ABSTRACT
While repression is accountable in terms of motivational conict preventing reection upon certain mental acts, such a picture nevertheless requires integration into a larger framework involving the ‘person’, ego and identity. Personality development typically involves the emergence of an apparent agent-the ‘person’—and a comprehensive general theory must address the relation of this person to the various parts, including the drives and their relation with the ‘cognising subject’ or ego. This is no small feat, since ‘sub-personal’ drive accounts typically appear to undermine the role of the ‘person’, which underscores the tension between whether we should understand humans mechanistically or as ‘agents’, and whether psychoanalysis should be seen as a natural science or some kind of privileged human science. Consequently, unless an integrative account of drives and persons can be provided, then the apparent division between impersonal drives and ‘persons’ provides a further source of pluralism in psychoanalysis.
