Hunger Instinct and Mental Food

Spring is here and although I have a fascination about the topic of narcissism and its connection to the libido, or as Freud might have said the sexual instinct, I have taken a slight diversion and been interested in what F.S. Pearls has to say about our mental development.

It did not surprise me that he seemed to attempt to rewrite Freud’s theory and remind us that the acting out of the sex instinct in its many forms just might not be the only instinct responsible for all of our traumas. Pearls had a keen interest in the hunger instinct. I could not fathom why until I really got my ‘teeth’ into his arguments about eating, chewing and liquefying food what it had to do with unresolved issues. I found that he quite nicely created a mental picture of how swallowing things whole without chewing on it can lead to biological problems or otherwise unpleasantness. I could not help but think of how many things in my life I had not chewed enough mentally for them to disappear. I guess what he was saying was that in the chewing we could liken this activity to gaining the understanding of every word spoken and its meaning to get the full value of it.

He quite nicely explained the relation of the hunger instinct to dental aggression. This too had me baffled for a while until I began to wonder whether his way of explaining things had anything to do with metaphor. His imagination then began to grow on me and began to help me to see more clearly what his theory had to do with immaturity and maturity as a person, or as Freud may have put it infantile regression or autonomy. What was even of more interest was my gradually coming to an understanding of what his explanation at a deeper level had to do with a human tendency of ‘avoidance’ of dealing with psychological resistances and levels of concentration on ‘good’ or ‘bad’ thoughts or emotions.

He hypothesised that there were different stages in the development of the hunger instinct “prenatal (before birth), predental (suckling), incisor (biting), and molar (biting and chewing)”. Obviously the psychological aspects of these stages are quite detailed, however, the conclusion is focussed on the arrival of instant gratification or an inability to destroy solid food, that is, not achieving satisfaction.

“Hunger for mental and emotional food behaves like physical hunger: K Horney observes that the neurotic is permanently greedy for affection, but that his greed is never satisfied. One decisive factor in this behaviour of the neurotic is that he does not assimilate the affection offered to him. He either refuses to accept it, or he deprecates it so that it becomes distasteful or valueless to him as soon as he has obtained it.

Furthermore, this impatient, greedy attitude is responsible more than anything else for the excessive stupidity we find in the world. Just as such people have no patience to chew up real food, so they do not take sufficient time to “chew up” mental food... “ Pearls F.S, (1969, pp.128-129).

I must say I was rather happy that Karen Horney got a ‘look in here’ as it did seem rather difficult for her in the USA and Melanie Klein in Britain to get their points across in those days about neurosis and psychosis. But good old Frederick has helped through his use of metaphor to discover the art or technique of concentration, that is, ‘getting right into the root of a situation’. Not negative concentration, but as he puts it “the perfect concentration is a harmonious process of conscious and unconscious co-operation...”, not the kind that leads to breakdown. “We have put down avoidance as the main characteristic of neurosis ...”. Pearls F.S, (1969, pp.226-227).

Pearls, F.S. , 1969. Ego, Hunger and Aggression. USA: The Gestalt Journal Press Inc.