Psychoanalysis and Motivation

Joseph D. Lichtenberg

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781135061128
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Applied Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Carrying forward his inquiry into the nature and conditions of normal and abnormal development, Lichtenberg focuses on motivation. His goal is to offer an alternative to psychoanalytic drive theory that accommodates the developmental insights of infancy research while accounting for the entire range of phenomena addressed by the theory of instinctual drives. To this end, he propounds a comprehensive theory of the self, which then gains expression in five discrete yet interactive motivational systems.

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

RATIONALE

PSYCHOANALYTIC THEORY AT ITS CORE is a theory of structured motivation, not a theory of structures. My purpose in this book is to consider how to conceptualize a psychoanalytic theory of structured motivation that can explain both the observations of infants that have produced so much new information in the past decade and the clinical experience of those who treat people of all ages.

My thesis is that motivation is conceptualized best as a series of systems designed to promote the fulfillment and regulation of basic needs. I delineate five systems (Sameroff, 1983), each comprising distinct motivational and functional aspects. Each motivational system is a psychological entity (with probable neurophysiological correlates). Each is built around a fundamental need. Each is based on behaviors clearly observable, beginning in the neonatal period.

The five motivational systems are: (1) the need for psychic regulation of physiological requirements, (2) the need for attachment-affiliation, (3) the need for exploration and assertion, (4) the need to react aversively through antagonism or withdrawal, and (5) the need for sensual enjoyment and sexual excitement. During infancy, each system contributes to self-regulation in mutually regulatory interactions with caregivers. At each period of life, the fundamental needs and the wishes, desires, aims, and goals that derive from those needs in each motivational system may be rearranged in different hierarchies indicated by different conscious and unconscious preferences, choices, and proclivities. From moment to moment, the activity of any one system may be intensified to the point where it provides motivational dominance of the self. The “self” develops as an independent center for initiating, organizing, and integrating motivation. The sense of self arises from experiencing that initiating, organizing, and integrating. Experiencing has an active (agent) and passive (receptor) mode.

Why do we need a new theory of motivation? Isn’t the vitality of motivation guaranteed in the human by instincts or instinctual drives? I argue that motivations arise solely from lived experience. Based on the particular lived experience, motivations may or may not achieve optimal vitality. Whatever biophysiological urgencies and innate neurophysiological response patterns underlie psychological motivations, the vitality of the motivational experience will depend initially on the manner in which affect-laden exchanges unfold between infants and their caregivers. Later, the development of symbolic representation enhances the potential for flexible, self-created reorganization of lived experience. A psychoanalytic theory of adaptive and maladaptive motivational functioning is about lived experience throughout life. Lived experience is about how we human beings consciously and unconsciously seek to fulfill our needs and desires by searching in potential events for affects that signal for us that experiential fulfillment.

Certainly it might be argued that psychoanalysis, using a theory of instinctual drives, already has made a major contribution to the understanding of human motivation. As a result of Freud’s discoveries, dreams, seemingly irrational thoughts and actions, and mental—and many physical—symptoms have all been revealed to be based on motivations: some conscious, many outside conscious awareness. Even seemingly simple conscious intentions have been found often to be compromises of complex competing motivations with past experience partially or totally controlling present choices.

These momentous contributions notwithstanding, a call for revision, I believe, comes from the continuous problem psychoanalytic theoreticians have encountered in assigning significance to motivational sources. These shifting attempts to give primacy to one or another source include: trauma opposed to instincts, sexual instincts opposed to the dominant mass of ideas, sexual instincts opposed to instincts of self-preservation, sexual instincts opposed to aggressive instincts, sexual drives and aggressive drives opposed by primary and secondary autonomous ego functions, and the pressure of drives as opposed to the primary organizing potential of object relations. That there have been so many shifts in assigning priority to one or another source of motivation suggests dissatisfaction with past and current ways of viewing and applying theory. The tension that results from this dissatisfaction is particularly noticeable in current debates between drive theorists and object relation theorists and between object relation theorists who incorporate drive theory and self theorists who do not. (See Greenberg and Mitchell, 1983, for an extensive review and critique of these controversies.)

Another call for new approaches rises from studies of development of the neonatal, infantile, and toddler periods of life. In 1983, I reviewed the extensive and largely recent findings of research on the first years of life and concluded that these findings cast considerable doubt on the motivations earlier ascribed to infants and toddlers. (Lichtenberg, 1983b). I argued that the findings of research and observation indicate that infants are not passive, unorganized, unrelating, tension-ridden creatures, as drive theory portrays them. The data from naturalistic and experimental observations reveal that infants in the first year of life evidence a high level of organization and human relatedness. I suggested that this high level of patterned activity and learning is not best explained by assuming an early capacity for intrapsychic symbolic self-and object representations. Although early experience does receive a form of encoding in memory, I presented reasons for believing that the symbolic representational capacity we regularly deal with in child and adult psychoanalysis does not develop until approximately 18 months of age. I recommended that the infant’s mode of functioning prior to that time be conceptualized in terms of perceptual-affective-action patterns of increasing organization and complexity and that the toddler’s mode of functioning be viewed as a continuation of these patterns augmented by a system of sign-signal communication and a sense of self as director.

Without an assumption of internal symbolic representations of self and object in the infantile period, we are forced to look for new means to understand motivation. That is, we must seek a way to conceptualize motivations that fits both the psychic life of the infant in the phase before symbolic representation and the psychic life of the older toddler, child, and adult who employs symbolic representation.

For many analytic clinicians and theoreticians, the dual drive theory, despite its seeming to “settle” the source of motivation through a reference to instinct, has proved to be a Procrustean bed that required us to crunch disparate aims into two categories. One effort to solve this problem came from ego psychologists, who assume that the ego has independent sources of energy, as well as aims. The vast literature of Hartmann (1964) and his colleagues and the further revisions in motivational theory by Rapaport (1967) have explored the basic concepts of Freud’s structural hypotheses with enormous inductive sophistication. I am taking off in a different direction and will not attempt a comparison, which would extend the length of this work greatly.

Other theoreticians, for example G. Klein (1976), attempted large-scale revisions conceptualizing multiple sources for motivation. Their theories bear a clear similarity to the proposals I make here. An important difference is that they lacked the informational base of current infant research and observation from which I derive much of my inspiration and documentation. Other theoreticians single out one or another area of motivated behavior as both a dominant feature of motivation and the source from which other motivations are derived. Prominent among such attempts are those of Bowlby (1958) to focus on attachment, Hendrick (1942) on mastery, and White (1959) on efficacy. I shall discuss each of these under the motivational system in which I place them. I shall present my reasons for believing that each constitutes a dominant motivation at some moments but is not any more fundamental than other motivational sources. When one is dominant, the other systems become more or less influential subset motivations. In many ways, Piaget’s (1936, 1937, 1952, Piaget and Inhelder, 1960) developmental hypotheses constitute a special case. They have received the most extensive discussion by psychoanalysts (Wolff, 1960; Sandler, 1975; Greenspan, 1979) making point-by-point comparative studies. I place the majority of Piaget’s findings in developments in the motivational system derived from the need for exploration and assertion, although a careful reading of Piaget indicates that he and his followers touched on motivations in all the systems. Many of these I reviewed in Psychoanalysis and Infant Research (1983b). A fundamental difference between Piaget’s epistomological approach and mine is the relative significance that I place on affect as an amplifier of all experience and as a target for motivated recruitment of functions. Another difference is the distinction between cross-modal processing of sensory input and Piaget’s theory of separate assimilation and accommodation of each sensory mode with step-by-step integration. As Stern (1985) argues, the existence of cross-modal processing of information supports his and my own contention for an earlier and more unified development of the sense of self.

An important impetus for my delineation of motivational systems arises from the clinical studies of self psychology. Kohut’s (1971, 1977, 1984) theory gives motivational primacy to each person’s attempt to develop in accordance with his or her “design.” Cohesion of the self develops, consolidates, and is restored when supported by an empathic ambience. In agreement with much infant research, Kohut conceptualizes a constant interrelationship between motive, to achieve and restore self cohesion, and environment, the empathic responsiveness. Successful response to need is seen as producing an emotionally meaningful and structurally supportive selfobject experience. This is a powerful clinical theory but very sketchy in some of its essentials. What is the person’s “design”? How do caregiver and infant communicate for an empathic ambience to develop? Self psychology has placed its greatest emphasis on needs that are primarily relational in nature (mirroring, alterego, and idealizing transferences). In moment-to-moment experience, what other needs (food, water, sleep, toy play, protective discipline) must be responded to empathically for cohesion to be established or restored and for a selfobject experience to occur? If in the view of self psychology, traditional analytic theory overemphasizes sexuality, and if in the view of traditional analysts self psychology ignores or under-emphasizes it, what does infant observation tell us that would help us to strike a more accurate balance? I believe that the informational yield from the clinical application of self psychology, combined with the data of infant researchers and observers who utilize a multitude of theoretic frameworks, can build a motivational theory that will begin to respond to some of the questions I have posed.

Since the publication of Psychoanalysis and Infant Research in 1983, the papers and books presenting and summarizing new findings in research on development have been extensive in number and evocative in content. Stern’s (1985) The Interpersonal World of the Infant deals with many of the same issues that I raised. I will draw liberally on Stern’s ideas, particularly those having to do with the development of the sense of self and of vitality. In the study of motivation I present in this book, I have drawn from sources that led Stern to write:

By presenting us with a plethora of motivational systems that operate early, appear separable, and are backed by some imperative, the infant faces us again and in a new way with longstanding arguments about the distinctions between id instincts and ego instincts.… Has classical libido theory, in assuming one or two basic drives that shift developmentally from one erotogenic zone to another and have a variety of vicissitudes during development, been helpful in viewing an actual infant? The consensus is no. The classical view of instinct has proven unoperationalizable and has not been of great heuristic value for the observed infant. Also, while there is no question that we need a concept of motivation, it clearly will have to be reconceptualized in terms of many discrete, but interrelated, motivational systems such as attachment, competence-mastery, curiosity and others. It is of no help to imagine that all of these are derivatives of a single unitary motivational system. In fact, what is now most needed is to understand how these motivational systems emerge and interrelate and which ones have higher or lower hierarchical standing during what conditions at what ages. The pursuit of such questions will be hampered if these motivational systems are assumed a priori to be derivatives of one or two basic, less definable instincts rather than more definable separate phenomena [p. 238, italics added].

Instinct, or drive, theory conceptualizes an internally centered prime mover. It is doubtful that motivation operates in so restrictively an appetitive manner. Certainly needs do have the potential to recruit functional activity, but in the ordinary course of events motivation can be aroused from either the inside or the outside. When a slightly drowsy baby is offered a rattle, the possibility of grasping, looking, hearing, and mouthing can set into motion a powerful exploratory-assertive motivation. The potential for functioning can ignite a spark that kindles other strikingly impelling motives. In each system, affects play a major role by amplifying the experience of motivations as they unfold, providing experiential targets for motivational aims. Thus, strictly speaking, each system is not a motivational system but a motivational-functional system (G. Stechler, personal communication, 1985). Motives inevitably call forth instrumental functions guided by affects. Functional possibilities with affective amplification call forth motives; For linguistic simplicity I shall refer to motivational systems rather than motivational-functional systems.

I refer to motivation as occurring in systems in order to emphasize that we are dealing not with structures or functions but with continuously ongoing processes. Where “structure” connotes stability, “system” connotes change and plasticity. Change and plasticity seem more appropriate to describe both the alteration in state of the small infant and the shifting dominance of motives in the everyday life of the adult. Moreover, system conveys activity, such as organizing, initiating, and integrating, and thus fits well with the view (Wolff, 1966) that infants never exist in a phase in which they are the passive recipient of drive pressures and environmental forces.

When “structure” is replaced by the concept of systems, development … can be viewed as the product of a complex interactional system which is constantly changing, integrating, transforming, and moving to more complex organizational levels. In such a model no one system would be considered as superordinate; no one phase or stage is viewed as decisive and every clinical issue … becomes increasingly elaborated over time. The infant … is viewed as moving in multiple interrelated ways toward greater psychological complexity, increasingly gaining a sense of his own personal reality, “reality” being something the infant actively constructs [Tyson, 1988].

ASSUMPTIONS

My first assumption is that whatever infants do with observable consistency, they are motivated to do. Thus, infants are observed to take nourishment at regular intervals, the implication being that they are motivated to do so. Since they can be observed to use their facial expression and whole body responses to display interest at the sight of the breast or bottle and pleasure with the milk intake, it can be inferred that feeding involves perception and affect and that both perceiving stimuli and experiencing affect are functional components of a motivational system in operation. That infants cry when not fed implies that they are motivated to indicate their aversion to a dystonic state. Further, the shift from crying before feeding to interest and joy with feeding indicates that infants are motivated to make the transition from the hunger state to the feeding state and that affect amplification provides a compelling pull to their motivational trigger. That mothers adjust their feeding procedures to their infants’ signals of readiness and infants alter their timing and rate of sucking in response to cues from their mothers indicates that mothers and infants are motivated to engage in self-regulations that conform to the mutually regulatory requirements of an interactional system. Even so mundane an example as the feeding experience indicates, I believe, that, from the beginning, the human being is motivated to perceive, feel, act, learn, and engage, through self-regulation, in a mutually regulatory interactional system.

My second assumption is that when related behaviors occur in larger patterns, these patterns imply significant motivational systems. For example, hunger is but one of a group of physiologically based requirements that are observable; others include the regulation of breathing, thermal range, waste elimination, total stimulus intensity, tactile and proprioceptive stimulation, equilibrium, and sleep. The infant is motivated to signal disturbances in a need-satisfaction range of each, and the mother is highly attentive so that she can respond to alterations in each. What these needs have in common is that disturbance in their regulation sets off loud affective alarms in the regulatory system of both partners (infant and caretaker). By contrast, success in their regulation constitutes a relatively noiseless substratum or foundation that facilitates optimal unfolding of the regulatory motives of the other systems.

The third assumption is that each group of patterns constituting a motivational system has an effect on motives derived from the other motivational systems. In some observable behavior, the systems are interlinked. For example, feeding not only involves regulation of a physiological need, but also is an important element in the fulfillment of attachment motives and makes a contribution to stimulating sensual desires as well. In general, success in the regulation of any motivational system contributes to success in the regulation of the other systems. With feeding this is obvious with respect to hunger regulation, attachment, and sensual pleasure. A well-fed infant is motivated to want to eat, to be active with mother, and to enjoy sucking and mucous membrane stimulation.

Again with feeding as a model, the motive to explore, if directed to the examination of the bottle or the spoon, may compete with the motive to eat. Or an exploratory motive may be incorporated into the basic pattern of eating if directed to the taste of different foods. Still another system will inevitably come into play: through the activation of their aversion system, infants can signal a mismatch between their needs and their caregiver’s offerings, thus contributing to both maternal regulation and self-regulation as they apply to food and procedural preferences. Thus, if we consider one of the motivational systems as dominant in a behavior pattern, we can recognize the regulatory effect exerted by and on each of the other motivational systems. When the regulation of the physiological need of hunger is the dominant motive, success will stimulate attachment, limit aversion responses to signals, and facilitate easy transition into exploratory or sensual seeking behaviors. On the other hand, prior failures in attachment or heightened aversion activation may interfere with success in the regulation of hunger.

The fourth assumption is that within the first 18 months motives in each system undergo transformations and refinements based on the possibilities inherent at each level of neurophysiological maturation. At first, motives operate to promote the unfolding of preprogrammed responses and preferences within a narrow range of regulatory potentials—that is, they seem to be reflexlike. The preprogrammed responses promote the development of behavior that rapidly shows evidence of learned preferences and, later, evidence of anticipation, planning, and intention.

Subsequently, infants can be observed making choices between alternatives, thus demonstrating an awareness of their own subjectivity and that of people around them. In this progression of motivated behavior, what can be said about the awareness of wishes and desires? My assumption is that, from the beginning, motivated behavior in each of the systems is experienced—that is, felt—as an affect and registered in memory as a perceptual-affective-action event and thus contributes to an emergent sense of self (see chapter 2). As regulation progresses, the infant becomes increasingly aware of the aim of the regulatory effort (the thumb to be sucked, the block ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Preface
• 1 Introduction
• 2 The Self and Other Conceptual Tools
• 3 The Motivational Systems Based on the Regulation of Physiological Requirements
• 4 The Attachment-Affiliation Motivational System: Part 1
• 5 The Attachment-Affiliation Motivational System: Part 2
• 6 The Exploratory-Assertive Motivational System
• 7 The Aversive Motivational System
• 8 The Sensual-Sexual Motivational System
• 9 Model Scenes, Affects, and the Unconscious
• 10 Empathy, Motivational Systems, and a Theory of Cure
• 11 The Neurobiology of Motivational Systems—June Hadley
• References
• Author Index
• Subject Index