Instinct

Hey folks, welcome back and thanks for tuning in.

Today is our October edition of Incentives and Instincts, a recurring series in which I speak with economist and friend, Bryce Ward, about some of the broader challenges facing our society.

Bryce, thanks for being here.

Happy to be here, Justin.

So, uh, full steam ahead.

Instincts take over, right, too, for him?

What's that? Yeah, yeah.

Instincts and his style of play.

Full steam ahead.

Yeah.

It's Freud's 1905, three essays on the theory of sexuality.

Now, one thing that Lacan says in seminar four is that if you were to read the original draft of the 1905 essays that you would not recognize it a bit because from 1905, and then in between like 1914 and 15 when he develops the concept of narcissism we get an understanding of this split between the sexual instinct or the drive and the self-preservation of what we would call the damning of the libido which is the ego formation and then i would say then he adds like one prior to beyond the pleasure principle he adds one more footnote in like 1919 But then the major explicit essay on the drive is Instincts in the Vicissitudes, where he actually wants to interrogate.

And this is what's beautiful about Lacan.

Whether or not you agree with Lacan, I think Lacan gives a very beautiful reading of Freud's project.

And I know Laplanche will kind of like run with that a bit.

But then in the later 1920s, he talks about this problem of masochism as like the way the drive imposes itself on the subject itself.

But we could also see him talk about that as early as 1917 in Instincts and the Vicissitudes, because he talks about, again, like to really break down what the drive is.

It's got four components you have in the essay.