Meetings of the New York Psychoanalytic Society

DISCUSSION: Dr. Benjamin B. Rubinstein felt that Dr. Brenner had failed to note that Freud had asked himself how we can explain the impelling character of drives, perhaps the most fundamental question of any drive theory. Freud's answer in regard to the libidinal drives was based on two principal notions: 1) the constancy principle, the postulate that the central nervous system, including the mental apparatus, has a built-in tendency to maintain its excitation at as low a level as possible, which ideally is the zero level; and 2) the hypothesis that the level of excitation in the mental apparatus is continually raised by somatic stimulation arising in the erogenous zones. Through the clash of these opposing forces the system somehow develops the means to drain off the excitation and to inhibit at their source the production of the somatic stimuli that cause it. Dr. Rubinstein pointed out that Dr. Brenner had chosen to ignore what most likely was Freud's major reason for advancing his theory: to explain the impelling character of the drives. Instead, Dr. Brenner focused on one element of the construction, namely the hypothesis of the somatic stimulation. Dr. Rubinstein agreed with Dr. Brenner that this hypothesis has turned out to be mistaken, but neither psychoanalytic nor behavioral data can explain the impelling character of the drives. The most such data can show is that the phenomena that constitute these data appear as if a factor has acquired its impelling character. The fact that Freud's notions do not stand closer scrutiny does not invalidate the