Greenberg and Mitchell, Object Relations in Psychoanalytic Theory (1983) (IV)
In the last entries I have parsed the distinction between the drive-structure and relational-structure models — hence their potential reconcilability — in terms of motivation. Are human beings essentially pleasure-seeking, as Freudians insist, or — as Fairbairn proposed — object-seeking? But this emphasis on motivation somewhat obscures the specificity of drive theory. Freud never stipulates “pleasure seeking” and “unpleasure avoidance” in some generic way, but always something rather concrete: early on, libidinal and self-preservative drives, later, erotic and aggressive drives, as the sui generis media of pleasure (and frustration), depending upon reality’s cooperation with their satisfaction. Accordingly, the mutual exclusivity of “drive” and “relational” models of mind has to do, not merely with the pleasure principle as such, but with the status of these particular motivations, together, finally, with the basic “picture” of a drive generally. The latter is either (a) the early Freud’s “inner excitation”, pressing on the psychic apparatus — “putting it to work” — which enables its “discharge,” or (b) the more broadly “unifying” and “dissolving” tendencies of mind, observable at all levels of the biological world, found in Freud’s later thinking. (In fact, as I noted in a previous entry, Greenberg and Mitchell emphasize the former almost exclusively, a curious oversight that diminishes some of the impact of their account. Hans Loewald provides a corrective to this oversight.)
So for the relationalists, to be sure, the human being is object- or attachment-seeking, rather than fully explicable in terms of other “urges” (sexual, self-preservative, aggressive, or otherwise). Yet the basic nature of these tendencies, trends, motives, are — apart from the types — themselves discrepant. In particular, it seems that relational thinkers are inclined to recognize, not (a) inner excitations pressing for discharge, or (b) the universal, combinatory and destructive activity definitive of biological reality, but (c) so-called “motivational systems.” (John Bowlby and Harry Stack Sullivan ought perhaps to be mentioned at this place.) Thus, on the questions both of the types of motivation attributable to human beings (“libidinal” or “relational," say), and the nature of a “motivator” generally (for instance, “inner impulsions” or “systems”), the two models part ways. Perhaps, finally, it is for these reasons that relational thinkers have rejected drive theory, rather than for reasons pertaining to the “pleasure principle” per se.
All of which is to say: neither the opposition between the drive-structure and relational-structure models, nor — therefore — the potential for a genuine rapprochement — are straightforward problems. Indeed, Greenberg and Mitchell’s book consists largely in chronicling the history of unsuccessful attempts by psychoanalytic theorists to “reduce" one model to the other, or to “mix” and “reconcile” them on a more equal footing. And in the last entry I quoted a striking passage in which the authors underscore the basic futility of this effort:
It is neither useful nor appropriate to question whether either psychoanalytic model is “right” or “wrong.” Each is complex, elegant, and resilient enough to account for all phenomena. The drive model establishes individual pleasure seeking and drive discharge as the bedrock of human existence; the rest of human behavior and experience, including social needs and activities, is derived from the operation of drive and its vicissitudes. The relational model establishes relational configurations as the bedrock of existence; all other human behavior and experiences, including compulsive and impulsive sexuality and aggression, are relational derivatives. Each model establishes a different natural order; each can explain everything. Each model swallows up the other. The models, to use Kuhn’s term, are “incommensurable”; they rest on fundamentally different a priori premises. Any dialogue between their adherents, although useful in forcing a fuller articulation of the two models, ultimately falls short of meaningful resolution. (404)
As I have now suggested, however, the putative “intractability” of the opposition between these two models — hence the dim prospect of some encompassing synthesis — appears to depend upon which ingredients in the drive-structure model we have committed to “honoring.” In the foregoing discussion I have differentiated a number of these ingredients in the drive-structure model, not all of which carry equal potential for accommodation, given the bedrock, non-negotiable premises of the relational-structure model. To collect these ingredients in one place: in the classical account, drives are
organized by considerations that are narrowly hedonic — pertaining to pleasure and unpleasure. This remains the case even in Freud’s mature conception, where (1) the notion of psychic equilibrium, the “constancy principle,” is implicitly revised, and (2) the “death drive” — manifesting psychologically as aggression — raises the prospect of some motivation “beyond the pleasure principle.” For even here, there is every indication that any distinct motivational stem, though perhaps not itself hedonic, becomes discernible only on account of its complex, uneasy fusion with erotic life, hence (indirectly) yielding its own sort of pleasure.
structurally peculiar: either inner excitations, somatic tensions pressing of discharge, or — later on — trends of unification and dismemberment
classifiable according to distinct typologies: either libidinal and self-preserving, in Freud’s early work, or erotic and death drive-infused, in the later
In the next entry, I will conclude with some comments on the likelihood of a rapprochement between the drive-structure and relational-structure models in light of these particular features.