Synonyms
Definition
In Freud’s theory of mind, a drive in a broad sense is the force of psychological motivation. In a narrow sense, it is the force of an active innate mental need. An innate mental need is made active by an impulse of an innate need of the body, and its drive forces the mind to do work to the end of satisfying the mental need. The drive does so increasingly until physical action is taken that has the effect of doing away with the somatic impulse, thereby satisfying the innate mental need. In Freud’s theory there are a multiplicity of drives, and part of the work of psychoanalysis is to identify and understand the most fundamental ones – sexual, self-survival, life, and death. All drives have a source, aim, object, and exert pressure.
Introduction
When a homing pigeon flies home, we might say it does so because of a homing instinct. Freud referred to such instincts with the German term Instinkt, which Freud’s editor James Strachey...
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Brown, B. (2017). Drive Theory. In: Zeigler-Hill, V., Shackelford, T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_1377-1
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