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Psycho-analytical research has shown from the first in the course of its extensive observations that the causes of neurotic disorders are to be found in emotional conflicts which involve man's greatest interests and most vital needs. No doubt it was the dualism which is a characteristic of every conflict which led Freud to attempt to trace back the number of forces or instincts operative in human beings to the two main needs of hunger and love. In doing so he was, incidentally, following a widely held view.
The vast quantity of data gathered by psycho-analysis, both as regards conscious psychology and the processes and mechanisms of the unconscious, enabled it to reveal a very fundamental character of mental life—that of having a direction, of exhibiting impulsions and aims and of giving play to needs. It thus became of great importance for psycho-analysis not only to describe the observed facts but to attempt to make a synthesis of them (of course only a provisional one) and to form some general ideas about them, some working hypotheses, as it were, by means of which to define and classify the forces of the mind.
The two great needs of man, hunger and love, were taken as types of the theoretical concepts of the 'sexual instincts' and the 'ego instincts'. Freud gave to the concept of instinct a new character in that he placed it on the borderline between the organic and the mental