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.
Dr. Ellman presents an interesting paper that spans many disciplines and conceptual domains. His discussion ranges from the neurosciences to evolutionary theory, and from psychoanalytic metapsychology to developmental theory and clinical technique. It may be a little difficult for those hearing the paper for the first time to follow all of the connecting lines Dr. Ellman draws between the various phenomena and theories he discusses, so I will summarize some of the main points and connections he makes, as I comment on some of the issues raised by the ideas and integrations that Dr. Ellman presents, and ask a few questions of him, and for us as well to think about and discuss.
Dr. Ellman begins at the beginning, with Freud's (1900) understanding of dream formation and of the wish as the instigator, or we might say the motor or energy, that pushes dream formation forward. Freud linked the wish to his theory of endogenous drives. The sexual drive was seen as the main internal push, and the wish was seen as the psychical representative of the drive. Freud had a very clear idea of something endogenous, not only internal in the mind but generating its own energy, or getting that energy from bodily sources, that was central to human motivation, human psychological functioning, and human actions. This idea has been under attack from various quarters, for various reasons, for many decades now. I would see Dr. Ellman's paper as an attempt to reengage with Freud's original vision of how the mind works, but to connect it to neurophysiological findings, evolutionary considerations, and ideas from modern developmental research, and thus give it a different, perhaps more modern, form. At the end of his paper he also connects the idea of endogenous stimulation