more you are exposed to novelty, the more
you are motivated to act on that novelty.” This leads to a “different tem-
poral relationship than the original oscillator model.” AIoreover, he saw a
point of contact between this view of two opposing cycles and Holt’s later
cmphasis on how much seemingly instinctual drive activation “may be at
least in part determined by contact with the environment, rather than from
inside.”
\Wenstein. after expressing disappointment that IVolff had led us to
believe that the infant observation would not be of much help in our en-
terprise, brought u p the classical clinical situation of a young man in analysis
complaining that his compulsive and promiscuous sexual behavior was
caused by being surrounded by pretty girls who gave him no peace-that he
was motivated entirely from outside himself. A similar question arises when
one thinks of “aggression feeding on aggression.” Does aggression arise from
external sources or is it, “as the psychoanalyst traditionally thinks of it, . .,.
a n innate need for aggression” interacting with the outside disturbancc?
hfax Scliur, who substituted on the panel for Fisher, underscored the
importance of several of Fisher’s ideas. First he emphasized that what is
learned from other disciplines about motivation gives us information about

but does not tell us what motivation really is. Similarly, “what we know
about the function of dreaming does not tell us really about dreams as such.”
Secondly, he agreed with Fisher’s emphasis on the idea that instinctual
drives “are meant to originate not outside the organism . but within the ..
organism.” He discussed this at greater length when responding to Holt.
Thirdly, hc stressed Fisher’s point that the hypothalamic centers are influ-
enced not only by hormonal and sensory input, but are also under the
infiuence of higher centers, particularly the cortex. T h e implicntion of this
lies in the possibility that mental representations would therefore be in a
position to infiuencc the functioning of the hypothalamic centers. Schur SUP
gested that a comparable control of pcrccptual processes followed from
Ragnar Granit’s dcmonstration that perceptual proccsses are not simply
passive, but arc regulated by centrifugal fibers from liiglier centers.
He continued, “Fisher then statcd that the same physical energy is
always set free in the hypothalamus and tlie limbic areas in the form of
clectrical and chemical changes. Drive is specific only in thc sense that there
is evoked a specific stimulation in relation to pathways.” But the study of the
content of drive derivatives and the content of affects is a question of cogni-
tive structures. By extension, the different manifestations of aggressive and
libidinal drives, although they can bc elicited by chcmical stimulations in the
same centers, are highly influenced by cognitive structures and othcr unknown
factors.
Schur recalled Rapaport‘s idea that “biochemical energy changes may
cvcntually be discovered which correspond to the exchanges of psychological
energy inferred by psychoanalysts.” To show how closely this hope has been
approached, Schur quoted at some length from John Eccles. Eccles outlined
the characteristics of nerve impulse transmissions, including tlie release of
speufic chemical transmitter substances at the synaptic barriers, causing elec-
trical changes in postsynaptic membranes. H c described two types of synapscs:
excitatory and inhibitory. Excitatory action “tends to remove thc electrical
charge from the surface of the n e n e cell, and 50 to increase thc excitability of
the cell. If there is a sufficient summation of this synaptic excitatory action,
that is, if i t is bombarded at many synapscs in quick succession, the charge
on the nerve cell will be so reduced that it will generate a discharge of an
impulrc down its axon.” I n contrast, thcrc i s the inhibitory synaptic action
i n which the charge on the cell membrane is increased, thereby rcducing the
probability of firing and “holding down thc spread of cxcitation from cell to
cell along the excitatory pathways.” Ecdes said that we are on the threshold
of understanding “the basic principles responsible for the laying down of
memory traces, which we may envisage as being due to an enduring enhance-
ment of synaptic efficacy with usage.” Scliur stressed the significance of “such
findings for what we call mental representations, for inhibition, for resistances,
. .. and for the differences of the interaction betwcen activating and inhi-
bitory functions.” He concluded by referring to Klcin’s formulations in
“Peremptory Ideation.” He thought these were quite appcaling; his only

reservation was that there might be “a little too much emphasis on the
question of feedback ... from sensory input and not enongh emphasis on
feedback from other parts of the mental apparatus.”
Valenstein was reminded by Schur’s quotation from Ecdes of Freud’s
“Project for a Saentific Psychology,’! in which spe+ groups,of cells were
assumed to be modificd by their excitations in order to store memories.
Valenstein emphasized “that the memories may take the place of external
objects which have stimulating or evocative ability . . [and thus influence .
even] the fairly gross quality of behavior that we think of as drive motivated.”
There is a widespread tendency to point to external sources of motivation
and to “blame it on the environment.” T h e analyst is repeatedly confronted
with this as a form of resistance.
Samuel Ritvo. pointing out the tendency to equate “energy concepts
with quantitative aspects,” thought that our quantitative ideas are “probably
extremely crude and in nccd of revision.” Nonetheless, if one has a dynamic
system, one has to consider the logical requirements of such a system, i.e.,
energy requirements. According to Kurt Lewin, energy concepts are funda-
mental to the conceptual handling of any dynamic system. Ritvo also com-
mented on hfendelson’s interesting experiment. He was impressed by the
similarity of the rat’s behavior to such clinical behavior as compulsive mas-
turbation,
Returning again to the question of the relationship between internal
drives and external stimulation. Valenstein summarized Karl H. Pribram’s
report of a woman who had undergone bilateral removal of anterior parts of
the frontal lobes. She was not aware of feeling hungry, nor did she feel at
all driven to think about food. Nonetheless, she had gained 100 pounds fol-
lowing the operation. One day he happened to observe her accidental en-
counter with a cart laden with food. She stuffed herself with the food until
she was forcibly taken away from it. Even then she was not aware of any
change in her appetite; and when she was given a chocolate bar she felt no
particular delight with it. She reached to take i t when she saw it and, when
it was withdrawn, left it alone. Valenstein felt that this behavior mirrored
that of Mendelson’s rats.
Schur thought that ”this woman had no mental representation and there-
fore she could not act under the influence of instinctual drives, but was exdu-
sively under the influence of peripheral stimulation. She was stimulus-bound.’’
I n this way she resembled the infant’s behavior, which is much “closer to the
stimulus-bound behavior of lower animals” until the infant gradually develops
mental representations. Although Freud had originally proposed the “very
imaginative formulation of hallucinatory wish fulfillment,” he did not a p
parently have any time element in mind; he did not specifically offer a time-
table for this “progressive change from relative dependence on external
stimulation to what we and others conceptualized as internalization [i.e] ...
to a gradual development of wishes which are, x, to say, the unit of the in-
stinctual drive.”

George Klein thought Ritvo had implied “that we could never get away
from energy concepts,” and had suggested that, while the energy concepts in
psychoanalysis were crude, tlicy could, with more sophisticated efforts di-
rected at making them more precise, descriptive and explanatory concepts, do
better than they do now. Glein asserted that the proble~qwas more serious
than this, saying, “Energy concepts may be irrelevant, because in my view
the problcm of motivation is cssentially a problem of aim, and I would add
affect-these are qualitative issues, structural issues, cxperiential issues. ...
The essential nature of affect is a quality of experience and this the energy
concepts are helpless to deal with.” There are two models of pleasure: one is
Rapaport’s and the other is exemplified by Erik Erikson’s model. The first
states “that there is a quantitative increment of a hypothetical energy which
encounters a barrier, creating a state of hypothetical tension, the reduction
of which with an appropriate object is experienced as pleasure. This is one
modcl of the affect of pleasure.” Klein felt there is a problem involved in it
because it does not deal with the nature of the pleasure, the quality of it. T o
him, this is the essentially knotty problem in Rapaport’s model and, in a
sense, this model represented a rcgression from Freud‘s attempt to deal with
the problem of quality by describing a special quality of energy called the
libido. But there are problems with that notion too b e a u x it is difficult to
conccivc of energy having a quality. On the other hand, the En’kson type of
model says “that a zone is capable of arousing when appropriately stimulated”
and that the stimulation has to be “qualitatively appropriate.” Sensual pleas-
ure resulting from this arousal acquires all kinds of cognitive meanings. Klcin
said, “In this model, when we respond sensually. we are not responding in
terms of a discharge of energic quantity. IVe are responding instead to the
.
meaning of an experience . . of a distinctive kind. Of course, there’is still a
pliysiological question of how this experience is possible. But this is a ...
problem made explicit by the nature of the model, which the libido drive
theory I think ignores.”
IVolff emphasized the importance of meaning, but for different reasons.
He agreed with Sdiur that the infant having no mental representation does
not havc an instinctual drive in a psychoanalytic sense; there can be no
wishes without sucli representation. In this sensc the infant is physiologically
driven and stimulus-bound. Therefore, data about the bchavior of infants
under these circumstances are irrelevant to tlii psychoanalytic model. Wolff
.
felt “one can’t have it both ways. You discuss . . the symbolic transformation
of ccrtain physiological processes . ..
or you discuss it at the level of energies
. .
and quantities. . To discuss behavioral observations which are based on
[a physiological] level. which don’t deal with the problem of symbolic trans-
formation, one is really not tackling the problcm . ..
of instinctual drives.
Why is it of relevance to discuss the physiological aspects while we avoid ...
the question of meaning and symbolic transformation?”
Schur replied, “At no level is any piece of behavior not also under the
influence of the environment, of external stimulation. The question is , to ..

.
what extent has . . this been internalized, but never is external stimulation
excluded.”
IVolff felt that he had not made himself clear. “What I meant to say
was that the critical discussion is in the realm of experience o r symbolic func-
tion and not in the realm of quantification of behavior.” I
Hartvig Dahl was troubled by the either-or im’plications of Wolff‘s and

Klein’s positions. H e quoted from a 1938 paper by Lorenz and Tinbergen.
IVhile discussing instinctive actions in animals, they nonetheless emphasized
that these actions were accompanied by subjective phenomena. They did not
regard experience “as a fortuitous side effect or a n epiphenomenon of physio-
logical processes. IVithout the sensual pleasure represented by the subjective
aspect of probably all instinctive acts, they would be discharged only when
the organism happened by mere accident upon the releasing stimulus situa-
tion. IVhat makes an instinctive activity a goal to be craved is undoubtedly
the subjective experience that goes along with it.” Dahl thought it is relevant
to talk about physiological processes even when one is talking about the in-
stinctual representation, that is, the wish. To him the question was not,
which is important, but how they are related. :
Robert R. Holt agreed “that there is something going on inside that is
of relevance, but the question is what is it.” If one speaks of the drive as a
mental representation of a somatic process, then presumably there would be
no mental representation without a somatic process. I n Holt’s view, the
question is, “What is the nature of the somatic process?” After emphasizing
that one must not take a narrow view of the possibilities, that one must con-
sider the role of such things as “external releasers” but that one must see
the difficulties i n trying to handle aggression (for example) as a “sort of
spontaneously upwelling drive,” he suggested that there is a better way to
conceptualize the inner contribution than in terms of an accumulation of
energy which must be discharged. What he proposed was that one start from
the pleasure principle, that is, that one say that the important thing which
motivates organisms is seeking pleasure and avoiding unpleasure o r pain.
These arc treated then as “phenomenological concepts.” He felt that Rapaport
“got us off on the wrong foot when he consistently emphasized that pleasure
means only energy or tension-reduction.” However, as Freud wrote in the
Project, “the experience of gratification then teaches us that going through a
certain action pattern leads to gratification.” This is the model both in the
Project and Chapter VII; it “does not have an instinct theory and can do
very well without one.” Holt felt that the anticipation of pleasure, which
accounts for the hfendelson rat behavior, “works a great deal better than the
notion of an accumulation of some quantity that has to be discharged.”
Several members of the audience then spoke. William Lewis made three
points. First h e referred to Wolff‘s comments on sucking and said that Lorna
Benjamin had demonstrated that there is a certain critical period when
babies are very active in searching for the nipple. If they arc prevented from
finding their thumbs at that time, they do not become thumb suckers. Next

624 SCIENTlFiC PROCEEDINGS
he said that he had recorded (on film) coital reflex behavior appearing in
infants u p to the age of eight months. T h e same patterns appear in baby
monkeys unless they have been raised in isolation. Then he reported another
potentially important finding-the dixovery by a neurochemist, Mabel
Hoken, that, if certain cells, which have some similarity, to neurons (in this
case, pancreatic cells), are stimulated, the cells Seem to remember the stimu-
lation and. when subscquently stimulated, emit more enzyme than before.
What makes this interesting is that it is comparable to being able to show
a change in the subsequent response of a neuron which has been stimulated
by neural transmitters.
Ernest Rappaport referred to Wolffs relaxation-oscillator model and to
the “paradox of persisting hunger in the state of satiation.” I n fact, he sug-
gested, there usually is not a paradox at all; typically in the case of the
obese person who eats excessively, it is a response to some underlying de-
pression. Or in the cace of the person who appears “to be oversexed” it is
usually an indication of “making il show” because of some other felt lack.
Similarly, a woman who had been addicted to pregnancy was trying to replace
her entire family which had been wiped out in Auschwitz.
Peter H. Knapp applauded Klein’s insistence “that we get rid of this
spurious energy model.” But he thought that Klein had confused “the notion
of energy and quantity.” particularly with respect to affect. One cannot com-
prehend affect exclusively in terms of quality. He saw no reason for having to
“get rid of all quantitative conceptions in understanding behavior.” He also
referred to a quantitative matter which had not been mentioned by anyone
in the panel; this was the “concept of arousal, because we are not only
dealing with the hypothalamus and limbic system .. .
but we are also dealing
with activating systems, with various levels of arousal, which spill over into
the neurocndocrine system.”
Ritvo pointed out that Klein’s concept of a region of imbalance is not
free of energic ideas. hloreover, he was puzzled by the suggestion of an op-
position between structures and energic concepts. “Structure is so much re-
. .
lated to quality. . It relates to forces in balance-forces aligned in a
particular way.” He felt there was not any essential difference between a
model which speaks, “perhaps too crudely, of tension reduction or discharge
and a model which speaks of imbalance related to phenomena or notions
like density, and then relies on a change in the system .. .
and on facilitations,
priming, excitation . .. all energic concepts involving changes . in structure ..
.
. . and all following from an imbalance.” He felt that this concept of a
primary region of imbalance relied for its dynamic quality on differences in
energy level. Although “it is a much more flexible model and a cleaner
machine and it operates with different quantitative notions, the idea of feed-
back or switchdf is basically no different; it is an energic, dynamic notion.”
IVolff disagreed. He thought there is a significant difference “whether a
force activates a structure or whether the structure in imbalance defines the

THEORY OF INSTINCNAL DRIVES 625
motive itself.” I n other words, it makes a difference whether one has to add
something to the structure from outside it, or whether the motivation is in-
herent in the structure itself.
Gerhart Piers agreed with Ritvo in finding it very difficult to dispense
with the concept of energy in thinking clinically. But he wovld always try
to be aware that he was speaking metaphorically. If’one asked a physiologist
to pinpoint the energy, he would be rcminded that the quantities are very
minimal and that thcy seem to serve as triggers to release functions and that
in all probability they are “neutral, which is to say, thc same for all func-
tions.’’ T o him, the concept of structure “does not require even the undcr-
lying concept of bound energy. It’s the path of the function.”
Valenstein began the afternoon session by observing that the morning’s
focus on Klein’s model implied “an extended structurrll point of view.” T h e
drive concept implicit in this view would resemble “proto-structure,” some-
thing like biological biases (predilections toward particular functions) inter-
acting with environmental possibilities to “crystallize the structure potential”
-a concept perhaps similar to that of the development of autonomous ego
functions. Nonetheless, as Ritvo had pointed out, this structural view left
unanswered many questions about quantities.
Noting that the morning’s discussion had been heavily weighted in the
direction of recent developments in neurophysiology, Rudolph I’d.Loewen-
stein traced the development of the drive theory in psychoanalysis proper.
T h e instinctual drive theory has bcen more fruitful perhaps than any other
psychoanalytic theory because it permitted a general explanation of many
apparently unconnected phenomena as well as the discovery of new data
such as “the regular sequence of libidinal development, of its changing
.
sources, aims and objects . . and of the primary role of object relationships
in childhood as well as in adult life.” Although the theory has undergone
sdme modifications. no clinical investigations seem possible without using the
discoveries based upon this theory; for example, the discovery of the im-
portant influence of childhood sexuality on human behavior throughout life.
Loewenstein continued, “The modifications of drive theory started with
Freud’s writing on aggression and on the theory of the ego.‘So long as libido
was considercd the only form of drive energy, the relation to biological or
physiological drive sources may have appeared comparatively simple. Not so
when aggression ... was recognized as a n instinctual drive independent of
...
the libidinal drive. Freud introduced the grandiose biological theory of
a death instinct, which completcly changed the concept of instinctual drive.
T h e death instinct and its counterpart, the life instinct, became merely
general trends of life processes.” Although the death instinct theory has
gradually been abandoned by many analysts, “the concept of an indepcndcnt
aggressive drive .. . has proved of enormous clinical and theoretical value.”
Since 1923, the trend has been away from trying to describe psychic phe-
nomena only in terms of libido and aggression and toward adding three more

626. SCIENTIFIC PROCEEDINGS
variables-those “subsumed under the ego, under the superego,’ and under
external reality.” Freud, it should be remembered, had never thought that
psychic phenomena could be described in terms of instinctual drives alone,
conceiving of the ego as having been separated from the id under the impact
of external reality. Since The Ego and file Id the mental apparatus has been
conceptualized in terms of structures and functibns.
After 1926, Freud emphasized that “the part of the ego which deals with
reactions to danger” was largely independent of drives, an independence
emphasized by Anna Freud in her description of defense mechanisms in 1936.
Then Hartmann introduced the concept of conflict-free ego function and the
development of primary and secondary autonomy of the ego.
Loewenstein noted that both autonomous functions and superego demands
can lead indirectly to arousal of instinctual impulses. An example of the first
can be observed in the result of the professional activities of analysts during
which the ego may “trigger instinctual behavior to meet the necessities of
outer reality.” hlany years ago he himself had described “a special form of
self-punishment, which consists of stimulation of instinctual wishes that no
longer lead to gratification, but only to painful experience. . [In these ..
cases] the stimulation of the drive originates in the superego; indeed the
stimulation of the id impulses stands in the service of self-punishment.”
H e stressed the usefulness of the 1915 statement that drives represent a
demand for work upon the psychic apparatus. “It is couched in terms which
are general, yet precise enough to be eminently useful,” particularly in de-
scribing what goes on in psychoanalytic treatment where one attempts to
achieve changes in behavior. He did not see “how we can dispense with the
hypothesis of a dynamic unconscious for the description and explanation of
what we observe.” He assumed that the concept of force was part of this
conception. “Innumerable data of psychoanalytic observation can best be de-
scribed by using comparative terms, such as greater or lesser priority, insis-
tence, intensity, o r quantity of something.” This economic approach may in-
clude the concept of energy, which is “potential for action or work, while
force is energy in action.” He then distinguished two groups of psychoanalytic
propositions: the first included the inferred unconscious emotions, wishes.
thoughts. memories, and so forth conccived of as h,omologous to their con-
scious counterparts, and the second included the abstract propositions, such
as ego, id, and superego, which remain heterologous to observable data. T h e
concepts of energy and force, borrowed from physics as abstract explanatory
concepts, are not derived from human sensations and remain heterologous to
obervable data; these quantitative factors remain inferences which cannot
usually be brought to thc patient’s awareness.
Loewenstcin concluded with a final word about the energy concepts. Al-
though ego functions such as thinking, perception, and memory may serve
instinctual aims, it is assumed that they operate with neutralized energy.
But “the human being at birth ..
. presents behavior which cannot reason-
ably be traced to neutralization of instinctual drives.” Therefore, it was

necessary to assume a n early undifferentiated stage out of which id and ego

developed. “If we hypothesize psychic forces and energy, we must further
conclude that this energy is likewise undifferentiated early i n life and b e
comes gradually differentiated concomitantly with the differentiation of the
psychic structure.” *
Robert Holt began with “some rather brief and blunt formulations about
Freud’s theory of instinctual drives” as he understood it, suggesting that any
“undarity or uncertainty about just what the theory is” followed from the
abundance of Freud’s theoretical ideas about motivation which a t times were
self-contradictory. As an example of such contradictions Holt referred to
Freud’s “many explicit statements (especially in lW5) to the effect that the
sources of libidinal drives were the peripheral erotogenic zones” and then to
his 1915 statement that “the study of the sourccs of instinct lies outside the
scope of psychology.’’ Out of “various contradictions and inconsistencies”
Holt extracted two theories: One, “fairly explicit, coherent, but untenably
mechanistic,” and the other, “a more implicit set of ideas that originated in
Freud’s clinical observations and his attempts to tailor concepts to the shape
of these facts.”
Holt described the “important testable propositions of the first, the anach-
ronistic theory. The basic model of the organism is the hypothetical reflex
arc, Conceived of as stimuluwinternal processing+response. That is, all
behavior originates i n the intrusion of physical energies from either the ex-
ternal world or from intrasomatic sources into the nervous system, conceived
.
of as passive, without energy of its own, and functioning so as to rid itself
of the noxious input via action . . , basic pleasure-principle functioning , .
is assumed. Only adaptive, realistic behavior with biologically adequate objects
can reduce tension by removing the inner organic sources of input, hence the
necessity of paying attention to the real world and acting in a sensible, pur-
posive fashion.” From this complex formulation Holt deduced threc “testable”
and, to him, incorrect propositions: (i) “the nervous system is passive and
functions only when stimulated from outside itself“; (ii) “all stimulation is
inherently originally noxious”; and (iii) “increases in intrapsychic tension are
unpleasant, and pleasure may be obtained only from reducing tension.”
Holt then presented a second general proposition of the model: “hfoti-
vation differs from ordinary reflex action in that external stimuli act as
singlc impacts, which may be removed or escaped, whereas internal drive
stimuli act continuously and cannot be escaped.” He argued with the first
part of this by saying that it was impossible for anyone to fully escape
external stimulation and remain alive. And he argued with the second part
of the statement by saying that consummatory behaviors in fact show satia-
tion as well as refractory phases after consummation.
I n any case he felt that the inner-outer distinction is not essential to
the theory and turned instead to “the kind of drive theory proposed by
Rapaport: ‘motives are appetitive internal forces,’ appetitive being defined

in terms of peremptoriness, cyclic character, selectiveness, and displace-

ability.” He asked what evidence Rapaport had presented for the existence
of such “internal forces” and answered, none. “Now it is surely a fact
of observation that some impulses and desires are relatively weak and easily
managed by voluntary or ego activity, while other impulses seem to erupt
from ego-alien sources, take over the organism, and drive it to an inexorable
conclusion. But this is a kind of data to be explained, not in itself conclusive
evidence for any theory.” He proposed analogies to a nonself-regulating ma-
chine. like an automobile with its throttle stuck and no one at the wheel, or
to an animal with a certain brain injury, who walks straight ahead, ”remorsc-
lessly and undeterred by any barriers until it literally knocks itselt out or
collapses from exhaustion.” T o him, “these examples suggest the possibility
that the peremptoriness of some kinds of motivated behavior is at least
as well explained in terms of defects in the controlling mechanism as by . ..
.
a theory of elusive psychic forces. . . Indeed, as [B.B.] Rubinstein has dem-
onstrated, the existing doctrine of psychic cnergy lacks any explanatory
power and is merely a set of descriptive metaphors.”
Holt said that for forty years experimental psychology had been domi-
nated by a concept of drive as “a state of unpleasant internal stimulation
arising out of the physiological deficits induced by [physiological] deprivation
and goading the organism into action. It was assumed that consummatory
action with a need-satisfying object led to objective satisfaction of the tissue
.
needs so that noxious drive-stimuli were reduced. . . Since this concept of
drive seemed so fruitful as a n explanation of hunger and thirst, it was
extended to all the so-called physiological needs, including sex.” Early find-
ings suggesting the importance of androgen and estrogen levels had to be
modified because ”circulating androgens and estrogens were, if anything, only
necessary and never sufficient conditions for sexual excitation and tumescence,
and an impressive body of observations on many species including man indi-
cated that libido, the physiological capacity to engage in intercourse, and
even orgasm (if not ejaculation) could persist for as long as thirty years after
the removal of the gonads, and thus with extremely low titres of the pre-
sumably necessary hormones. ...
What was worse, sexual behavior in no
infrahuman species showed the expected buildup with increased deprivation.
.. . Leaving aside the phenomenon of oestrous in many mammalian females
.. . the overwhelmingly important determiner of subsequent sexual cxcitc-
mcnt and activity was the presence of a more or less suitable partner.”
Holt quoted Frank Beach to the effect that sexual tendencies depend
upon external stimuli for arousal and that it is “‘unlikely that in the absence
of erotic stimuli a male animal cxists in a constant state of undischarged
sexual tensions. This would be equally true for the human male, were it not
for the potent effects of symbolic stimuli which he tends to carry with him
wherever he goes.’ To Holt, this meant that “the fact that human beings do
..
I’
act as if they had such accumulations of drive tension, . can be under-

stood as self-stimulation mediated by imagery, fantasy and internal language.”

H e mentioned Kurt Goldstein’s description of a severely braindamaged
patient who could only be sexually aroused when his wife directly touched
his genitals. following which he was potent. “There is no evidence that any
physiologically measurable ‘tensions’ build u p in or. near the genitals with
deprivation; indeed, when the whole genital area has been denervated. male
animals of several species still become excited by receptive females and suc-
cessfully copulate with them.
“What seems to be critical in sexual arousal is sensory awareness of the
partner,” and there have been repeated observations of male animals who
had copulated to the point of exhaustion being rearoused when offered a new
mate. Nonetheless, “even in the rat sexual excitement may be achieved in
some degree from memory of previous cxperiences of gratification. . It is ..
very difficult to account for these fa& by means of a conception of sex as a
drive arising out of an inner buildup of tension that must be discharged.”
He added, “Incidentally. in both males and females, much evidence supports
Beach’s suggestion that two separate mechanisms are involved in genital
sexuality: one governing sexual arousal, the other governing ejaculation and
orgasm. Thus, there are two separate thresholds: one for the onset of sexual
excitement and tumescence, which in nonhuman animals is determined
largely by external stimuli, supplemented increasingly u p the evolutionary
series by subjective o r symbolic self-stimulation; and a threshold for orgasm,
which is determined by sensory feedback primarily from penis and clitoris.”
Holt then turned to the evidence on aggression and concluded that there
has never been evidence that the need for aggression builds u p after an animal
has been deprived of it. “The bulk of the systematic experimental and ob-
servational work in man as well as animals supports the conception that
aggression is an innately determined (though extensively modifiable) reaction
to certain claws of provocations, chiefly frustration and assault.” He con-
sidered hunger and thirst, pointing out that “the whole business turns out
to be astonishingly complex.” He cited many studies pointing to the many
complicated factors controlling food and drinking behavior: hypothalamic
thermostats and glucostats, sensations from the stomach, as well as visual,
olfactory, and gustatory and other oral sensations. In human subjects “eating
is controlled by symbolic means and by external stimuli.” After many experi-
ments Stanley Schachter decided that the “hunger and eating of obese persons
depends on external circumstances.” All things considered, Holt concluded
that hunger and thirst also do not fit the tension-reduction model of drive.
For Holt what remains are “Freud‘s observations about human motiva-
.
tion . . which must be incorporated into any broadly useful theory: human
beings are impelled to a large extent by unconscious motives; we havc a
basic tendency to seek pleasure and avoid unpleasure, but are able to delay
the wish for immediate gratification when we learn that greater pleasure may
be obtained by respecting reality, [even though] our goal-seeking behavior
is enormously complicated by the operations of defenses against anxiety and

630 SClENTIFIC PROCEEDINGS
.
guilt. . . The facts of peremptory drivenness can be quite adequately concep-
tualized by means of a cybernetic model like that of Klein, in which anticipa-
tions of pleasure or pain supply the urgency which seemingly ‘energizes’ some
behavior.”
Schur began the discussion of Holt’s paper by no‘ting Holt’s intention
to challenge the theory of instinctual drives; whereas Schur would try to
show that in fact Holt’s statements supported Freud’s motivational concepts.
First he pointed out that Holt ”did not direct his criticisms of Freud’s instinc-
tual drive to his later and most pertinent definition, which is the point of
departure of thc panel.” Schur then requoted the aim of the panel as it was
given in the program (referring to the 1915 definition) and continued: “Tak-
ing this definition as a point of departure, Rapaport, myself, and many others
conceptualized this as a psychological and not as a physiological concept, as
Holt has stated in his discussion.” He was puzzled why Holt had not used
this definition because certainly no one knew better than Holt himself that
it indicated a psychological concept. Nonetheless, Schur felt that in Holt’s
attempt to prove that Freud’s concepts were “anachronistic, outmoded, empty,
etc,” he had unwittingly reinforced the importance of the 1915 concept.
Schur called attention to Freud‘s formulation about the reflex model,
and quoted at some length from “Instincts and Their Visissitudes,” in order
to clarify the matter. Freud wrote:
I n order to guide us in dealing with the field of psychological phe-

nomena, we do not merely apply certain conventions to our empirical
material as basic concepfs; we also make use of a number of complicated
postulates. IVe . .. assign to the nervous system the task-speaking in
general terms-of masfering stimuli. IVe then see how greatly the simple
pattern of the physiological reflex is complicated by the introduction of
instincts. External stimuli impose only the single task of withdrawing
from them; this is accomplished by muscular movements, one of which
... becomes a hereditary disposition. Instinctual stimuli, which originate
from within the organism, cannot be dealt with by this mechanism. Thus
they make far higher demands on the nervous system and cause it to
undertake involved and interconnected activities by which the external
world is so changed as to afford satisfaction to the internal source of
stimulation. . .. We may therefore well condude that instincts and
not external stimuli are the true motive forces behind the advances
that have led the nervous system, with its unlimited capacities, to its
present high level of development. There is naturally nothing to prevent
our supposing that the instincts themselves are, at least in part, precipi-
tates of the effects of external stimulation, which in the course of
phylogenesis have brought about modifications in the living substance.1
1 Standard Edifion, 14:119-120.

TOSchur, this is a crucial statement of the “transition from a biological

to a biopsychological animal [and o f ] the development of the concept of
internalization, which plays such a tremendous role both in evolution and
individual development.” One of Holt’s main criticisms addressed itself,
not to this formulation, but to that of the “tension-reduction model,” which
linked the concept of instinctual drive with the unpleasure-pleasure principle
-more specifically, the constancy principle. Schur considered it “as a logical
shortcut” if Holt assumed that, if we agree with this criticism, then that
disproves the concept of internalization and the concept of instinctual drive
which results. There are two quite different models. T h e first one, the un-
pleasure principle, is a regulatory principle based upon the necessity of with-
drawing from stimulation, and of achieving some kind of equilibrium; this is
what Holt had attacked. T h e second model, however, has to do with the
model of the wish, which is “the unit of psychic functioning, the unit of
instinctual drives, and the unit of the functional aspect of the id. T h e wish
[deals] with the tendency and the need to refind the perception of gatifica-
tion.” There is not only die tendency to avoid tension, to avoid danger, “but
there is also a tendency to seek such stimuli as will eventually arrive at
gratification.” A criticism of the first model does not diminish the usefulness
of the second, which assumes that there is a development from simple gratifica-
tion of certain basic somatic needs to an ever-enlarging area of wishes which
involve such things as values and other ego activities. T h e concept of instinc-
tual drive is the broader one, and it has been extended even further by
Hartmann.
Schur felt that Holt had in fact actually presented examples that support
the second model, and he was distressed that Holt should have found it
necessary to quote Beach who stressed the role of self-stimulation in men.
“Now what is self-stimulation? T h e internalized unconscious memory traces
.
of wishes. . these are the forces we are speaking aboutl” Holt’s example of
the severely brain-damaged man who was sexually aroused only by genital
stimulation merely emphasizes the distinction between a motivation from
internalized memory tfaces of experiences of gratification on the one hand,
and being stimulus-bound on the other. Holt’s conclusion that Freud’s ob-
servations about human nature remain permanent contributions, that people
are impelled by unconscious motives to seek pleasure and avoid unpleasure.
struck Schur as the return of “the ghost of Rapaport.” H e quoted hiephisto-
pheles who, when Faust asked him who he really was, replied: “I am a part
of a force which always wants the bad, but always ends u p creating the good.”
Valenstein then quoted from Holt’s prepared paper a paragraph which
Holt had not read aIoud. It said, ”It would surprise me, for example, if :here
were no one here today who did not react to some of the data I want to
present by saying that that is perfectly compatible with Freud’s drive theory,
even though it is presented as challenging the theory.”
Holt replied: “Schur seems to be taking me to task for attacking Freud
hip and thigh, whereas I explicitly start with the supposition that Freud at-

tacked himself. There are two Freuds here, as Schur himself points out. And
I am taking sides with one of them against the other. . I end up on the..
side of the clinical Freud.” On the whole, Holt felt that he was in agrecment
with the arguments that Schur had presented.
After suggesting that the previous presentations were good examples of
die human tendency to defend “conceptual territorial space,’’ Dahl quoted
Freud (1926) in support of the effort to look to other disciplines for help.
Freud wrote, “There is no more urgent need in psychology than for a se-
curely founded theory of the instincts on which it might then be possible
to build further. Nothing of the sort exists, however, and psychoanalysis
is driven to making tentative efforts towards some such theory.” Freud wrote
that his attempts to formulate an instinct theory in the metapsychological
papers “remained no more than a torso,” clearly indicating his dissatisfaction
with all his previous efforts to classify and define instincts-first into ego
and libidinal instincts. secondly into narcissistic versus object libido, and
finally into life and death instincts.
Bemuse many of his subsequent comments would be on physiological
data. Dahl stressed that he agreed with Schur and others that the fundamental
idca in the psychoanalytic motivation theory of instinctual drive is the wish,
that is, the mental representation of an experience of satisfaction. “It must be
taken for granted that the memory configurations which have consequence
for the future for each individual represent the consolidations of early
experiences of satisfaction.” But we look at motivation from two points of
view: (i) its sources in physiology insofar as these exist in physiology, and
(ii) in the experiences of satisfaction and their recollection.’These approaches
sccm complementary rather than contradictory.
Dahl then gave a rather detailed account of the behavior of rats who
had had ablations of portions of the lateral hypothalamic stat centers involved
in eating and drinking behavior. Ablation of these drive ccnters in rats
leads to severe aphagia and adipsia. The animals find food and water aversive
and react to them with behavior which normally accompanies actively reject-
ing some unpleasant taste such as that of quinine. However, over a period
of wccks, the animals may recover and, when they do so, they behave as
though the stat center had been rcset at a different level. In an exactly
analogous way, ablation of the medial satiation -centers leads rats to increase
their n t e of eatingunti1 they reach a plateau and continue eating at a higher
level .than previously. Although he concluded from such studies that it is
reasonable to talk about different amounts of physiological excitation or
inhibition, Dahl did not know how to translate these quantitative ideas into
a notion of general energies.
In reply to Holt’s position that there is no one-to-one relationship bc-
tween the amount of xxual behavior and levels of sexual hormones, he
reported a study by A. R. Caggiula which suggested a direct relationship.
Caggiula implanted electrodes in rats’ hypothalamic centers having to do with
mounting behavior and cjaculations and taught the rats to press a bar to give

THEORY OF INSTINCI'UAL DRIVES 633
themselves electrical stimulation in the area. The rate of bar pressing varied
positively with the androgen levels, contrary to anticipations based on a
threshold model.
Dahl returned to the 1915 definition of instincts-in particular to the
concept of instinctual drive as a demand for work oq the psychic apparatus
by virtue of its connection with the body. He felt it was not neccss~ryto
to think of the apparatus being operated by a hypothetical psychic energy
in order to use such a construct. I n fact, he joined Holt and Schur in cxpress-
ing doubts about the Nirvana principle. Nonetheless, criticisms of the par-
ticular energy notions which Freud had used did not negate the usefulness
of the concept of drive as a demand for work. He then focused on Klein's
idea of the primary regions of imbalance and suggested that some of the
possible sources of disturbance in sudi regions could best be studied physio-
logically, in the sense that certain sources, such as hypothalamic drive centers,
could make a demand; the work would lie in the apparatus finding the
appropriate signals, sensory inputs, symbols, memories or whatever, which
match both the requirements of the previous experience of satisfaction as
well as the biochemical needs of the system. He agreed with Klein in think-
ing of discharge, not as dissipation o r getting rid of energies, but rather
as turning off by inhibition or reduction of sensitivity at the source of the
demand. It seemed to him that what had been learned about the hypothalamic
centers fits this 'model quite nicely.
O n the one hand, there are excitatory output nuclei which, when acti-
vated, result in some response on the part of the rest of the system. O n the
other hand, there are different nuclei which seem to be activated by the feed-
back from the system's response to the original output activation (demand);
these are the so-called satiation centers. These schemes are best understood
for hunger and thirst behavior, but are also compatible with what is known
so far about the centers involved in sexual activity. T h e particular nature
of the activity which follows the output of these centers is, of course. governed
by the history of the system activated-a history laid down in particular
memory configurations. What is of interest to the psychoanalyst are the
details of the failure of the psychic organization successfully to terminate
drive demand-that is, a situation where there is merely inhibition to drive
output without a successful activating of the inhibitory (satiation) centers.
Holt had focused mainly on data which suggest instinctual arousal by chance
encounters with objects in the environment. Dahl felt, however, that much
experimental work remains to be done to show the correlations between the
resulting behaviors and the actual somatic states. H e thought it was premature
to say that no demonstrable, correlated chemical changes were to be found.
He concluded by pointing out that the concept of an amount of energy
accumulating and needing to be discharged is a very recurrent idea-one
shared by ethologists and psychoanalysts alike. Wolff, in describing the be-
havior of the neonate, had used just such a notion when he wrote about B
limited quantity of neural energy to explain the reciprocal occurrence of

startle reactions and startle reaction substitutes, such as mouthings and

erections. Dahl thought that the prevalence of this kind of tension-reduction
model may not have much to do with its properties as an abstract concept,
but may rather be derived from the human experience of tension and its
reduction. I n view of psychoanalysts’ day-today confrontations with feelings
of tension and their consequences, they are likely, he thought, to continue
to think in such terms.
Wolff was troubled by an implication that he felt w3s in the air, namcly,
that “all the so-called hard information is in the realm of neurophysiological
data, and, as Dahl mentioned quite recently, that hunger is something
we know a great deal about.” H e went on to say that this reminded him of
the drunk looking for his key under the streetlight. simply because that’s
where thc light was. He wondered, “If it is true that the fundamental phc-
nomena of psychoanalysis are the materials ..
. of a clinical psychoanalysis,
... is there something about going then to the laboratory and sticking
electrodes into the heads, because it is easier, which avoids the greater
problem that Klein was talking about, namely ...
the phenomena from
which the theory grows-the clinical phenomena?” He asked why one should
accept neurophysiological evidence when it is “useful or compatible,” and
when it is not compatible, say that is not what onc is talking about. He
felt one could not have it both ways. If one starts with a reflex arc model,
i t has certain consequences. He then acknowledged that he had indeed used
the term “limited quantity of neural energy.” However, he now thought
that he could just as well havc used some alternative conception such as
reciprocal activation. I n any case he felt that it w3s not possible to use these
observations to support the conccpt of instinctual drive energy as it is used
i n psychoanalysis. Neural energy is beside the point, because the psycho-
analytic conccpt deals with symbols and wishes. “Onc can only begin to talk
about these concepts in terms of a n organism that is capable of symbolization.’’
Ritvo replied to both Holt and Wolff. He emphasized that therc has
never been any question that external stimuli play a n important part in
sexual bchavior, but that this in no way contradicts the concept of instinctual
drive. “With any sexual behavior there are determinants from the external
.
environment . . and there arc elements stemming from self-stimulation
through fantasy and imagcry which, once they have reached consciousness.
act upon the cgo in the same fashion as external stimuli. . T h e special ..
usefulness of the concept of instinctual drive defined by its characteristics of
.. .
aim, source, and object . is that . . the commonalities can be found in
behavior which may be widely diverse on the surface [and get be understood]
by dynamic unconscious fantasies and strivings inferred from observable
behavior.” Holt’s reference to obese patients whose eating serves other aims
than satisfaction of hunger supports the psychoanalytic view. Ritvo’s views
about tension reduction were almost identical to Dahl’s.
Locwenstein stressed that, although subjective experience must indeed
play a role, a scientific approach to psychological phenomena requires an

abstract concept.’ Holt had said that Rubinstein had demonstrated that the
concept of psychic energy was not explanatory but descriptive. Loewenstein
did not know how one could demonstrate or not demonstrate that. It is
really a question of how one uses the term, since the difference between
explanatory and desm-ptive discourse in psychology is a difficu1t matter. H e
referred to Holt’s criticisms of mechanistic approades, but felt that i t was
difficult to get away from models with mechanistic properties. For example,
even Klein’s “beautiful desaiption of the area of imbalance is a mechanistic
concept.” Whether concepts are valid o r not is another question, “but one
cannot simply reproach them for being mechanistic unless they are used
naively and that is the case neither of Freud nor of Klein.” Moreover, he
was of the impression that Holt had described experiments mostly in one
direction and had not emphasized experiments indicating the existence of
inner drives of a physiological sort. But he did not pretend to be an expert
in these areas and returned to what he knows best, what is observed in
patients. There it is dear that motivations “are not always necessarily instinc-
tual-far from it. They can stem from the ego as well as sometimes from the
superego.” He felt that Freud had never been so naive as to think that any
single concept could encompass all behavior. Loewenstein concluded by quot-
ing a definition of work and energy by the physicist, n.faxwel1: “Work is the
act of producing a change of configuration in a system in opposition to a
force that resists that change. Energy is the capacity of doing work. Work is
the transformation of energy from one system to another.” He thought that
this would fit perfectly well with what analysts are u p to.
Holt responded, starting with the concepts of work and energy. His
central objection to the use of these concepts was that they are quantitative
and yet, in the field of psychoanalytic observation, incapable of measure-
ment. This is a difficulty which must not lightly be cast aside. I n contrast, the
concept of work as used in physics has a precise, measurable meaning by
virtue of the fact that physics operates with dimensional quantifications,
which are what is absent from psychoanalysis. Holt wondered how one would
compare (i) the work of solving a double-crostic, (ii) the work of inventing
a new machine which might have tremendous labor-saving consequences,
and (iii) some “routine simple drudgery which nevertheless serves the pur-
pose ... of restraining drive preoccupations.” There is no way to settle
such questions, he felt. nloreover, he did not see why such questions should
ever be raised by psychoanalysts, and was astonished th3t members of the
panel found this a useful formulation, since “psychoanalysts never talk
about work . . . except in a metaphorical way.” He himself would not be
unhappy to use the word as a descriptive concept, but no more than that.
He felt he may have stretched the point a bit when he said that Rubinstein
had demonstrated that energy is a descriptive and not a n explanatory term.
However, he thought that a strong and cogent case had been made for this
idea. H e went on to distinguish between the mechanistic and cybernetic prin-
ciples, preferring to use the term mechanistic to apply to machines which

636 SCIENTIFIC PROCEEDIKGS
are not self-regulating and to use the term cybernetic for those that are.
Next, he addressed himself to the “evidence that deals with the internal
aspect of sex.” He felt that the evidence has not supplied us with something
like a measurable hormone to replace the unmeasurable energy. He agreed
that “sexual excitatory mechanisms depend on an adequate level of the
. .
relevant hormone, but . [the hormone] cirtainly does not seem to play
the role of being the substitute of the hypothetical ...
distended seminal
vesicle.” He felt that experiments of the kind cited did not “provide the
data that would be needed for those who want to maintain that conception
of drive.” Instead he thought that the central necessary concept is a “pure
pleasure-principle factor.” Hunger is very much controlled by anticipations
of pleasurable gratification, and, all things considered, the male rat’s sexual
behavior is “controlled primarily by certain propcrties of the female fat
stimulus.”
Hc continued by saying that people were not rats and we are interested
i n people. Of Freud‘s many theories some have been neglected while others
have been seized upon and hypertrophied. “The ones that have been the
favorites of many theoreticians are unfortunately the 19th century hangovers
. .
of Freud’s mechanistic education. . It’s true that we are so used to terms
[like] cathexis and countercathexis that it is hard to see how people could
think without them . ..but other people are used to talking to their
patients rather directly, using the patient’s own language. . . They stick .
closer to concepts like wish and don’t necessarily go into considerations of
energy and cathexis and psychic structure and all the rest of these arid and
dessicated terms.” He made a plea for sticking closer to clinical language
and clinical considerations when talking about motivational problems. H e
believed that the kind of alternative theory that Klein has presented will
handle the data of psychoanalysis without making untenable assumptions.
H e disagreed with the 1915 definition on another ground, namely, that it
represented Freud‘s thinking dualistically, that is, of “a mental realm and a
physical realm ... a very clear position of classical interactionalist dualism.
.. . This passage is better simply forgotten than really dwelt upon.”
Valenstein said that Holt apparently misunderstood how psychoanalysts
function. They do talk the patients’ language. the language of expcrience,
and do not talk with patients in metapsychological terns. He was curious
about Holt’s use of the metaphor of the driver and the car and wondered
what would have happened if Freud had used that instead of the rider on
the horse. “The horse, after all, has some passions of his own.”
Herman Serota commented on the issue of quantification, pointing out
that it was very congenial for him to make statements suggesting quantitative
estimates of the degree of a patient’s anxiety or the amount of some other
behavior. He also referred to a neurophysiological correlative of aggression.
Thirty years ago, while measuring temperatures in the hypothalamus and
other areas of the brain of a cat, he had found that when a dog was brought
into the room, the temperature in the hypothalamus increased; then, after

several minutes, for reasons that were not dear, the temperature returned
to its baseline.
Howard Shemen spoke to statements made by both IVolff and Holt to
the effect that, in the absence of a n appropriate stimulus, there is no evi-
dencc to show that drive increases. On the contrary, as Fisherbad pointed
out in his paper, evidence from dream deprivation {tudies shows that there
are indeed psychological consequences of deprivation and that there is a
recovery phenomenon-pressure, so to speak, which builds u p and is “re-
leased once the opportunity for dreaming or sleep is given.” He also com-
mented on what seemed to be “a remarkable hiatus between the need (un-
derstood as a tissue deprivation), as a physiological concept, and the instinc-
tual drive (as Schur described it), as a purely psychological concept, as if the
organism at the start of life was a purely physiological being.” He found it
hard to know from the description of the neonate whether IVolff was dcscrib-
ing psychologiul or physiological phenomena. In particular, Shevrin ques-
tioned “the implied definition that only symbolic activity is psychological
ideational activity,” calling attention to the ability of neonates to make
perccptual discriminations, which do not seem to be symbolic, but certainly
seem to be psychological.
Wolff said he had not talked about drives; he had talked, instead, of
two opposing tendencies-one an increase of need with deprivation and the
other a decrease over the long term. Moreover, he was not at all convinced
that it was useful to talk about hunger, sex, and thirst “as though they all
had common properties.” Finally, he was perfectly willing to grant that not
only neonates, but also animals, are capable of psychological phenomena.
Nonetheless, the psychoanalytic theory of instinctual drive is indeed best
understood in terms of symbolic representations.
James Naiman stated that he felt Holt’s evidence emphasizing the role
of external stimulation was somewhat one-sided. H e referred to Neal Miller,
who studied animals that were allowed to eat or drink as much as they
wished. and whose brains were then suffused with a chemical transmitter,
whereupon they either ate or drank more, depending on the particular
chemical. This is evidence for the importance of “what goes on inside the
organism.”
Dahl called attention to an issuc which was perhaps the most important
issue of a l l - o n e which thc panel had not grappled with, probably because
there is not much more to say about it. H e was refemng to our lack of knowl-
edge about the physiology of the subjective experience of pleasure.
hewenstein concluded the afternoon’s discussion by saying that Holt
was mistaken i n his view that psychoanalysts do not use the concept of
work in analysis. T h e fact is that they repeatedly focus on the manifestations
of a patient’s resistance and on the work which has to be done to overcome it.

Dahl, H. (1968) - Psychoanalytic Theory of The Instinctual Drives in Relation To Recent Developments

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SCIENTIFIC P R 0 C E E D I N G S-Panel Reports

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the physiological energy processes involved.” He suggested that animals, too,

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Hartvig Dahl was troubled by the either-or im’plications of Wolff‘s and

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necessary to assume a n early undifferentiated stage out of which id and ego

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in terms of peremptoriness, cyclic character, selectiveness, and displace-

act as if they had such accumulations of drive tension, . can be under-

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stood as self-stimulation mediated by imagery, fantasy and internal language.”

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I n order to guide us in dealing with the field of psychological phe-

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TOSchur, this is a crucial statement of the “transition from a biological

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startle reactions and startle reaction substitutes, such as mouthings and

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