What does Pulsion mean? The term was introduced in Freud's translations to distinguish it from the term Instinct.

Demystifying what Pulsion means to Freud

When Freud speaks of Instinct (Instinkt), he refers to animal behavior, hereditary, characteristic of the species. The term Pulsion (Trieb), on the other hand, highlights the impulse. According to Freud, a pulse has its source in a bodily excitation (state of tension); its objective or goal is to suppress the state of tension that reigns in the pulsional source; it is in the object or thanks to it that the pulse canreach its goal.

Pulsion - A dynamic process consisting of a pressure or force (energetic charge) that makes the individual tend toward a goal. (Laplanche and Pontalis - Vocabulary of Psychoanalysis - pg. 394) It is common to refer to the concept of drive (Trieb) as the one that designates the limit between the somatic and the psychic, a concept-limit or frontier concept that, for some aspects, would resemble the notion of instinct (Instinct), but, for others, would radically distinguish itself from it.

The similarity would be in the idea of tendency or impulse to act, that is, generically speaking, both terms would express a need that compels the organism towards some action in reality. (Fractal, Rev. Psicol. vol.23 no.2 Rio de Janeiro May/Aug. 2011)

What does Pulsion mean for Freud

Freud, in his definition, notes that the Pulsion as a boundary concept between the psychic and the somatic is one of the meanings of the concept of drive, that is, a broader and more superficial meaning. Besides the boundary concept or frontier concept that presents the drive as that which marks the contours of the psychic field investigated by psychoanalysis against the somatic, there are two other meanings of a deeper and more specific level.

The drive is also defined as: Drive as the psychic representative of the bodily stimuli - the drive as the psychic representative (psychischer Repräsentant) of the stimuli that come from inside the body and Drive as the measure of the work demand imposed on the psychic - the measure of the work demand imposed on the psychic as a result of its relation with the bodily.

Freud presents the drives with duality. The first dualism found, according to him, is the one of the sexual drives and the ego or self-conservation drives. Along the time, these concepts were modified and classified between life drive (Eros) and death drive (Thanatos).

What does Life and Death Pulse mean

Life Pulses are classified as a large category of pulses that Freud uses to counteract, in his last theory, the Death Pulses. Life drives tend to constitute larger and larger units and to maintain them.

The term "Eros" was used to classify the Life Pulses. Eros is a word that comes from the Latin, Éros, and its meaning expresses love, desire, and sensual attraction. Eros is the god of love in Greek mythology.

The term erotic is derived from eros. Marcuse discusses in his book "Eros and Civilization" (1966), about the term Eros as a life drive, which is sharpened by the individual's libido, through the longing for civilization, and the collective coexistence. For Marcuse, according to a Freudian analysis, Eros is the libidinal drive, which motivates the individual to life. (Oliveira, L. G. Labirinto Magazine - Year X, nº 14 - December2010)

Death Pulses and Thanatos

In turn, the Death Pulses would be initially turned inward and tending to self-destruction, while the Death Pulses would be secondarily turned outward, manifesting then under the form of aggression or destruction pulses. They tend toward the complete reduction of tensions, that is, they tend to bring the living being back to the anorganic state.

The term "Thanatos" was used to classify Death Pulses. In Greek mythology, Thanatos (Thánatos, a word that comes from Greek) was the personification of death. The death drive, to which Freud refers, is the symbolic death, the social death; a drive that leads the individual to madness, to suicide, that is, a symbolic or material death before society.(Oliveira, L. G. Labirinto Magazine- Year X, nº 14 - December 2010)

The hypothesis of Death Pulse, for Freud, served to explain the phenomena related to the repetition compulsion and also to affirm the duality of the pulses, which are the life pulses and the death pulses.

Final considerations

According to Freud, the individual has latent life drive and death drive within himself. The life drive makes the individual feel the need to satisfy his wants, to seek pleasure and to satisfy the libido, but, for the individual who lives in society, his libido is materialized through organized instinct.

The organized instinct is the social conscience implanted in the individual to live collectively (that is, the action of the Ego over the Id, according to Freud's 2nd topic*) *Note: The Id, in Freud's 2nd topic, is called unconscious; it is the deposit of psychic energies. The ego seeks to replace the pleasure principle that reigns unrestrainedly in the Id with the reality principle.

In the ego, perception plays a role that in the Id is instinct, thus the ego represents reason. The ego originates in the unconscious, its function is to act as a mediator between the impulses of the Id.

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This article was written by Alana Carvalho, student of Clinical Psychoanalysis. She works as a Reiki therapist (Espaço Reikiano Alana Carvalho). She is studying Psychoanalysis and is expanding her horizons and helping with the process of self-knowledge above all.