ECONOMIC POINT OF VIEW

Along with the topographical and dynamic points of view, the economic point of view is one of the three main axes of metapsychology. It deals with psychic events in terms of the intensity of the forces that run through them and animate them.

This concept was present in Freud's early thinking and appears in his first metapsychological formulations. It then assumed increasing importance during the evolution of his theoretical thinking and his conception of psychopathology. It is based on the hypothesis, much criticized in recent times, that the mental apparatus is invested with forces that are specific to it (instincts) and which can vary in intensity, either "constitutionally", or as a result of reinforcements linked to the vicissitudes of development (particularly trauma). These primary forces can oppose each other, combine together, and form complex amalgamations and alliances with each other. The economic point of view is an attempt to describe this interplay of forces and the resulting intensities.

After 1920, the economic approach assumed increasing importance in Freud's thinking because of the clinical difficulties encountered in non-neurotic cases. The metapsychological notions that Freud then developed attributed a centrally determinant role to the economic point of view in the genesis and maintenance of pathological conditions and their different structures.

In the same way that the concept of instincts is criticized by certain psychoanalysts who prefer more contemporary concepts that focus on information, representation, or signifiers (Widlöcher, D., 1997), the economic point of view has also elicited certain theoretical reservations. However, it is difficult to see how to modify this aspect of metapsychology, which is directly linked to the question of instincts, without seriously jeopardizing the whole of the corpus. Moreover, clinical work makes us sensitive to variations in instinctual intensity and investment which would be difficult to explain without recourse to the economic point of view and the binding and unbinding of instincts.

RenÉ Roussillon

See also: Cathexis; Discharge; Excitation; Fusion/defusion; Libido; Pleasure/unpleasure principle; Primary process/secondary process; Principle of consistency; "Project for a scientific psychology, A"; Protective shield, breaking through the; Psychic energy; Quantitative/qualitative; Repression; Sum of excitation; Trauma; Traumatic neurosis.

Bibliography

Freud, Sigmund. (1905d). Three essays on the theory of sexuality. SE, 7: 123-243.

——. (1915c). Instincts and their vicissitudes. SE, 14: 141-158;

——. (1920g). Beyond the pleasure principle. SE, 18: 1-64;

Green, André. (1995). La causalité psychique. Entre nature et culture. Paris: Odile Jacob.

Widlöcher, Daniel. (1997). Les nouvelles cartes de la psychanalyse. Paris: Odile Jacob.

Further Reading

Lustman, Seymour L. (1968). The economic point of view and defense. Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, 23, 189-203.

Meissner, William W. (1995). The economic principle in psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis and Contemporary Thought, 18, 197-292.