Talk:Drive

Drive (German: Trieb; French: pulsion) is a foundational concept in psychoanalytic theory referring to the psychical force that animates desire, structures jouissance, and underlies the subject’s relation to the unconscious. Unlike biological instincts, drives are symbolically mediated, partially organized, and inherently repetitive.

Freud: Conceptual Foundations

For Sigmund Freud, drive is a key metapsychological construct that exists at the interface of body and mind. In Instincts and Their Vicissitudes (1915), he defines drive as:

“a constant force of a biological nature, emanating from organic sources, that always has as its aim its own satisfaction through the elimination of the state of tension which operates at the source of the drive itself.”

Freud distinguishes drive from instinct: instincts are relatively fixed, species‑specific patterns (e.g., hunger, thirst) that seek satisfaction; drives instead exert a constancy of pressure on consciousness that cannot be fully neutralized.

Freud further identifies four defining characteristics of the drive:

• Pressure – “the amount of force or measure of the demand for work which it represents.”
• Aim – to remove the tension at its source, though never fully satisfied.
• Object – that through which partial relief is obtained (with fixation indicating close attachment).
• Source – the somatic process whose stimulus enters mental life as the drive.

In Freud’s early sexuality theory, human sexual life consists of multiple partial drives (German: Partialtrieb) emerging from different erogenous zones. Before puberty, these partial drives function anarchically — a condition Freud terms polymorphous perversity — and are later organized (precariously) under genital functions at puberty.

Later, Freud elaborates a dualism of drives — between life drives (Eros) and the death drive (Todestrieb) — recognizing a compulsion to repeat that seems independent of pleasure:

“We are compelled to assume a compulsion to repeat... this compulsion appears to be independent of the pleasure principle.”

Lacan: Drive as Symbolic and Structural Loop

For Jacques Lacan, Freud’s notion of drive is perhaps psychoanalysis’ most significant contribution to understanding subjectivity. Lacan insists on maintaining the distinction between drive and instinct: while instincts imply a pre‑linguistic biological need, drives are non‑biological, cultural, and symbolic constructs.

Lacan emphasizes that the drive:

• never attains satisfaction,
• does not aim at an object but circles around it,
• and gains its jouissance from the circuit itself, not from consummation.

“The aim of the drive is simply the way in which it goes around its object.”

Thus, the drive’s purpose lies in its repetition — a movement that transgresses the pleasure principle and articulates the subject’s relation to the Real and the Other.

Partial Drives and Partial Objects

Lacan agrees with Freud that sexuality is constituted through partial drives, but reinterprets their partiality:

• Drives are partial not because they are fragments of a unified whole, but because they represent only the dimension of enjoyment — not reproductive function.
• Partial drives do not achieve a harmonious genital fusion but remain irreducibly structured around jouissance.

Lacan identifies four fundamental partial drives, each linked to a distinct erogenous zone and partial object:

Partial Drive	Erogenous Zone	Partial Object	Verb
Oral drive	Lips	Breast	To suck
Anal drive	Anus	Faeces	To excrete
Scopic drive	Eyes	Gaze	To see
Invocatory drive	Ears	Voice	To hear

These partial objects are not empirical things but structural leftovers (objet petit a) around which the drive circulates.

Circuit of the Drive and the Subject

In Seminar XI: The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, Lacan outlines the three stages of the drive’s loop:

1. Active voice (e.g., to see),
2. Reflexive voice (e.g., to see oneself),
3. Passive voice (e.g., to be seen).

Lacan states:

“It is only in the third element — ‘to be seen’ — that the subject properly emerges.”

This formulation aligns the subject’s emergence with the final stage of the drive, underscoring that subjectivity arises not prior to but through the movement of drives.

Drive, Desire, and Jouissance

Lacan distinguishes drive from desire:

• Desire is oriented by lack and by the desire of the Other.
• Drive is oriented by jouissance, the enjoyment that exceeds symbolic closure.

Desire remains open and relational, while the drive repeats, finding its satisfaction in the very circuit of movement rather than attainment of an object.

Lacan thus rewrites Freud’s dualism: rather than opposing specific drives or instincts, he argues that all drives are sexual and, in their repetitive nature, are effectively expressions of the death drive — a perpetual return characteristic of jouissance.

Matheme of the Drive

In 1957, Lacan proposes the formal representation of the drive:

$ ◊ D

Here $ signifies the barred subject, and D indicates demand — demonstrating the subject’s displacement before a demand that insists without conscious intention.

Clinical Implications

In clinical practice, manifestations of drives are found in symptoms, compulsions, and fantasies. These are not deviations from “normal” function but expressions of the drive’s structural logic — its repetitive circuits and jouissance. Whether in neurosis, perversion, or psychosis, drives articulate the subject’s relation to the Other’s demand and the Real.

Summary

In psychoanalysis, the drive is not a biological instinct but a psychic force that loops around unattainable objects, producing jouissance and organizing the subject’s unconscious life. Freud established the drive’s metapsychological framework and dualism; Lacan restructured it as a symbolic loop, a partial articulation of desire, and a key to understanding repetition, subjectivity, and the impossible satisfaction that defines human psychic existence.

See Also

• Desire
• Death drive
• Pleasure principle
• Instinct
• Objet petit a
• Gaze
• Voice
• Unconscious
• Subject