This essay attempts to examine whether it is possible to find a mutual understanding of the concept of drive between Spinoza’s philosophy and Freud’s psychoanalytical theory. Former texts on this subject have given a variety of conclusions: from a radical separation between the two authors to a complete identification between the two. The drive, or the desire which is the term Spinoza uses, has in Spinoza’s philosophy its foundation in the concept of conatus. Conatus is every thing’s strive to persevere in its being and is the expression of God’s, or the only substance’s, force and action in a here and a now. In the Freudian theory the term trieb, drive, is defined by it’s variation regarding object, source and aim. The late Freudian theory of drives separates the life drive, also called Eros, from the death drive. Eros is the strive of every being to maintain life but also to procreate and create stronger unities of life. It is, as the strive of conatus, a persevering strive. However, in examining the strive of conatus to persevere in its being, which could be said to strive by the guidance of a principle of joy, the distinction between the concept of conatus and the Freudian Eros is made visible through the comparison to the Freudian pleasure principle.

Particularly in the health domain, humans thrive to reach an equilibrium between maximizing pleasure and minimizing harm. I propose that a cognitive strategy people employ to reach this equilibrium is the activation of Compensatory Health Beliefs (CHBs). CHBs are beliefs that the negative effects of an unhealthy behavior can be compensated for, or "neutralized," by engaging in another, healthy behavior. "I can eat this piece of cake now because I will exercise this evening" is an example of such beliefs. This thesis presents a theoretical framework which aims at explaining why people create CHBs and how they employ CHBs to regulate their health behaviors. The model extends current health behavior models by explicitly integrating the motivational conflict that emerges from the interplay between affective states (i.e., cravings or desires) and motivation (i.e., health goals). The first study includes a psychometric scale that measures CHBs in the general population and provides data on its reliability and validity. The results showed that scores on the scale were uniquely associated with health-related risk behaviors and symptom reports and could be differentiated from a number of related constructs. Holding CHBs may hinder individuals from acquiring healthier lifestyles, for example lose weight or exercise. The second large-scale study of this thesis aimed at studying CHBs in adolescents with type 1 diabetes. It is proposed that in this population, CHBs might interfere with treatment adherence. If compensatory behaviors fail to compensate for the maladaptive behaviors, poor blood glucose control and related health problems may arise. To investigate this further, I developed and validated a CHB scale specific to type 1 diabetes. The scale was validated in a sample of adolescents with type 1 diabetes. Results showed that holding maladaptive compensatory health beliefs was associated with poorer blood glucose control and poorer adherence to self-care behaviors while adaptive CHBs were associated with better blood glucose control and better adherence to treatment behaviors. Specifically targeting CHBs in an intervention could improve adherence to treatment and therefore the long-term health of this population. Future research as well as the implications for possible interventions are explicitly being discussed.

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My concern in Dead Drunk is not simply the subject matter of death, it is rather with the representation of drunks in the form of fictional phantoms in The Glass Canoe and Bliss as rendering the death drive visible. Close scrutiny of the representation of the drunk in Australian fiction, as discussed in relation to The Glass Canoe, and Bliss reveals a ‘constant recurrence of the same thing’ rendered uncannily visible. On inspection, what becomes visible is recurring deaths and subsequent resurrections. For the ghostly Australian drunk there is always the possibility of resurrection, but that resurrection is usually in the form of another drink. A drink promises resurrection, but instead delivers a return or recurrence of the drunken, ghostly state. / The presence of drinking and drunks in Australian fiction can be described as a haunting, the ghostly drunks as repetition of an anachronistic past. It is the repetition of the representations of drunks as ghostly presences in Australian fiction that is telling. Utilising Sigmund Freud’s theories developed in ‘The Uncanny’ (1919) and Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920), I propose that if the uncanny is an encounter with one’s origins and the death drive is a backward looking return to origins; the drunks are a past that is repeatedly encountered in an uncanny moment. Utilising the modalities of the uncanny in regards to The Glass Canoe reveals the guises of the drunken ghosts. Making reference to an Australian colonial past, founded on intoxicant use and abuse the dissertation suggests alcoholism as a white man’s dreaming. A discussion of Bliss links the uncanny ghosts to a registration or surfacing of the death drive. In conclusion I suggest the psychoanalytic concept of sublimation as both an explanation for and a release from the symptomatic repetition. / Floundering, the creative work, is an extract from a novel in progress. The section presented is the opening to the novel. The narrative unfolds during one day, New Year’s Eve, and involves the interactions between the two brothers Jordy and Tom, and Old Fat. Loretta, the boys’ absent mother, haunts the novel and drives the narrative. Although the creative work does not explicitly depict dead drunks as discussed in the dissertation, the theory has by necessity permeated the creative, and the creative permeated the theory, forming a chiasma – a crossing over between strands of thought.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Florida State University, 2004. / Advisor: Dr. Daniel Maier-Katkin, Florida State University, School of Criminology and Criminal Justice. Title and description from dissertation home page (viewed Jan. 18, 2005). Includes bibliographical references.

This master s dissertation comes to meet with our concerns about how is the phenomenon of adherence to brands in behalf of other social valuations traditionally accepted and anchored in the personal skills to interact with their peers than by dictates artificially constructed. We un-derstand that to achieve this goal is to start from a historicity of how a brand is does exist for both chose Network Fast Food McDonald's because of it being positioned as a leading pro-vider of the world's food and have about seventy years of existence. To build our theoretical model we rely primarily on the teachings of psychoanalytic Winnicott and Melanie Klein for the initial training of the human psyche. They argue about the importance of relationships and primal as a sufficiently good environment becomes important to healthy human psychic makeup. We spend the following to influences coming from the food traditions and their complementarity to the structure of the sense of belonging in human identity. Then explore how technological changes in food preservation, resulting in the last century, caused profound changes in human commensal references. Finally we enter the magical world of advertising and how these disciplines, over time, became the major guiding environmental changes more profound and fruitful unprecedented in human civilization. These changes were made primari-ly through the deconstruction of the way of realizing the needs to live well. The dictates is given by the imperative of disposal of products now produced on a large scale. Through this consumerist bias noised, we move from a world guided by the principle of reality where the individual is held to be, to another, now headed by the pleasure principle, where one relativiz-es their existence seem like something that has been mediated by the media, this new modus vivendi everything should be easy and pleasurable to have value. / Esta dissertação de mestrado vem ao encontro de nossas inquietações sobre como se dá o fe-nômeno da adesão às marcas em detrimento de outras valorações sociais tradicionalmente aceitas e fundeadas nas habilidades pessoais de interação com seus iguais do que por ditames artificialmente construídos. Entendemos que para alcançarmos este objetivo há de se partir de uma historicidade de como uma marca ser faz existir, para tanto escolhemos a Rede de Fast Food McDonald s em virtude da mesma estar posicionada como uma das maiores fornecedo-ras de alimentos do mundo e ter aproximadamente setenta anos de existência. Para construir-mos nosso modelo teórico nos apoiamos principalmente nos ensinamentos psicanalíticos de Melanie Klein e Winnicott para a formação inicial da psique humana. Estes argumentam so-bre a importância dos relacionamentos primais e de como um ambiente suficientemente bom se faz importante à saudável composição psíquica humana. Passamos a seguir às influências oriundas da tradição alimentar e da sua complementaridade à estruturação do sentido de per-tencimento na identidade humana. Em seguida exploramos de que forma as mudanças tecno-lógicas na conservação dos alimentos, advindas no século passado, ocasionaram alterações profundas nos referenciais comensais do ser humano. Por último adentramos no mundo mági-co da publicidade e propaganda e de como estas disciplinas, ao longo do tempo, tornaram-se as grandes norteadoras das mudanças ambientais mais profundas e profícuas jamais vistas na civilização humana. Estas transformações se fizeram principalmente através da desconstrução do modo de se aperceber as necessidades ao bem viver. Os ditames se deram pelo imperativo de escoar produtos, agora, produzidos em larga escala. Através deste viés consumista propa-lado, passamos de um mundo norteado pelo princípio de realidade onde o indivíduo se realiza em ser, a um outro, capitaneado agora pelo princípio do prazer, onde a pessoa relativiza sua existência em parecer algo que lhe foi mediado pela mídia, neste novo modus vivendi tudo deve ser fácil e prazeroso para ter valor.

In Jane Austen’s renowned Pride and Prejudice, published in 1813, the reader encounters love and marriage in the British middle-class during the nineteenth century. While the main focus of the novel is the love story between Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy, the reader also encounters the youngest Bennet sister, Lydia. Lydia is depicted as loud, vain, rude and ignorant and even though this is a correct description of Lydia’s behavior, there are underlying reasons for that foolish and naïve behavior. Thus, the aim of this essay is to examine and explain the underlying reasons as to why Lydia behaves as recklessly and selfishly as she does. By close reading of the novel and by using psychoanalysis and relevant Freudian concepts, mainly the id, the ego and the super-ego, the analysis concludes that there is an evident connection between Lydia’s unruly behavior and her dysfunctional relationship to her parents. Due to the lack of parental guidance, Lydia has been left uncontrolled and heavily ruled by her id. Moreover, this essay will demonstrate that there is a shift in Lydia’s behavior as the novel progresses. As a result of certain events in the novel, Lydia’s behavior shifts even further towards her being driven by the pleasure principle and her id.

Thesis (MA (Psychology))--University of Stellenbosch, 2010. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Jacques Lacan and Sigmund Freud‟s ideas are presented with specific emphasis on the themes presented in Freud‟s (1920a) Beyond the Pleasure Principle. Freud‟s Project for a Scientific Psychology (1950) provides important clues to describe the pleasure principle in terms of Quantity (Q), facilitations [Bahnung] and contact-barriers. Therefore, the implications of the pleasure principle relate greatly to 1) Freud‟s notion of the unconscious, 2) Lacan‟s explanation of das Ding, 3) the difference between jouissance and plaisir, and 4) the relationship between das Ding and the Law. Lacan‟s understanding of the death drive is consequently the culmination of all the topics mentioned and repeated throughout. Lacan‟s description of the death drive is twofold: firstly, the mechanical explanation of the pleasure principle, and secondly, how desire features within the pleasure principle. Lacan‟s description of the death drive encompasses libido, desire, economy, Linguistics, and the Oedipus complex, which illustrates why Freud‟s (1920) Beyond the Pleasure Principle is not only an important text in Freud‟s oeuvre, but also in Lacan‟s. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Jacques Lacan en Sigmund Freud se idees word nagegaan met spesifieke beklemtoning van die temas in Freud (1920a) se Beyond the Pleasure Principle. Freud (1950) se Project for a Scientific Psychology verskaf belangrike wenke vir die beskrywing van die pleasure principle in terme van kwantiteit (Q), fasilitasies (Bahnung) en kontak-versperrings [contact-barriers]. Gevolglik het die implikasies van die pleasure principle betrekking tot 1) Freud se begrip van die onbewussyn, 2) Lacan se verduideliking van das Ding, 3)die verskil tussen jouissance en plaisir, en 4) die verhouding tussen das Ding en die Wet. Lacan se begrip van die doodsdrang (death drive) is gevolglik die toppunt van al die onderwerpe wat deurentyd genoem en herhaal is. Lacan se beskrywing van die doodsdrang is tweedelig: eerstens, die meganiese verduideliking van die pleasure principle en tweedens, die rol van begeerte in die pleasure principle. Lacan se beskrywing van die doodsdrang behels libido, begeerte, ekonomie, Linguistiek, en die Oedipus-kompleks, wat wys hoekom Freud (1920) se Beyond the Pleasure Principle nie net „n belangrike teks in Freud se werke is nie, maar ook in Lacan s‟n.