ABSTRACT
Freud (1915c) proposes that given that organisms satisfy drive-states through various ‘objects’, drive activity necessarily involves object relationships. Accordingly, drives provide the motivational bases for understanding object relations and neither drives nor object relations can be satisfactorily appreciated in isolation, as Spruiell (1988) rightly notes:
While it is true that Freud’s concepts of drives and objects changed over the years, it is also fair to say that he always saw objects in terms of drives;
by the same token, it would be almost impossible to imagine drives without objects. It would be like the Zen koan in which one tries to imagine one hand clapping.
