You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
DES: Thank you for speaking with me, Dr. Kernberg. What we'd like to do this morning is talk about Freud at the millennium on the occasion of this exhibit and the conference that we have organized on the evolution of Freud's contribution. Let's talk about theory first. What do you see as having happened with the various theories that he has proposed? How useful are they? For instance, topographical theory, theories of the unconscious.
OK: Well, it's hard to put it all into a few words. When you say theory, you refer to the theory of mind, the structure of the mind, the unconscious motivational forces that determine development, psychopathology, and treatment. The first thing that I would stress is the importance of unconscious forces at work. I think that the most important aspect of Freud's contribution is his discovery of the extent to which unconscious motivation is over-shadowing our daily life, and determines what makes us happy, how we try to avoid anxieties, how we enter into intimate relations, love, and commitment to work. Of course, in the case of pathology, he showed how unconscious motivations may distort psychic structure and functioning, and this, of course, has enormous therapeutic implications.
I want to stress two aspects of Freud's theory. First, I think that Freud's theory of drives, which he gradually evolved, and finally consolidated in the theory of libido and the death drive, or libido and aggression, is fundamental. It's one of his most fundamental contributions, although it has remained controversial in psychoanalytic thinking. My own understanding is that this was a conceptualization of genius of the two basic forces that