The concept of Drive occupies a contested and generative position throughout the depth-psychology corpus, functioning simultaneously as a biological given, a psychological force, and a philosophical problem. Jung’s most sustained engagement with the term insists that drives are ‘specific forms of energy’ subordinate to the broader, more neutral concept of psychic energy (libido), and that reducing the totality of psychic life to a single drive—whether Freud’s sexuality or Adler’s power—constitutes an inadmissible specification that forecloses genuine psychological understanding. Jung’s own retrospective in Memories, Dreams, Reflections frames the Freud–Adler dispute not as a domestic quarrel but as a clash between two partial truths—Eros and the power drive—that may themselves be manifestations of a single underlying motivating force expressed in opposite polarity. Von Franz extends this trajectory by treating drive not as a brute compulsion but as a purposive vector carrying latent fantasy material; her alchemical reading of the ‘red sulphur’ as instinctive drive insists that the drive has an objective—something it is ‘driving at’—and that the therapeutic task is to ‘cook’ this raw material until its soul appears. Behaviourist and neuroscientific traditions represented in the corpus approach drive from outside: as a maintaining stimulus that keeps an organism active, as a reduction-seeking homeostatic tension, or as an induction of arousal. The depth-psychological tradition consistently resists these reductive accounts, insisting on the drive’s teleological and symbolic dimensions.
drives are specific forms of energy. Energy includes these in a higher concept of relation, and it cannot express anything else than the relations between psychological values.
Jung argues that drives must be subordinated to the broader concept of psychic energy and that reducing all psychic life to any single drive constitutes an inadmissible theoretical error.
, The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, 1960thesis
Eros and the power drive might be in a sense like the dissident sons of a single father, or the products of a single motivating psychic force which manifested itself empirically in opposing forms.
Jung reframes the Freud–Adler controversy as a polarity within a single underlying psychic force, with Eros and the power drive as complementary rather than rival explanatory principles.
, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, 1963thesis
one must try to find out amicably what the drive really wants, that is, what it is driving at, for it has an objective… strong drives emanate a fantasy content, they comprise a bunch of fantasy material.
Von Franz treats drive as a purposive, teleological force carrying latent fantasy material, and the therapeutic work as an alchemical ‘cooking’ that allows the drive’s symbolic content to emerge.
, Alchemy: An Introduction to the Symbolism and the Psychology, 1980thesis
the fish is symbolically equivalent to the wingless bird (red sulphur, the instinctive drives). The tension between the two worlds spirit and matter, consciousness and the unconscious is indicated by the wavy lines.
Von Franz maps instinctive drives onto the alchemical symbol of the wingless bird or red sulphur, positioning them as the prima materia that consciousness must first unearth before any transformation can occur.
, Alchemy: An Introduction to the Symbolism and the Psychology, 1980supporting
strength and intelligence are the two aspects of the power drive, and they account for the many primitive animal stories in which the witty, clever one outwits the stronger one.
Von Franz analyses the power drive as bifurcating into brute force and cunning intelligence, both of which remain unconsciously operative in collective and individual psychology.
, The Problem of the Puer Aeternus, 1970supporting
strength and intelligence are the two aspects of the power drive, and they account for the many primitive animal stories in which the witty, clever one outwits the stronger one.
Reiterating the bifurcated structure of the power drive, von Franz demonstrates its cultural ubiquity through the motif of the clever animal outwitting the stronger—a motif she reads as a projection of intrapsychic dynamics.
, Puer Aeternus: A Psychological Study of the Adult Struggle with the Paradise of Childhood, 1970supporting
Attachment is a fundamental motivation in its own right and cannot be reduced to a secondary drive.
Attachment theory directly contests classical drive theory by asserting that the attachment motivation is primary and irreducible to biological drive-reduction.
, Addiction as an Attachment Disorder, 2004supporting
For Guthrie, a drive produces maintaining stimuli, internal stimuli that keep an animal active. An active animal is more likely to make a required response in most learning situations.
Guthrie’s behaviourist reinterpretation reduces drive to a source of maintaining stimuli rather than a motivational force in its own right, subordinating it entirely to the principle of contiguity.
, The Principles of Psychology, 1890supporting
Sheffield’s view, reinforcement occurs when arousal is induced, as opposed to the drive reduction the[ory]… a drive induction theory of reinforcement.
Sheffield’s drive induction theory challenges classical drive-reduction accounts by proposing that reinforcement is produced by the arousal a drive generates rather than by its reduction.
, The Principles of Psychology, 1890supporting
libido… This is desire and emotion, the life blood of the psyche. Jung called libido psychic energy.
Stein contextualises Jung’s libido theory as the general energic framework within which specific drives operate, distinguishing Jungian usage sharply from Freudian drive theory.
, Jung’s Map of the Soul: An Introduction, 1998aside