Need help with some psychology terms

Hey everyone!

A friend of mine just got diagnosed with:

Hypothymia
Clinical Depression
Anhedonia

Could you guys be so kind as to give me a rough idea of what all this actually means?
Thanks!

placidmoose32 said:Anhedonia

It’s an emotional disorder where a patient loses the ability to experience pleasure in any area of life.

I can't offer much more help than that; it isn't listed in my foreign terminology dictionary. 😬

Do you want to talk more about your friend? 😉

placidmoose32 said:Hey everyone.

A friend of mine was diagnosed with:

Hypothymia
Clinical Depression
Anhedonia

Could someone be kind enough to give me a general idea of what this actually means?
Thanks!

Low mood, reduced arousal levels, and an inability to experience pleasure or enjoyment.
Basically, a total lack of drive... similar to depression, though they likely lacked the specific cognitive markers required for a full clinical diagnosis.
Keep in mind, the causes behind your friend's condition could be entirely physiological or organic in nature.

Could someone maybe help me out with the translations for these specific terms? I'd really rather not spend my entire weekend digging through library stacks and old textbooks if I can avoid it 😁

reverse drive
pleasure principle
pre-linguistic trauma
material theory
how is Freud's 'Beyond the Pleasure Principle' usually translated

So you’re translating something from the realm of psychoanalysis—basically depth psychology...
...I have to admit my knowledge of depth psychology is fairly superficial, though I’m open to being corrected...

As for "reverse drive," I’d go with inverse drive (maybe impulse, but if memory serves, when discussing Freud, people used instinct or drive interchangeably)

The "pleasure principle" is just that... the principle the Id follows, while the Ego operates according to the reality principle...

"Pre-linguistic trauma"... perhaps pre-linguistic trauma... a trauma occurring somewhere before age one, right as the Ego begins to form.

"Matherial theory"... is this regarding communication? Like Communication Theory? If I were doing it, I might just leave it as Material Theory of Communication...

'Beyond pleasure principle' — "on the other side of the pleasure principle" (the original German is "Jenseits des Lustprinzips," so that's about the gist of it)

...it's always worth checking something like the
Psychoanalysis Dictionary
Authors: Jean Laplanche, J. B. Pontalis
New York : "Random House" : Forward, 1992.

I'm not sure how they handled the translation here, but I can definitely clear something up: Freud makes a huge distinction between instinct and Drive (Trieb). An instinct is basically what’s hardwired into every member of a species—like how a spider just knows how to spin a web—whereas a Drive is this complex concept that links our somatic and psychic functioning. The source and energy come from the body, but the goal and object are represented psychically. He actually puts it this way: 'A Drive is a measure of work demanded by the psyche in its connection to the body.'
In humans, those basic instincts are essentially lost, which is really the whole foundation of the theory of sexuality.
It seems like the English translators just swapped Trieb for "instinct" and completely muddied the waters. It’s honestly a bit problematic because it can flip the entire meaning of the theory into something totally different.
The Ego tries to follow the reality principle—though it doesn't always succeed—mostly because the pleasure principle often fails to account for everything. Sometimes you just have to adapt, be patient, and put in some actual effort instead of immediately jumping at a guy or girl you're interested in.

Instinct is being used in the traditional sense here—you know, like animal instinct or that gut feeling when you sense danger is lurking...

William Morris8 said:I'm not sure about the translation, but I can clarify something else: Freud distinguishes between instinct and Drive (Trieb). Instinct is what's genetically passed down to all individuals of a species (like a spider spinning a web), whereas Drive is a concept that articulates somatic and psychological functioning.

I’m not entirely convinced Freud makes that specific distinction here. It seems more likely that, spurred by the horrors of World War I, he introduced the concept of the death instinct (later termed Thanatos) as an opposing force to the life instinct (Eros).
He didn't really view instinct as a genetically programmed complex or a behavioral pattern triggered by specific stimuli—things like nesting behaviors or mating rituals. He might have differentiated the two terms, but in Freud's work, that gap is much smaller than how modern science separates them today.

When Freud talks about instinct, he uses the term *Instinkt*, but when he’s referring to a drive, he specifically uses *Trieb*. That distinction—the concept of the drive—is really one of the pillars of his entire theory. He actually refers to the death drive as *Todestrieb*, not *Todesinstinkt*. He originally brought this idea forward after being inspired by his grandson's "Fort-Da" game. It’s worth noting that *Todestrieb* isn't quite as literal regarding actual physical death as a casual reader might assume—it's more complex than that, I guess. Sometimes, Freud would just use *Thanatos*, especially when he wanted to emphasize that duality between life and death drives: Eros / Thanatos.

Besides, you mentioned that the Laplanche and Pontalis translation was already out...

Interesting point...
... I’ve done some reading on Freud directly. He’s essentially treated as a persona non grata among most American psychologists, so there's a real chance his theories were misrepresented to us.
Besides, I highly doubt any professor in an American personality psychology department is actually reading Freud in the original language...
If that's the case, even Fulgosi might be misinterpreting him in personality psychology; I really should double-check that, though I don't have the book on hand right now.
It's barely morning and I've already learned something new. At least the day isn't a total wash. ;-)

Well, here goes nothing😁

Believe it or not, I’m actually working on translating a book about performance
I really wanted to say thanks for the help 🙂 since I don't know the first thing about personality psychology or how all these specific terms work in American English

The author brings up this 'materialist theory of psychiatry...' thing, so I'm honestly not entirely sure what they're getting at there, but then they move right into talking about the unconscious, belief systems, and animism

Aaaauh! Best of luck! By the way, who actually wrote this?

Anthony Howell
Is he well-known?

Not me—is he a neuropsychiatrist, a cognitive specialist, or something along those lines? I guess I'm just surprised to see him leaning so heavily on psychoanalytic concepts, so that's why I'm asking.

William Morris8 said:Not for me. Is he a neuropsychiatrist, a cognitive scientist, or something along those lines? I'm just surprised he’s leaning so heavily on psychoanalytic concepts, which is why I'm asking.

If Google isn't lying,
this guy is a dancer, a choreographer, a poet—an artist writing about performance art through the lens of psychoanalytic theory...
So, he isn't from a psychological background.

So then our whole debate about drive and instinct is basically irrelevant—just hit me up directly, Brenda Smith!

He talks about tango brilliantly! It reminds me of my old instructor from Buenos Aires—he actually made the jump from classical ballet to tango himself! I think I'll definitely dig a little deeper into what he has to say.

It seems you all have quite the handle on this subject matter,
but I’m curious—what exactly does "cathexis" imply?
(I don't happen to have a psychoanalysis dictionary on hand🙂)

If you look at the Greek root of the word "occupy"—it’s basically how we describe Freudian Occupation: the idea that a certain amount of psychic energy (or libido) gets invested and tied up in specific mental representations, ideas, parts of the body, objects, and so on. It’s really just an attempt to describe the economic processes behind how the mind functions. An investment of energy, I guess.