4 | MOTIVATION
Motivation is the psychological energy —physics defines energy as the
ability to generate work,9 in other words, the ability
to generate movement—that causes an individual to present a
behavior—remember that behavior, as has been presented, is every
movement with a specific goal.10,11 Motivations can be
conscious and unconscious.
In general, from a psychodynamic point of view, there are four types of
motivations: the search for pleasure through perception —libido—,
aggressive impulses, the desire to attach to others, and narcissistic
needs—namely, the desire to reach the maximum attainable development
of an individual.10 Each one of these motivations, of
course, has their corresponding counterparts. In medical practice, these
motivations can be easily detected: for example, the diabetic patient
who does not take his drugs could be behaving motivated by a
self-aggressive impulse, the somatizing patient who repeatedly goes to
the emergency room to receive medical attention even though the doctors
have tell him continuously that he has no physical disease could be
behaving motivated by an impulse of dependence, etc.
The concept of motivation is relevant because it implies intentionality,
namely, it implies that all mental phenomena are directed to an object
that is not the mental phenomenon in itself5—in the
interpersonal context, this object is individuals—, a property of the
mind that is basic to explain the concepts that follow.