Drive

DRIVE, a peculiar active state of the organism, caused, predominantly, by prolonged endogenous excitation and persistently manifesting itself in a series of actions, usually directed toward some object. Subjectively, a drive is characterized by a feeling of tension associated with a gravitation toward a known goal, as well as by a feeling of some dissatisfaction, which is replaced by a positive sensory tone following the achievement of the goal. Comparing drives with other mental states, psychologists considered the drive to be the simplest basis of a volitional act. According to Wundt, a drive is an unaccountable, "impulsive action." A drive is characterized by the absence of a conflict of motives and the immediate emergence of an action right after some emotional experience. When clearly conscious motives and goals are added to a drive, it, according to the terminology of subjective psychologists, turns into a "desire" and into a "conscious volitional action." According to another formulation, a drive is a "feeling plus a motor tendency." Often the term drive is replaced by the terms "craving," "aspiration," and "instinct" (the latter by English authors). The development of comparative psychology, the physiology of the nervous and endocrine systems, as well as materialistic trends in modern human psychology are paving the way for the study of the true nature of drives. From the point of view of comparative psychology, a drive approaches instincts if one refers to the latter as innate, complex reflex reactions that arise regularly as the organism develops (e.g., the instincts of seasonal migration in birds or the building instinct in bees). The matter, however, concerns only some features of similarity, since endogenous stimuli play a prominent role in the mechanism of a drive, and since a drive, in its external manifestation, represents a stable cycle of partial reactions that abruptly terminates upon the achievement of the drive's object. As for the moment of innateness, it enters into the composition of human drives only as one of the elements of the latter, and for a whole series of drives, this element completely loses its actual significance. Influences from the external (and for humans, primarily, socio-class) environment exert a powerful influence on all aspects of a drive—on the time and intensity of its manifestation, on the connection of the drive with a specific external object, and on the very content of all partial reactions included in the drive. To a somewhat lesser extent, this applies to the food drive, and to a greater extent to the sexual drive, which, as is known, manifests itself in the most diverse forms corresponding to the economic and cultural-historical stage of social development; the significance of external influences is most pronounced for such drives as, for example, the drive toward certain types of labor and organizational activity, the very emergence and formulation of which occur with the decisive participation of social factors. Thus, a drive is a product of the close interaction between unconditionally reflex mechanisms and acquired "superstructural" apparatuses of behavior—with a different specific weight of each of these moments for different drives. From the anatomo-physiological side, the mechanism of a drive is composed of the joint activity of the endocrine system, the autonomic nervous apparatus, including the subcortical ganglia, and, finally, the cerebral cortex. Glands of internal secretion play the role of the main source of internal stimuli for a type of drive. Thus, for example, the sexual drive usually fades along with the involution of the endocrine sex glands. The necessary participation of the autonomic nervous system in the mechanism of a drive is proven not only by the fact of the close connection between this system and the endocrine apparatus, but also by the circumstance that the activity of a drive is accompanied by a series of vasomotor, secretory, and motor-affective phenomena, characteristic especially of the higher centers of the autonomic nervous system located in the subcortical ganglia. As for cortical processes, the very presence of which in the mechanism of a drive is evident from the adaptive and sometimes even creative character of drive reactions, these processes apparently possess a number of neurodynamic features. The relatively high stability and intensity of drives, their inhibitory effect on other reactions of the personality, and, finally, the great significance of side irritations during the emergence or strengthening of individual drive reactions—all these signs show that at the basis of a drive lies a dominant (in the sense of Ukhtomsky) process, and, moreover, an especially prolonged and strong one. The relative significance of each of the indicated anatomo-physiological components is extremely different for different drives. Thus, for example, complex socially directed drives of a scientific or public figure are directly connected with the excited state of certain cortical mechanisms without the autonomic and endocrine systems playing the role of the initial stimulus of the cerebral cortex; both these systems, although they undoubtedly participate in the indicated reactive process, are apparently involved in it secondarily. The classification of drives is extremely insufficiently developed in modern psychology. Among individual classification attempts, one should note the attempt of Thorndike, which is sympathetically accepted by a number of other prominent psychologists. Thorndike distinguishes: instincts (drives in the understanding of English authors) of acquisition and possession, the instinct of collecting and accumulating (collecting), instincts of hunting, wandering (as opposed to the instinct of homebody-ness), the instinct of fighting, motherhood, gregariousness (supposedly proven by the painfulness of loneliness), the instinct of imitation, social instincts, etc. This classification, which rather deserves the name of a list, is extremely controversial. On the one hand, it deprives the concept of a drive of any originality, since, logically continuing the author's thought, one would have to consider almost all types of human behavior as an instinct or drive. On the other hand, since the author considers instincts as innate formations, man, their bearer, turns (according to the author's thought, but contrary to reality) into a purely zoological, asocial being. Freud divides human drives into two large groups: 1) the so-called "Ego" drives, or self-preservation, and 2) sexual drives. Drives of both groups represent, according to Freud, a product of long phylogenetic development and fuel all active manifestations of the personality with their energy. Thus, drives figure here not as concrete bio-social, but as abstract-biological formations. From this point of view, "altruistic" (or, rather, socially directed) drives are not drives at all, and the corresponding aspirations of the personality are deprived even of relative energetic independence, since they "live" at any given moment exclusively at the expense of primitive (sexual) drives. In one of his last works, Freud makes an attempt to improve his classification of drives, distinguishing drives toward life, connected with the tendency to continue life and maintain vital tone (sexual drives), and drives toward death, drawing man toward a state of greatest rest. These drives are not specific to humans and are supposedly inherent in all organic nature. Individual observations of neurotics and children, cited by Freud in favor of this theory, cannot, naturally, remove from this theory the reproach it deserves for its extreme metaphysical nature. In contrast to the cited classifications, a scientific-materialist classification of drives, which is still subject to development, must proceed from taking into account the circumstance that in the behavior of a real person, a large role is played not only by relatively primitive drives (such as, for example, sexual drives and the food drive), but also by complex, socially conditioned and directed drives (such as drives toward various types of labor, organizational, scientific, and other activities). These latter can, no less than primitive ones, acquire great stability and intensity and determine a number of characteristic features of the personality. The doctrine of the dynamics of drives relates both to the question of the development of an individual drive and to the question of the connection between different drives. The most developed is the theory of the development of the sexual drive proposed by Freud. The sexual drive begins to manifest itself, according to Freud, from the first days of a person's life. Already in such reactions of a child as sucking the mother's breast, and even more so sucking other objects, one can discern signs of the sexual drive. The erogenous zone from which sexual excitement can be caused is, in a child, almost the entire surface of the body, but mainly the oral and urogenital areas. The sexual drive takes the form of individual and alternating, so-called partial drives, such as, for example, narcissism (pleasure from contemplating one's own body) and the incestuous drive (the desire to possess one of the parents). Only by the moment of puberty do the numerous partial drives unite into one drive of a truly genital type. Subsequently, the sexual drive develops insofar as it is transformed into other types of activity and, thus, fuels and organizes in its own image and likeness all of a person's attachments not only to people, but also to objects and ideas.

While Freud's data on the pregenital history of the drive deserve, in the main, enormous scientific attention and correctly emphasize the role of the sexual drive in the child's psyche as being more significant than was accepted before the appearance of Freudian research, Freud's doctrine on the sexual nature of the main types of human activity is devoid of persuasiveness, being in many respects a priori or based on risky analogies. The interrelationships between drives are quite often expressed in the form of a struggle between them. In this, both cases of mutual extinction of competing drives and cases of the displacement of one of the drives are possible, whereby the one that has gained the upper hand often acquires all the features of a dominant formation (see above). The displacement of a drive and its transfer into a latent state also occurs in the presence of constant external obstacles to the realization of the drive. The same factor can entail the complete disintegration of a drive, which, however, occurs more often on the basis of endogenous processes that eliminate the endocrine-vegetative components of the drive. The question of the genetic connection between drives deserves special attention. It should be recognized that in the process of the ontogenetic development of the personality, complex drives develop on the basis of primitive drives, just as, according to the data of the school of I. P. Pavlov, conditioned reflex reactions are formed on the basis of unconditioned reflexes. However, once having arisen and having received favorable conditions for their further strengthening, new drives develop according to their own peculiar laws and acquire energetic independence in relation to the primitive drives from which they arose. Complex drives continue their existence even after their original genetic basis disappears for some reason (e.g., the sexual drive in old age). On the other hand, they can suppress primitive drives even when the latter possess greater potential capabilities. Thus, the presence of a genetic connection does not at all mean the actual dependence of complex drives on primitive ones. From this point of view, Freud's theory of sublimation should also be evaluated: insofar as it emphasizes the possibility of the development of one drive on the basis of another, it deserves full recognition. But in that part where it attempts to prove the mandatory actual dependence of higher types of human activity on primitive drives, it can hardly be accepted. Furthermore, the theory of sublimation attaches exclusive importance to sexual drives, whereas in reality the primitive psycho-physiological basis of the personality is far from exhausted by these drives alone. The role of drives in the structure of the personality is very significant, since drives and the affects and emotions associated with them are woven into all basic types of human activity. What is accepted as being called the will is determined to a large extent by the intensity of the drives and their balance with one another. The character structure of the personality also depends to a large extent on the development of one drive or another. Further research into the problem of drives has important practical significance, since proper influence on drives, both in the sense of directing them toward a known type of activity and in the sense of regulating their vegetative-endocrine basis, is extremely essential for pedagogy, therapeutic and preventive medicine, as well as for other socio-practical fields.

I. S. Pathology of the drive. Numerous disorders of both basic, elementary drives and derivative, more complex drives constitute an extensive chapter of general psychopathology and clinical psychiatry. As a rule, the deeper the disorder of the personality (whether it is a consequence of congenital underdevelopment, some psychosis, or psychoneurosis), the more a deep deviation in the sphere of the most basic drives is revealed, and, conversely, in comparatively benign processes, the disorder of the drive turns out to be less sharply expressed. Quantitative and qualitative anomalies of the drive are distinguished. A general weakening of all drives is encountered in states of profound dementia, e.g., in the terminal period of progressive paralysis, when the patient remains in a completely motionless position, and one has to turn him, feed him, and take care of his natural functions. The same thing is observed in some other organic diseases of the brain. A sharp weakening of the drive is often a consequence of epidemic encephalitis (in its most severe forms), where, along with phenomena of parkinsonism, the complete apathy, mental and physical immobility of the patients are striking. Affective dullness with a sharp limitation of the drive serves as one of the characteristic symptoms of schizophrenic diseases. A quantitative change in the drive in its two opposite directions (in the direction of the plus and in the direction of the minus) is extremely demonstrative in manic-depressive psychosis: in manic exaltation, drives are intensified, starting from the drive for food, the sexual drive, and ending with social drives and various kinds of partial manifestations of intensified, although superficial, activity in the form of a drive for acquisitions (purchases), for muscular movements, for self-expression in sports, in speeches, in organizational activity, etc. A completely opposite picture is given by a melancholic state with the inhibition of all drives, whereby the drive for food, for self-preservation, as well as for reproduction and for the manifestations of the personality in the sphere of social relations are equally disturbed. The complete absence of the drive for self-preservation often takes the form here of a drive for suicide, for inflicting injuries upon oneself, and also (indirectly, through the mediation of delusional ideas) for the murder of loved ones, e.g., one's own children. A special group of disorders of the drive is represented by irresistible drives, which can be extremely diverse; they were previously considered as separate diseases: kleptomania (drive to steal), pyromania (drive to commit arson), dromomania (drive to wander), dipsomania (drive to periodic intoxication), narcomania (drive for various narcotics), etc. All these drives are symptoms of various kinds of psychoses, psychopathic states, and psychoneuroses. Of especially great importance are qualitative disorders of the sexual drive, so-called perversions, such as, for example, fetishism (the direction of libido toward any inanimate objects, mostly articles of clothing, footwear, etc.), exhibitionism (the drive to show one's sexual organs to persons of the other sex), various types of homosexuality (the drive toward persons of one's own sex), sadomasochism (the drive to inflict pain or to endure the latter as a surrogate for sexual satisfaction), etc. (see Sexual perversions). Less serious are disorders of the drive observed in some states bordering on the normal as transient symptoms, e.g., perverted drives for food in pregnant and hysterical women, for the consumption of chalk, sand, vinegar, etc., as well as an intensified drive for food (bulimia) in some internal diseases, but also in many demented persons, schizophrenics, and paralytics. A diminished drive for food (sitiophobia), reaching the point of complete refusal of food, is a symptom of schizophrenia, but is not infrequently observed in the period of sexual development in girls, being either a not sharply expressed form of the same schizophrenia, with a comparatively good prognosis, or serving as some insufficiently clarified manifestation of an anomaly of the period of puberty. Various disorders of the drive are caused by very many reasons, among which endocrine anomalies and structural changes of the central nervous system in organic diseases occupy the first place. A special group of pathological drives is constituted by those underdevelopments which (according to the theory, or rather, the hypothesis of Freud) represent a halt (fixation) of libidinal energy on one of the erogenous zones, which in the normal state are deprived of their erotic significance, gradually yielding their libido to the genital zone. Thanks to such fixation (on the oral or anal zone), the individual subsequently acquires (according to Freud's doctrine) some peculiar character traits, at the basis of which lie these or those features of the drive.