An inner compulsion to act ‘hard-wired’ into the body. According to psychoanalysis, instincts have four features: a biological source (opinion varies as to what this source is, but usually it is assumed to be genetic); a supply of energy from that source (e.g. the libido); a specific aim which, when achieved, gives rise to satisfaction, or a discharge of energy (e.g. cathexis); and an object, namely the means of attaining a specific aim. ethology, which is the behavioural study of animals, postulates that there are six basic instincts: sex, fighting, parenting, sleeping, territoriality, and grooming. The key implication of this is that instincts are thought to be unstoppable because they originate in a part of the body that is outside the realm of thought. By the same token, some instincts---like parenting and grooming---might be learned behaviour and not instinctual at all; similarly, even the apparently obvious instincts like sex, necessary to the reproduction of certain species, are anything but straightforward. For Freud, Anna, instincts are something which both the conscious and unconscious must come to terms with. He suggests there are four possibilities: reversal into its opposite (i.e. an active demand converted into passive acceptance); turning against the self (i.e. making the self into an object); repression; and sublimation. Freud always distinguished between the Instinkt and the Trieb, but rather unhelpfully this distinction is obliterated in the English translation because James Strachey translates both as drive. The difference between the two is, however, crucial, and one could say that Lacan, Jacques’s career is built on emphasizing the latter over the former.