Laplanche and Pontalis distinguished three meanings of Freudian constancy. On the main page, I discuss homeostasis. Here I discuss the other two.

Constancy as a principle of conservation of energy

Laplanche and Pontalis say that the PoC is “a cornerstone of Freud’s economic theory.” Moran makes a larger claim, saying that the PoC is one of “the fundamental principles of Freud’s metapsychology.”

Do those sound the same? It is somewhat subtle but they are not the same. Freud’s world is one of people being pushed here and there by powerful drives and powerful social pressures. They can barely negotiate the roller-coaster ride, sometimes ending up in hysteria, narcissism, or psychosis. It is hardly a “constant” world.

When L&P say that PoC is a cornerstone, they are referring only to Freud’s economic theory. That is a very minor, technical part of Freud’s metapsychology. It relates only to measurement of underlying offsetting psychic forces. The PoC does play an essential part in this technical area. It says that, after accounting for all the forces at play, the net effect must be zero. In other words, all energy must be accounted for. No energy simply vanishes.

Constancy as the principle that people aim for the lowest level of stimulation possible

What is the optimal level of excitation or stimulation for an organism? L&P note that Freud was never clear on this. Sometimes, it seemed he was saying that the organism wants to get to as low a level as possible. But when he did so, he often also seemed to recognize the absurdity of such a “death drive.” Nevertheless at the end of his career, he did specify such a drive: a drive to “lead what is living back into an inorganic state” (22, 95).

Moran thinks that this principle aligns Freud with Schopenhauer. It is true that Freud got a lot from Schopenhauer (click <here>). And when Freud introduced the death drive, he noted that it paralleled Schopenhauer’s concept that “death is the true end of life.”

But Freud would not go that far. In contrast to Schopenhauer:

We are not asserting that death is the only aim of life; we are not overlooking the fact that there is life as well as death. We recognize two basic drives and give each of them its own aim. How the two of them are mingled in the process of living, … these are [the concern of psychoanalytic theory]