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It is my purpose to sort out and examine briefly different psychoanalytic conceptions of the terms activity and passivity. The scope of my analysis considers five overlapping contexts in which these terms are used: instinct theory, structural theory, object relations, subjective experience, and trauma. Although I shall dwell on certain points along the way, hoping thereby to make some contributions of my own, this will not be done in order then to propose a 'best' definition of activity and passivity, for, as I shall try to show, the conceptual problems standing in the way of definition are formidable if not insuperable. It will be enough to begin to define these problems and suggest some angles of approach to them. The second section of this paper, which deals with the so-called activity and passivity of the analyst in the clinical analytic situation, applies and amplifies the formulations arrived at in the first section.
In discussions of instinct theory, analysts generally follow Freud (9), (11) in designating instinctual aims as active or passive. In this context, aim does not refer to an end or goal; the end or goal is always pleasure or tension reduction or avoidance of pain. Moreover, as Freud pointed out, the instinctual drive is active by definition. In this context, aim does refer to one aspect of the means or mode used to achieve an instinctual end: the aim is active if its gratification depends on the subject's acting on an object; the aim is passive if its gratification depends