How important is the economic dimension to contemporary psychoanalysis?: a detailed study on the primary object and the ambivalence of the instinct in Freud

Abstract

Through the examination of Freudian texts, this paper focuses on the interplay between subject and object in relation to the instinct drives, from an economic perspective. The paper raises questions about what seems to be a weakening or "devitalization" of the theory. We believe that both sexuality and the "raw" aspects of the psyche are being left out by some trends within contemporary psychoanalysis, in the name of an alleged emphasis on the relational aspects. We are specifically interested in the role the economic dimension (as formulated by Freud) may have in contemporary psychoanalytic debates, in which ethics is brought to the foreground. Far from being averse to the other in the constitution of the psyche, it is our understanding that the economic dimension can shed light on the subject. It highlights the mutual support between the Ego and the other, in the shared field where processes of subjectivation occur.