Today, we explore what it means to adhere to the reality principle, seeing some common solutions of cognitive therapies, and highlighting the stance of psychodynamic ones. This difference helps us understand the theories behind these two approaches, and how they focus, respectively, on normality and uniqueness as a starting point for helping the patient.
Then, we enter the most controversial territory of psychoanalysis: the death drive. Is there a force in every person that together with the desire, that pushes him/her forward towards progress and creation, acts as a conservative force, sucking back the individual? Or, as Freud calls it, is there ‘an urge in organic life to restore an earlier state of things‘?
Empatherapy 