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In psychology, a drive theory, theory of drives or drive doctrine [1] is a theory that attempts to analyze, classify or define the psychological drives. A drive is an instinctual need that has the power of influencing the behavior of an individual; [2] an "excitatory state produced by a homeostatic disturbance".
According to Freud as well as ego psychology the id is a set of uncoordinated instinctual needs; the superego plays the judgemental role via internalized experiences; and the ego is the perceiving, logically organizing agent that mediates between the id's innate desires, the demands of external reality and those of the critical superego; [3 ...
Freud desired to understand religion and spirituality and deals with the nature of religious beliefs in many of his books and essays. He regarded God as an illusion, based on the infantile need for a powerful father figure. Freud believed that religion was an expression of underlying psychological neuroses and distress.
The essay, marking Freud's major revision of his drive theory, elaborates on the struggle between two opposing drives. In the first few sections, Freud describes these as Eros, which produces creativity, harmony, sexual connection, reproduction, and self-preservation; and the "death drives" (what some call "Thanatos" [4]), which brings destruction, repetition, aggression, compulsion, and self ...
From the conservative, restorative character of instinctual life, Freud derived his death drive, with its "pressure towards death", and the resulting "separation of the death instincts from the life instincts" [25] seen in Eros. The death drive then manifested itself in the individual creature as a force "whose function is to assure that the ...
In Inhibitions, Symptoms, and Anxiety (1926), Freud revised his theory of anxiety as well as delineated a more robust ego. Freud argued that instinctual drives (id), moral and value judgments (superego), and requirements of external reality all make demands upon an individual.
Freud argued that "an ego thus educated has become 'reasonable'; it no longer lets itself be governed by the pleasure principle, but obeys the reality principle, which also, at bottom, seeks to obtain pleasure, but pleasure which is assured through taking account of reality, even though it is pleasure postponed and diminished".
Freud elaborates further on the development of religion, as the emphasis on acquisition of wealth and the satisfaction of instinctual drives (sex, wealth, glory, happiness, immortality) moves from "the material to the mental." As compensation for good behaviors, religion promises a reward.