Here is the paraphrase from Moran’s article that I adamantly disagreed with. Moran wrote:

Freud begins [“Drives and their vicissitudes”] with the ‘biological’ postulate that ‘the nervous system is an apparatus which has the function of getting rid of [beseitigen] the stimuli that reach it, or of reducing them to the lowest possible level; or which, if it were feasible, would maintain itself in an altogether unstimulated condition.’

Call me naive but I think Moran is insinuating that Freud is an arrogant blowhard. I think you get a much better sense of Freud’s humility and humanity if you consider that Freud did not "begin” the article with such a jarring statement.

I’ll show you two cases: first, just the paragraph leading up to that sentence; then an excerpted version of all the text of the article up to that point.

Just the paragraph leading up to that sentence

In order to guide us in dealing with the field of psychological phenomena, we do not merely apply certain conventions to our empirical material as basic concepts; we also make use of a number of complicated postulates. We have already alluded to the most important of these, and all we need now do is to state it expressly. This postulate is of a biological nature, and makes use of the concept of ‘purpose’ (or perhaps of expediency) and runs as follows: the nervous system is an apparatus which has the function of getting rid of the stimuli that reach it, or of reducing them to the lowest possible level; or which, if it were feasible, would maintain itself in an altogether unstimulated condition.

More of Freud’s soft approach at the start

We have often heard it maintained that sciences should be built up on clear and sharply defined basic concepts. In actual fact no science, not even the most exact, begins with such definitions. The true beginning of scientific activity consists rather in describing phenomena and then in proceeding to group, classify and correlate them. Even at the stage of description it is not possible to avoid applying certain abstract ideas to the material in hand, ideas derived from somewhere or other but certainly not from the new observations alone.

Such ideas – which will later become the basic concepts of the science – are still more indispensable as the material is further worked over. They must at first necessarily possess some degree of indefiniteness; there can be no question of any clear delimitation of their content. So long as they remain in this condition, we come to an understanding about their meaning by making repeated references to the material of observation from which they appear to have been derived, but upon which, in fact, they have been imposed. Thus, strictly speaking, they are in the nature of conventions – although everything depends on their not being arbitrarily chosen but determined by their having significant relations to the empirical material, relations that we seem to sense before we can clearly recognize and demonstrate them. It is only after more thorough investigation of the field of observation that we are able to formulate its basic scientific concepts with increased precision, and progressively so to modify them that they become serviceable and consistent over a wide area.

Then, indeed, the time may have come to confine them in definitions. The advance of knowledge, however, does not tolerate any rigidity even in definitions. Physics furnishes an excellent illustration of the way in which even ‘basic concepts’ that have been established in the form of definitions are constantly being altered in their content. A conventional basic concept of this kind, which at the moment is still somewhat obscure but which is indispensable to us in psychology, is that of a ‘drive’. Let us try to give a content to it by approaching it from different angles.

First, from the angle of physiology. This has given us the concept of a ‘stimulus’ and the pattern of the reflex arc, according to which a stimulus applied to living tissue (nervous substance) from the outside is discharged by action to the outside. This action is expedient insofar as it withdraws the stimulated substance from the influence of the stimulus, removes it out of its range of operation. What is the relation of ‘drive’ to ‘stimulus’? There is nothing to prevent our subsuming the concept of ‘drive’ under that of ‘stimulus’ and saying that a drive is a stimulus applied to the mind. But we are immediately set on our guard against equating drive and mental stimulus. There are obviously other stimuli to the mind besides those of the drives, stimuli which behave far more like physiological ones. For example, when a strong light falls on the eye, it is not a drive stimulus; it is one, however, when a dryness of the mucous membrane of the pharynx or an irritation of the mucous membrane of the stomach makes itself felt.

We have now obtained the material necessary for distinguishing between drive stimuli and other (physiological) stimuli that operate on the mind. In the first place, a drive stimulus does not arise from the external world but from within the organism itself. For this reason it operates differently upon the mind and different actions are necessary in order to remove it. Further, all that is essential in a stimulus is covered if we assume that it operates with a single impact, so that it can be disposed of by a single expedient action.

A typical instance of this is motor flight from the source of stimulation. These impacts may, of course, be repeated and summated, but that makes no difference to our notion of the process and to the conditions for the removal of the stimulus. A drive, on the other hand, never operates as a force giving a momentary impact but always as a constant one. Moreover, since it impinges not from without but from within the organism, no flight can avail against it. A better term for a drive stimulus is a ‘need’. What does away with a need is ‘satisfaction’. This can be attained only by an appropriate (‘adequate’) alteration of the internal source of stimulation. Let us imagine ourselves in the situation of an almost entirely helpless living organism, as yet unorientated in the world, which is receiving stimuli in its nervous substance.

This organism will very soon be in a position to make a first distinction and a first orientation. On the one hand, it will be aware of stimuli which can be avoided by muscular action (flight); these it ascribes to an external world. On the other hand, it will also be aware of stimuli against which such action is of no avail and whose character of constant pressure persists in spite of it; these stimuli are the signs of an internal world, the evidence of drive needs. The perceptual substance of the living organism will thus have found in the efficacy of its muscular activity a basis for distinguishing between an ‘outside’ and an ‘inside’. We thus arrive at the essential nature of drives in the first place by considering their main characteristics – their origin in sources of stimulation within the organism and their appearance as a constant force – and from this we deduce one of their further features, namely, that no actions of flight avail against them. In the course of this discussion, however, we cannot fail to be struck by something that obliges us to make a further admission.

In order to guide us in dealing with the field of psychological phenomena, we do not merely apply certain conventions to our empirical material as basic concepts; we also make use of a number of complicated postulates. We have already alluded to the most important of these, and all we need now do is to state it expressly. This postulate is of a biological nature, and makes use of the concept of ‘purpose’ (or perhaps of expediency) and runs as follows: the nervous system is an apparatus which has the function of getting rid of the stimuli that reach it, or of reducing them to the lowest possible level; or which, if it were feasible, would maintain itself in an altogether unstimulated condition.