Dr. Paul Conti

It may be that now I want too much money.

I want to get paid more and more and that's going to make me feel better about myself and I neglect other things.

Or if we're not getting a lot of pleasure, then we just don't feel good about what we're doing and we lose our incentive to try.

So both assertion and pleasure, there are different ranges in each person.

But we want to see, hey, what is that range for me in each of those drives?

And how do I run on the higher end of where that range is for me?

And that's been really classically understood in humans, but we're just getting, we're moving it another step forward by saying, okay, what sits underneath of it in the structure and function of self and what sits on top of it, which is the generative drive.

It's the generative drive that really makes us human.

It's the generative drive that lets us do things that someone else hasn't done before, whether it's how someone sings or how someone is kind to the person next door.

to them or how someone brings ingenuity to their job or to a relationship and to say, I'm here and there's something about me that's unique.

No one else is like me and I want to be in this world and I want to express myself and I want to be felt in this world, not just in a way that asserts myself and gets what I want, but in a way that makes the world a better place.

So an example, we could look at the creation of art or I write in the book about a person who was on a beach and there had been a storm that passed and the waves were very, very heavy.

And the person sees that there are people out in the water who are really in trouble.

And that person just takes clothes off, strips down to the boxer shorts and jumps into the water and really risks himself to help other people, to rescue other people.

And you look at that, you can't explain.

that by a desire to assert yourself in the world.

You know, that would have been much safer to stay on the beach and assert himself in a different way that maybe served his own life as opposed to risk losing it or to say, oh, that person wants the pleasure of being able to help someone else.

I mean, this is what classical theory has said.

And it just doesn't make any sense that there are parts of us that are altruistic, that are creative, that want to make the world around us different.

And that might be growing flowers where there was just dirt or