The Regression Drive of Sigmund Freud's Beyond the Pleasure Principle

Freud explains that the most critical facet of psychological research are the 'drives' found in the psychological apparatus that influence the mind's unconscious thoughts and cause people to desire restoration to a prior state of being. Freud reasons that all living organisms want to be dead, as in their state of preconception, because theoretically we were dead before alive. He also notes that some people believe that humans have a drive that acts toward progression, which he disputes as only being a repression of the regressive drive. In Freud's explanations, he does not provide enough substantial evidence to support his claims that the regressive death drive exists, but not the progressive, or why it exists. He hardly considers the abundance of information supporting a progressive drive and dwells on the situations that prove his hypothesis correct.

Freud's misconceptions begin with the conservative nature of drives, which he uses as the basis to derive support for his argument. Freud poor example of the fish and embryos does not supply enough evidence to accept the conservative nature of drives as fact. Because his hypothesis of the conservative nature of drives cannot be taken as truth everything he uses it to support is of questionable accuracy. The reason the goal of life is not death can easily be demonstrated by human behavior. Humans strive to live a long life, which can be stated that the goal of life through humans is to live. Humans know that death is inevitable, but that does not make them strive for it. Suicidal behavior is the only support for a goal of death, which isn't consistent with the general population as it only makes up a small percentage.

Freud explains that, "It would contradict the conservative nature of drives if it were the goal of life to achieve a state never previously attained to. Rather, it must aspire to an old state, a primordial state from which it once departed, and to which via all the circuitous byways of development it strives to return" (Beyond the Pleasure Principle, p. 78). As previously stated, the conservative nature of drives is an inadequate basis of support for how the drives function. The largest and perhaps finest example to support the progressive drive is the theory of evolution, which unlike Freud's hypothesis has an abundance of data to support its claims. If Freud's hypothesis were correct, humans would be trying to maintain their primitive behavior and resisting progress instead of persisting to advance technology and society. There are no civilized populations trying to mimic the Neanderthals, but according to Freud there should be or there are.

If Freud is interpreted in the most literal sense, then organisms would not exist today, as they all would have killed themselves, or at the least the organisms that are capable of such actions would have. Since the drive acts upon the subconscious, it would be especially true if believed that the subconscious has a greater influence on our actions and behaviors than its conscious correspondent. In a smaller example, according to Freud's hypothesis, humans are trying to remain in or return to their infantile stage. This type of behavior has not occurred, since no adults crawl around on the floor or exhibit other primitive baby-like behaviors.

Freud contradicts himself when he acknowledges the existence of the 'partial drives', which in his explanation appear to be the opposite of the regression drive. He goes on to explain that the partial drives are, "charged with the task of safeguarding the organism's own particular path to death and barring all possible means of return to the inorganic" (Beyond the Pleasure Principle, p. 79). The partial drives he speaks about are the progressive drives that exist instead of the regressive drives. It is this partial drive that acts as the progressive drive for organisms to strive to live instead of the goal of death. According to Freud, the dangers that threaten life are external influences, which he says an organism 'resists in the most energetic way' instead of taking a shortcut to it's life goal, assuming it is death. That is another of Freud's numerous contradictions, which actually supports my hypothesis of a progressive instinct, especially that he acknowledges the large amount of effort the organism puts forth to resist death, yet describes it as a drive that 'simply evaporates'.

Freud's support for the regressive drive is primarily based on his hypothesis for a conservative nature of drives. Freud gives minimal evidence to back up his hypothesis, which results in poor support for the regressive drive. From the theory of evolution and observations of organisms' behaviors it is easily concluded that there exists a progressive drive rather than a regressive and the goal of life is not death; death is simply an inevitable outcome of life. Death being an expected result does not provide the evidence for his claim that the goal of life is death. Freud says that the appearance of the progressive drive is only the repression of the regressive, but it is evident that is the other way around.

References:

Sigmund Freud's 'Beyond the pleasure principle'