![]() Pleasure is the subjective hedonic quality linked to stimuli or objects defined in behavioral terms as incentivizing or rewarding. The complexity of affects, as phenomena behind the mechanisms of the brain regulating the development of painful or gratifying experiences, explains why, from a biological point of view, these were understood only partially until recent years since then significant progress has been made by neuroscience in this field. ![]() Furthermore, the hedonic marking of affects is the quality that, at a basic level, distinguishes emotions from other psychological processes ( Damasio, 2004). Pleasure and Affects: The Perspective of Neuroscienceįar from being a mere sensorial representation, pleasure can on the contrary constitute a complex psychic experience entailing various processes such as memory, motivation, homoeostasis, and, in some occurrences, pain. In the last part of the paper, we will indicate possible theoretical implications for a neuropsychoanalytic understanding of libido-independent intrinsic motivations and their relationship with the self, including neuroscientific observations on self-related processes, agency, body-ownerships, and attachment. In particular, we will explore for insights from Panksepp’s theory of primary-process emotional feelings, including the notion of “wanting” and “liking” as dissociable components of reward. The purpose of this paper is thus to discuss psychoanalytic conceptual developments that have addressed pleasure, drives, and affects, in the light of recent findings coming from neurosciences. The notions of pleasure, drives, and affects are all of utmost importance for a neuropsychoanalytic understanding of mental functioning, due to their capability to explain desire, thought, and behavior from the perspective of human subjective experience. What these concepts have in common is an inner endorsement of one’s action, which is the sense that action is self-generated and is one’s own. Intrinsic motivation broadly refers to a set of psychological concepts including the inherent propensity to pursue one’s choices, to seek out novelty and challenges, to satisfy curiosity and competence, and to extend one’s capacities and control over events. Subsequent conceptual psychoanalytic developments have partially rejected such metapsychological theorizations, postulating that other intrinsic motivations that are independent from libido can be observed in humans. Within this conceptual framework, the aim of drive is always pleasure, and objects become significant in so far as they provide a way of discharging drives pressure. According to Freud, affect is a perceptual modality that registers the internal drive state of the subject rather than the objective experience of the external world, and the quality of this perceptual modality is calibrated in degrees of pleasure and displeasure. ![]() Pleasure is more than a mere sensory event, but rather it can be conceptualized as a complex, multiform experience involving memory, motivation, homeostasis, and, sometimes, negative affects. 2Centro Psicoanalitico di Roma, Società Psicoanalitica Italiana, Rome, Italy. ![]()
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