Beyond the Pleasure Principle
Beyond the Pleasure Principle (Jenseits des Lustprinzips) is a 1920 work by Sigmund Freud. The importance of the work lies in its revision of Freud’s earlier theory of instincts, positing that in addition to the libido, there exists a competing death instinct. Freud’s movement towards this new conception of his drive theory would continue in his later work The Ego and the Id in 1923.
Summary
In the first section of the work, Freud begins by addressing the concept of the pleasure principle itself, which is the idea that humanity possesses an instinctual drive toward experiencing pleasure and shielding itself from pain. Freud does not dispute the existence of a pleasure principle, but does take issue with the idea that the pleasure principle is the dominant mental drive. If it were, he argues, then most mental processes would result in pleasure or be accompanied by it; but because of various other instincts, one can only say that there is a general tendency towards the experience of pleasure that is often in conflict with other drives. One such drive is the reality principle, which according to Freud, is a result from the ego’s impulse towards self-preservation and, in effect, forces pleasure to be postponed or attained in a roundabout way. Freud ends the opening chapter of the work by announcing his intent to examine the mind’s reaction to external danger, which he describes as the mental perception of displeasure.
Section II opens with an analysis of the trauma experienced by veterans of the First World War. The traditional belief was that traumatic neuroses were the result of physical injuries, a belief that Freud feels has finally been put to rest. Additionally, Freud notes two important characteristics of ordinary, non-war-related traumatic neuroses: that they are primarily caused by surprise or fright (which Freud distinguishes from fear, which is related to a specific object, and anxiety, which is an expectation of danger rather than a reaction to it) and that a wound or other physical trauma simultaneously inflicted typically prevents the development of neuroses. Freud then turns to a discussion of his theory of dreams and its relation to traumatic experiences. In his first book, The Interpretation of Dreams, Freud postulated that dreams are wish-fulfillments, enabling the mind to resolve internal conflicts (in accordance with the pleasure principle). However, this seems to be contradicted by the experiences of those with traumatic neuroses, in which their dreams frequently place them back in the traumatic event which they experienced. Freud believes this has little to do with their minds being occupied with the traumatic events. If anything, he says, trauma patients tend to avoid thinking about their trauma during their waking hours; instead, Freud argues that the function of dreaming itself is disrupted by traumatic experiences. Freud then turns to a discussion of children’s games, focusing in particular on the actions of a young boy who repeatedly threw his toys away from him while attempting to say fort ("gone") and da ("there"). Freud speculates that this action had less to do with setting up the joyful experience of recapturing the toy, and more to do with the child’s attempt to regain control over a situation that he found unpleasant (in this case, the frequent departures of his mother).
Section III consists of an analysis of what Freud terms the “compulsion to repeat," which refers to attempts by neurotic patients to recreate the experience that led to their current mental state. The compulsion to repeat seems to run counter to the notion of the pleasure principle, and Freud relates it to the recurring neurotic dreams and the repetition in the games of children that he discussed in the previous chapter. Often, these repetition compulsions manifest themselves during the patient’s treatment, and Freud relates them to his concept of transference neuroses, in which the patient’s fantasies and impulses, formerly repressed, are acted out in the present.
The fourth and fifth sections contain some of Freud’s most controversial claims about biology and human consciousness; indeed, Freud opens section four with a warning to the reader that much of what follows will be purely speculative. Freud then launches into a long, detailed discussion of the creation and destruction of individual cells. Cells contain an imbalance of energy, and Freud takes their tendency to destruction as implying a natural inclination to return to an earlier state of nonexistence. Freud then applies this idea to an entire living organism, hypothesizing that humans possess an impulse to return to a previous state of equilibrium. In this case, the initial state of humans is one of non-existence. Freud claims that this death instinct was the first instinct developed by organic life, (and later in the book that death developed at a somewhat late stage in the evolutionary process). He attempts to present biological justification for this, stating that destruction of the self is a resolution of tensions produced by external stimuli. Furthermore, the death instinct finds itself in a constant struggle with the libido, which Freud presents as a substitution for perfection. That is to say, the creation of new life takes the place of the individual organism’s attainment of perfection, which Freud believes is impossible, given the inevitability of death in the face of such a strong biological drive.
The sixth section contains Freud’s exploration of the idea that death was acquired late in the development of higher organisms. He also draws an analogy between the libido and Eros, which he takes as the poetic representation of the force which binds together the universe and all living things. He then ruminates on the origin of sexuality, wondering whether the view put forward by Aristophanes in Plato’s Symposium--that humans were split from their other half eons ago and constantly strive to reconnect with their other in the hope of being whole again--might serve as a useful metaphor for the individual’s desire to lose himself in his partner during the sex act, and whether this is another drive to equilibrium, in which a distinct organism attempts to return to a primordial state in which there were not individual entities, but rather a great mass of single-celled creatures. Freud then reminds his readers that this work is simply speculation and that more research is needed before anything conclusive can be stated. He then follows with a brief seventh section in which he summarizes some points about the relation between the pleasure principle and the instincts and again calls for more research.
Reception and Analysis
James Strachey writes that “in the series of Freud’s metapsychological writings, Beyond the Pleasure Principle may be regarded as introducing the final phase of his views” which would be developed further in late works such as The Ego and the Id and Civilization and its Discontents. Similarly, Peter Gay writes in an introductory note that “Beyond the Pleasure Principle is more remote from Freud’s clinical experience than earlier theoretical papers” and that despite his use of some case studies, “there is a good deal of conjecture in this little, path-breaking book.” Gay argues, nevertheless, for the importance of the work for its illustration of the shift in psychoanalytic thinking toward a “structural” theory of the mind.