Beyond the Pleasure Principle (The International Psycho-Analytical Library) (Volume 4)

An excerpt from The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, Volume 3, 1922:

In the psycho-analytical theory of the mind we take it for granted that the course of mental processes is automatically regulated by "the pleasure-principle"; that is to say, we believe that any given process originates in an unpleasant state of tension and thereupon determines for itself such a path that its ultimate issue coincides with a relaxation of this tension, i. e. with avoidance of "pain" or with production of pleasure' (p. 1). In this opening sentence, Freud gives us an exact and precise summary of the part played by pleasure in the chain of psychic events. This part is, as will be shown almost immediately, an economic one; it does not bring about the event— it is important to recognise this—but merely conditions its direction and has besides a definite effect on the time of occurrence. We must openly admit that such an exact formulation differs a little from the earlier ones (cf. 'Formulierungen über die zwei Prinzipien des psychischen Geschehens', Sammlung kleiner Schriften zur Neurosenlehre, III., 1913). Although the function of the pleasure-principle has been long and fully admitted as part of the demonstrative proof of analysis, it has never attained to the status of a law; it was merely a heuristic judgment, that is a partial generalisation with all the characteristics of a preliminary survey. The proposition of a ' reality-principle' too, regarded as a piece of scientific theory, lacked the necessary unambiguity and clearness: it clung too closely to details, and for that reason ignored important criteria. Fundamentally it is again the time-element (the check to the claim made by instinct for realisation) that is finally decisive in establishing its distinction from the pleasure-principle.

A degree of indeterminateness of this kind in the formulation of a conception can, however, only temporarily obscure the outlook: the fundamental facts remain and themselves provide the explanation. The introduction of the economic point of view led to the recognition that the pleasure-principle remained predominant for the direction taken by the psychic processes, but this did not imply as a necessary corollary that the psychic processes made their appearance as an outcome of the pleasure-principle. The force that releases them may be something quite different. At this point Freud has taken up the novel considerations which emerge from the recognition that something lies 'Beyond the Pleasure-Principle'. The lines along which such a conclusion has been reached can be accurately traced. Psycho-analysis of the so-called traumatic neuroses revealed a psychic fixation of the patient on the trauma, which did not as a rule manifest itself in waking life (in conversion-hysteria symptoms the fixation is clearly present), but which on the other hand is invariably lived over again in dreams.…