O conceito freudiano de "impulso", ou "instinto" (Trieb), é reconhecidamente um dos conceitos mais fundamentais da psicanálise. No entanto, seu sentido ainda é objeto de controvérsia. Originalmente definido por Freud em um sentido biológico ou quase biológico, sua recepção em muitas das diversas tradições pós-freudianas tendeu, frequentemente, a recusar essa filiação epistemológica inicial. Um dos sinais dessa reorientação doutrinária é a recusa da tradução de "Trieb" por "instinto" e a preferência pelo neologismo "pulsão", de origem francesa e comum na literatura (...) psicanalítica escrita em várias das línguas neolatinas, inclusive em português. O objetivo deste artigo é criticar essa tendência. Para tanto, são examinados os principais argumentos normalmente apresentados contra uma visão biológica do Trieb freudiano, a saber, 1) a alternativa terminológica entre os termos alemães "Trieb" e "Instinkt" e o modo como estes são utilizados por Freud; 2) a crítica freudiana de uma redução da sexualidade humana à função reprodutiva; 3) o conceito de "Todestrieb" ("instinto de morte" ou "pulsão de morte") formulado por Freud por volta de 1920 e central na etapa final de seu pensamento. Procura-se argumentar que essas formulações não impedem uma interpretação biológica do conceito de "Trieb". Essa interpretação, por sua vez, abre uma via de diálogo entre a psicanálise e a biologia, a qual é também enfática e explicitamente defendida por Freud. Esta primeira parte do trabalho introduz a questão e também aborda o problema da relação entre sexualidade e reprodução na psicanálise e na biologia. Uma segunda parte, a ser publicada em uma próxima edição de Scientiae Studia, será dedicada ao problema da agressividade e da autodestrutividade nessas duas áreas do conhecimento. Freud's concept of "drive" or "instinct" ("Trieb") has been widely acknowledged as one of the most fundamental concepts of psychoanalysis. However, its meaning is still a matter of controversy. It was originally defined by Freud in a biological or quasi-biological sense, but its reception in many different post-Freudian traditions has often tended to reject this early epistemological affiliation. One sign of this theoretical reorientation has been to refuse the translation of "Trieb" as "instinct" and to favor instead the neologism "pulsion" ("drive"), which has French origins and became common in the psychoanalytic literature written in many neo-Latin languages, including Portuguese. The objective of this paper is to criticize this trend. For that, the main arguments usually presented against a biological view of Freud's "Trieb" are discussed, namely: (1) the terminological alternative between the German words "Trieb" and "Instinkt" and how these terms are employed by Freud; (2) Freud's critique of the reduction of human sexuality to the reproductive function; (3) the concept of "Todestrieb" ("death instinct" or "death drive"), formulated by Freud around 1920 and central in the last stage of his thought. It is argued that these formulations do not preclude a biological interpretation of the concept of "Trieb". Such interpretation, in turn, opens the way for dialogue between psychoanalysis and biology, a dialogue which was also emphatically and explicitly supported by Freud. This first part of the paper is an introduction to this issue, and approaches the problem of the relationship between sexuality and reproduction in psychoanalysis and biology. A second part will be published in a forthcoming issue of Scientiae Studia; it will be dedicated to the problem of aggression and self-destructiveness in these two fields of knowledge. (shrink)

U tekstu se razmatraju neki problemi sa kojima se suocava istrazivanje zivotne sredine. Osim pojmovne problematike, svojestvene srpskom jeziku, resavanje realnih problema okruzenja generalno treba da resi dihotomiju antropocentrizam - biocentrizam koja izvire iz suprotstavljajuce ljudske prirode a upravo se u ekologiji pokazuje neodrzivom. Izmedju ostalih tema preispituje se znacenje teze o ekologiji kao novoj velikoj prici, koja omogucava da nauka i demokratija nastave da napreduju i medjusobno se legitimizuju, sa stanovista univerzalnog vazenja. Takodje se preispituje delotvornost teorija iz kojih (...) se izvodi beznacajnost ljudske vrste za njeno oslobadjanje od antropocentrizma koji suzava perspektivu opstanka. PR Projekat Ministarstva nauke Republike Srbije, br. 43007: Istrazivanje klimatskih promena i njihovih uticaja na zivotnu sredinu - uticaji, adaptacija i ublazavanje. (shrink)

The aim of this work is to present the thesis “On the Ontogenetic Evolution of the Human Embryo in its Relations with Phylogenesis,” by Affonso Regulo de Oliveira Fausto, published in Brazil in 1890. To our knowledge, it was one of the first Brazilian academic works focused specifically on evolution. It was also the first doctoral thesis that addressed the topic of recapitulation in order to analyze what was then called the progressive evolution of the human species in tandem with (...) the embryological development of the individuals that would constitute the Brazilian “type.” In the present work, we analyze the author’s thesis in relation to its sources, concepts, as well as the country’s political context at the time of its publication. Fausto’s text, in which he explicitly recognized the influence of Ernst Haeckel’s recapitulation theory, represents a window to understand better a concept of nation based on science and on the idea of inexorable progress that was accepted in Brazil at the end of the nineteenth century. (shrink)

Starting from Mal d'archive and La bête et le souverain II, I explore what Derrida argues is the cleaved nature of Freud's concepts, and which he compares to the contradictory characteristics of every archive : to be revolutionary in its institution of the new and simultaneously to be or become conservative, even reactionary. For Derrida, Freud's later writing will tie the motivation to create an archive to the destructive logic of the death drive. An interesting example of Freud's cleaved concepts (...) first emerges in his early study of the brain. It is elaborated in his deconstructive approach to aphasia and to the acquisition of language. I argue in this essay that Derrida understood Freud's logic as present over the course of his entire life, and this, in a way that justifies my showing its presence in Freud's earliest neurological texts. I show that in its radicality, which includes an interactionist neurology based on inscription and archiving, opposition to 19th century cortico-centrism, and a rethinking of traditional “localizationism,” Freud's model of the brain and mind would have advanced understanding of the mental “archive” decades before this upheaval took place in neuroscience. (shrink)

This essay synthesizes the place of biological evolutionism in the early history of psychoanalysis, and shows the implicit significance of German Darwinism in Sigmund Freud’s whole psychoanalytical works. In particular, Freud, together with Sándor Ferenczi (1873–1933), applied to mental disorders hypotheses inspired by August Pauly’s (1850–1914) psychological Lamarckism and Ernst Heckel (1834–1919) theory of recapitulation. Both of these theories rested upon the principle of inheritance of acquired characteristics, and were disproved by biological discoveries during the interwar period. However, despite these (...) scientific progresses, Freud never gave up his idea of inherited unconscious memories, and we try here to sketch out what would have cost him a renunciation to such outdated biological principles. Notwithstanding, Sigmund Freud was the first to elaborate on evolutionary causes of mental syndromes, which makes of him the forerunner of current neo-Darwinian psychopathology, with few continuators to date within the psychoanalytic field. Nowadays, the extended neo-Darwinian synthesis and affective neuroscience may pave the way for a rational Darwinian approach to human mental disorders, which would take into account the whole neurological and psychological evolution of species, and be centered on emotions and their vicissitudes. (shrink)

This article re-contextualizes Sigmund Freud's interest in the idea of the inheritance of acquired characteristics in terms of the socio-political connotations of Lamarckism and Darwinism in the 1930s and 1950s. Many scholars have speculated as to why Freud continued to insist on a supposedly outmoded theory of evolution in the 1930s even as he was aware that it was no longer tenable. While Freud's initial interest in the inheritance of phylogenetic memory was not necessarily politically motivated, his refusal to abandon (...) this theory in the 1930s must be understood in terms of wider debates, especially regarding the position of the Jewish people in Germany and Austria. Freud became uneasy about the inheritance of memory not because it was scientifically disproven, but because it had become politically charged and suspiciously regarded by the Nazis as Bolshevik and Jewish. Where Freud seemed to use the idea of inherited memory as a way of universalizing his theory beyond the individual cultural milieu of his mostly Jewish patients, such a notion of universal science itself became politically charged and identified as particularly Jewish. The vexed and speculative interpretations of Freud's Lamarckism are situated as part of a larger post-War cultural reaction against Communism on the one hand, and on the other hand, against any scientific concepts of race in the wake of World War II. (shrink)

This article deals with the relationship between the creator of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, and the Latvian-born Chilean professor of physiology – and endocrinologist and anthropologist – Alejandro (or Alexander) Lipschütz. Up till now, the historiography of psychoanalysis in Chile has ignored the existence of this relationship, that is to say, the fact that there exists an interesting exchange of correspondence as well as references to Lipschütz in some important works published by Freud and in Freud’s correspondence with the Hungarian psychoanalyst (...) Sándor Ferenczi. There are also references to works on psychoanalysis carried out by Lipschütz in Chile. The Freud–Lipschütz relationship allows us to examine two interesting topics in contemporary historiographical approaches to psychoanalysis. First, it permits us to reflect on the connections that Freud and Ferenczi sought to establish between psychoanalysis and biology (endocrinology in particular) as a strategy to address criticism of the scientific foundations of psychoanalysis and, therefore, to help legitimize psychoanalysis in the field of science. Second, the relationship between Freud, working in a culturally influential city such as Vienna, and Lipschütz, working in a ‘peripheral’ country such as Chile, paves the way to reflect on the consequences of a history of psychoanalysis written from the perspective of the ‘margins’. This is a history that focuses not on regions where early industrialization and modernization processes, along with an important academic and scientific tradition, help explain the interest in and reception of psychoanalysis, but on regions where different sets of conditions have to be examined to explain appropriation and dissemination processes. (shrink)