Mastery

A familiar phenomenon referring to the relations of power and domination between individuals, mastery seems to be well known; and yet, albeit introduced by Freud, the notion of a drive for mastery seems subsequently to have been neglected. By placing the notion of mastery at the heart of metapsychology, Paul Denis (1997) has given this question a central place once again. In the analytic field, emprise is the French translation suggested by Bela Grunberger of the Freudian term Bemächtigung, which Lytton Strachey translated by mastery. Denis has pointed out that it is necessary to distinguish two levels: a phenomenological level, that of the relationship of mastery, which Roger Dorey describes and considers as a characteristic of perversion, and a metapsychological level, that of Freud's drive for mastery.

It is this latter notion that Denis develops by introducing the idea of a formative component of the drive for mastery (“formant d'emprise de la pulsion”), a component that can be found in each drive movement and, consequently, in everybody. He thus proposes a new model of the drive: the drive is formed from the combination of two currents of cathexis “in the form of mastery” and “in the form of satisfaction”. From this perspective, the only thing that can stop the efforts to achieve mastery is the experience of satisfaction or the reestablishment of a function of representation. This theoretical model proves to be particularly fruitful because it makes it possible to decondense a certain number of clinical situations.

A moment in the analysis of a patient may serve to illustrate this point. The analytic process seemed subject to the ebb and flow of particularly powerful drive movements. Everything was unfolding in a tormented atmosphere from which it was difficult to escape. In reality, a sequence repeated itself: the patient would first be plunged into despair and then accompany what she said with recurrent suicidal threats, such as: “I don't do anything”, “I feel