On Paolo Migone's “What Does ‘Brief’ Mean?”

I write regarding “The Politics of Psychoanalytic Lexicography,” by Elizabeth Auchincloss and Eslee Samberg (JAPA ⁶²/₃). The authors write that “‘Drive,’ also sometimes referred to as ‘instinct’ … is the mental representation of an endogenous motivational force … that stimulates mental activity …” (p. 527). It should be noted that “drive” is one of the several concepts that belong in the conceptual net Freud called “psychic energy,” which he derived from the constancy principle in physics. Freud postulated that there is psychic energy, on a par with gravitational energy, kinetic energy, electrical energy, etc., meaning that psychological activities like willing, deciding, meaning, feeling, etc. can be quantified, just like physical energies. No such energy has ever been defined, and there are very strong conceptual reasons why it can never be, reasons having to do with the irreducibility of the mental to the physical. It is an important point because this irreducibility means that psychoanalysis will never be a science on the order of physics, as Freud had hoped.

Marcia Cavell

E-mail: