Eros is the drive of life, love, creativity, and sexuality, self-satisfaction, and species preservation. Thanatos, from the Greek word for "death" is the drive of aggression, sadism, destruction, violence, and death.
The id comprises two kinds of biological instincts (or drives), including the sex (life) instinct called Eros (which contains the libido) and the aggressive (death) instinct called Thanatos.
The dual drive theory is the combination of libido and aggression, pulling and pushing. It was Freud's belief that it is the healthy fusion of the two that propels us forward in a positive and healthy manner. Sexual intercourse is an example; it is both libido and aggression.
The id provides the drives for behavior, the superego strives for moral perfection, and the ego works to strike a balance between those two needs and the demands of reality. A healthy, well-functioning personality is all about striking a need between the id, ego, and superego.
According to Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytic theory of personality, the superego is the component of personality composed of the internalized ideals that we have acquired from our parents and society. The superego works to suppress the urges of the id and tries to make the ego behave morally, rather than realistically.
The id is the animal part of the personality, an unconscious drive to have lots of sex, survive, and thrive. It urges you to push in and eat your weight in cake. The ego is where the conscious mind lives. It's lumbered with the tricky job of satisfying the id's wild desires in a realistic and socially acceptable way.
What Drives Us? According to Sigmund Freud, there are only two basic drives that serve to motivate all thoughts, emotions, and behavior. These two drives are, simply put, sex and aggression. Also called Eros and Thanatos, or life and death, respectively, they underlie every motivation we as humans experience.
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.
Drive theory is based on the principle that organisms are born with certain psychological needs and that a negative state of tension is created when these needs are not satisfied. When a need is satisfied, drive is reduced and the organism returns to a state of homeostasis and relaxation.
Thirst, hunger, and the need for warmth are all examples of drives. A drive creates an unpleasant state, a tension that needs to be reduced. In order to reduce this state of tension, humans and animals seek out ways to fulfill these biological needs.
People vary in personality and social behavior. It is generally accepted that some of this variation is due to differences in genes and some to “environment”—that is, to differences in people's experiences.
Among the other drives or needs that have been proposed are achievement, activity, affection, affiliation, curiosity, elimination, exploration, manipulation, maternity, pain avoidance, sex, and sleep. In the 1940s U.S. psychologist Clark Hull proposed a drive-reduction theory of learning.
Primary drives are innate biological needs such as being hungry or thirsty. Whereas secondary drives are those learned through conditioning or association with a primary drive, such as money and social acceptance.
Primary drives are innate drives (e.g., thirst, hunger, and sex), whereas secondary drives are learned by conditioning (e.g., money).
Having said that, it is undeniably true that Freud gave sexual drives an importance and centrality in human life, human actions, and human behavior which was new (and to many, shocking), arguing as he does that sexual drives exist and can be discerned in children from birth (the theory of infantile sexuality), and that ...
Freud's Aggression Instinct Theory Freud's view was that all human behavior originated from Eros, the life instinct that assists with reproduction; he later added Thanatos, the death instinct, to his theory. He believed that human aggressive behavior was necessary to human survival and reproduction.
Drive is something that makes you keep going. It is more individual in the sense that some people are more driven than others. Motives however are indicative of why you do what you do. Motives are factors within a human being or animal that arouses and direct goal oriented behaviour.
Definition: Drives. DRIVES: Instinctual (pre-lingual) bodily impulses or instincts, which Freud ultimately decided could be reduced to two primary drives: 1) the life drives (both the pleasure principle and the reality principle); and 2) the death drive, which Freud saw as even more primal than the life drives.
the need of one individual to persuade another to a particular point of view and feel satisfaction in having done so.
The life instincts, sometimes known as the sexual instincts, are those that are related to survival. The death instincts include such things as thoughts of aggression, trauma, and danger. Such urges are kept out of consciousness because our conscious minds often view them as unacceptable or irrational.
Key assumptions of the Psychodynamic Approach
We possess innate 'drives' (or 'instincts') that 'energize' our minds to motivate behaviour as we develop through our lives. Our [three-part] personality – the psyche – is comprised of the ID, ego and superego.
The id consists of our primary drives and primitive desires, the ego acts as a reminder not to act on these desires in socially unacceptable or inappropriate manners, and the superego consists of our sense of morality. The three components form our personality and define our decisions and behaviors.
The id is driven by the pleasure principle, which strives for immediate gratification of all desires, wants, and needs.1 If these needs are not satisfied immediately, the result is a state of anxiety or tension. For example, an increase in hunger or thirst should produce an immediate attempt to eat or drink.
The id is entirely unconscious, and it drives our most important motivations, including the sexual drive (libido) and the aggressive or destructive drive (Thanatos). According to Freud, the id is driven by the pleasure principle — the desire for immediate gratification of our sexual and aggressive urges.
Primary drives refer to things a person needs to survive, like thirst and hunger. Secondary drives are determined by social factors, money, pride, and fame are all great examples of secondary, not primary, drives.