The Search for Satisfaction: A Journey Through Drive, Jouissance And Repetition Incorporating Neuroscience
Understanding drives is essential because they tell us about that original encounter in which a somatic stimulus encounters the mental representations. This paper is an attempt to recollect previous research and construct a parallel of psychoanalytic concepts and neuroscientific findings such as the correspondence between drive and libido and the dopaminergic seeking system. We are mind, body and language.In our research we present the hypothesis that there are three existing paths of obtaining certain level of satisfaction – pleasure, jouissance and death drive, led by the pleasure principle of partial satisfaction and the Nirvana principle of (impossible) complete satisfaction.In Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Freud reviews his own drive theory incorporating a new term - death drive. Freud theorized about compulsion repetition, a cycle in which a behavior is carried out repeatedly and repressed material is lived instead of remembered, let alone elaborated. He observes that some are not guided by the principle of pleasure seeking, which reveals a complacency of the subject with the suffering of his symptoms, beyond their conscious yearning for healing. While the goal of the life drives is self-preservation, sexual satisfaction, creation and procreation, the final goal of the death drive appears to be to completely reduce tensions and return the living individual to the inorganic state of stillness and repose which is unachievable.When Jacques Lacan introduces the concept of jouissance (enjoyment), he refers to this mythical state of complete satisfaction before the barrier of the castration as such.The way to achieve this state of minimum tension, can as well be mediated by addiction and/or compulsive behavior as we have seen before, suppressing the internal tension of stimulus and surrendering to the principle of Nirvana and the death drives – complete reduction of any tension.Now we know that the frontal cortex is responsible for regulating the instinctual reactions and puts them in social context. But when one appears to be struggling to achieve satisfaction by harmful or unpleasant actions this can be common consequence of the dopaminergic reward functions, resulting in a paradoxically dysfunctional behavior. Repetition is an important brain function. Repetition is involved in learning processes and improves performance. In this theoretical research we would like to review and differentiate between efficient, rewarding repetition and repetition compulsion in order to further clarify how satisfaction can be achieved and up to what point.