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All the theoretical and technical disputes among psychoanalysts-during Freud's lifetime and since-have had as their key battleground the libido theory. The major schisms have opened over the libido theory, but critics also have set up opposition parties within the psychoanalytic parliaments to push for their views of the inadequacies of the libido theory.
Again and again, both by schismatics and by dissidents within the psychoanalytic movement, it has been said either that Freud placed too much emphasis on the sexual-instinctual drives to the neglect of something else, or that he failed to ground them in something nonsexual or presexual. That is, he was either monomaniacal about his theory or he was superficial, too focused or not deep enough. As Robert Waelder (1960, p. 75) noted forty years ago, there have been critics who were heirs to Adler and critics who were heirs to Jung.
In the present complicated moment in the history of psychoanalysis, the libido theory has defenders, but they are on the defensive as various exponents of object relations theory, interpersonalism, intrasubjectivism, self psychology, and so forth have come forth to catalogue what has been missing or denied in Freudianism during the reign of the libido theory. Even though the critics and criticisms are diverse, we think that a general indictment can be drawn up-provided that the last version of Freud's instinct theory, in which a death instinct is opposed to the life (including libidinal) instincts, is left aside as too complicating. In its simple form, the indictment has four counts, as follows.
First, the libido theory presents human beings as aiming, fundamentally, at tension reduction or tension discharge, which is how the theory defines pleasure. The pleasure principle rules