Further explorations in ego psychology “Beyond the pleasure principle” and the ego, the id and the superego

This chapter describes humans as struggling between two opposing drives: Eros, which produces creativity, harmony, sexual connection, reproduction and self-preservation; and a “death drive,” which brings destruction, repetition, aggression, compulsion and self-destruction. Freud posits that the process of creating living cells binds energy and creates an imbalance. It’s the pressure of matter to return to its original state, which gives cells their quality of living. Yet, students and even many clinicians who currently practice with psychoanalytic therapy – such as object relations or relational clinicians – are often surprised when they learn that they’ve been working with concepts like projective identification and inducement and enactment as if these were relatively new concepts. What Freud actually wanted to do was to deepen our understanding of trauma by adding an understanding of developmental process to it.