The Confusion of Partial Drives
Almost all narcissists and children in yoga poses particular, are voyeurs. More than others, they are attracted to ambiguous events. They want to see for the same reason that they want to be seen. There is in yoga poses this an interesting complex in yoga poses the consequences it has in yoga poses art or even in yoga poses metaphysical intuitionism. (Jean Piaget, 1920, Psychoanalysis and Child Psychology, 32)
The sadistic relation can only be sustained in yoga poses so far as the other is on the verge of still remaining a subject. If he is no longer anything more that reacting flesh, a kind of mollusk whose edges one titillates and which palpitates, the sadistic relation no longer exists. (Jacques Lacan, 1954, The Seminar, XVII.3, 215)
At first, the oral, anal, and phallic drives are identified as pregenital instinctual components33 that will be coordinated under the primacy of the genital zone:34 What we call genitality is a summation of instinct components, so called, and of excitations of the erotogenous zones (Ferenczi, 1929). Subsequently, Freud’s theory of the drives became fuzzier for many reasons. It seems to me that the following are the most interesting ones for the development of body psychotherapy.
1. In addition to the oral, anal, and phallic drives, Freud admits that other zones of the body can become erogenous zones linked to partial sexual drives, especially the eyes and the skin.35 This leads to the analyses of partial drives that annul each other, turn each other around, reverse each other, transform each other into their opposites, and so on.36 A sadistic drive and a masochistic drive can hold each other in yoga poses check around an erogenous zone and can hamper the proper functioning of that zone. That is how, for example, Freud and Abraham explain hysterical blindness. The idea that the structure of a character is based on the proliferation of partial drives is brilliantly exploited by Wilhelm Reich in yoga poses his character analysis ofthe 1930s.
2. In the same articles, Freud and Abraham apply this model of the partial drives not only to the other instincts (hunger and thirst) but also to emotional propensities such as aggression.
Karl Abraham often associated, in yoga poses direct fashion as in yoga poses phrenology, the erogenous behaviors of a particular zone of the body to a specific psychological problem Thus, one of his patients handled light with difficulty because his eyes were central symbolic components of different drives:37
1. He had first expressed this attitude by speaking of his ardent respect’ for his father.
2. He identified his father’s watchful eye with the sun
3. The patient had also transferred to the sun his ambivalent attitude towards his father in yoga poses a remarkable way. He disliked the light of the sun but he loved its warmth.
