Beyond the Pleasure Principle

Behold one of Freud’s most over-determined navels. A piece of thought, exploration and theory that is yet to be pinned down and is a fertile seed to many theorists who came after and attempted to corral this confused yet beguiling psychical mechanism into their own works. A fount of seemingly never-ending creative inspiration for others.

While also being a frustrating 78 page read…

Been trying to come up with a review for this one for weeks and kept hitting some wall that I would be hard pressed not to attribute to some function of the pleasure principle / reality principle / death drive / jouissance.

Overtime / bonus chapter enjoyment through experience.

I know, I am rambling…
But this work doesn’t need to be summarized here.
My show more only desire is to express its effect on me…
As if one could say, “My *only* desire”…

It seems that every time I read Freud my brain is forced to read him on 4 or more parallel tracks that range over “what he’s trying to say” and “how he sometimes gets bogged down in trying to explain everything physiologically” yet “how even when that feels wrong there’s always still something interesting there so you have to parse it in real time” to “considering everything within the psychological and cultural context within which he was writing” yet still “separating that from the universal truths that he would still be living” while all the while being reminded of “what an amazing and brilliant explorer of a completely new realm” he was.

I’m reminded of Jacques Cousteau only if Jacques Cousteau had also basically DISCOVERED OCEANS before anyone else had thought to notice them.

Here’s the thing for me. Reading Freud is clearly frustrating because he was obviously on to something extraordinary and yet since he was the first one there he had to figure out from scratch how to even conceptualize, label and order it. I agree with others I’ve read that posit word choice might have been his biggest enemy. Pleasure principle. Reality principle. Death drive. Not only might these have been named better, but Freud himself often seemed mercurial in how he used his terms and would shift their meanings over time. I’m perfectly fine with Freud modifying and revising his concepts and theory over the years. But when that seems to happen within the limited pages of a short work it can be a bit difficult to lock on to a clear intended meaning.

Maybe that’s why his writings - and this work in particular - seem so ripe for interpretation and exploration...

I read BtPP right before reading Alenka Zupancic’s What IS Sex? (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36304803-what-is-sex) and I have to say it was a damn good match. Or maybe much of Lacanian studies revolve around this singular process/mechanism so that's not so surprising? I've now just started reading Seminar VII, and it’s with some feeling that the extension of this core theory will be expanded further.

Even with all the frustration and confusion it’s hard not to walk away from this book knowing in your gut that Freud was on to something. The words shift, the causes are many and over-determined, and yet the psychical actions that he describes feel too true and familiar to deny. Desire for homeostasis, judging future actions against some knowledge of possible pleasure or pain (comfort or discomfort), compulsive repetition (often of “seemingly” un-pleasureable acts), a basic obsession with and avoidance of the impossibility of existing, of being conscious yet cut off by a loss/gap back in a past you can’t remember yet always feel on the back of your shoulder. A desire to be inanimate if only to stop the desire machine…

This is the tool box for much that would follow... show less

I think people familiar only with the popular image of Freud would be surprised at the pains he takes to make sure his hypotheses are taken as provisional, speculative, in need of further study, etc. The interesting bit is the bridge he constructs from "folk" psychological phenomena that everyone will be familiar with to an assembly of 19th century chemical/hydraulic metaphors.

Freud is a pretty polarizing figure in academia, so it's not surprising that Beyond the Pleasure Principle is a fairly contentious work. Yet, in contrast to a great deal of what Freud wrote before this, there is a great deal of contrition, and much room for doubt. Which was, in my eyes, a good thing, seeing as much of what he argues is tenuous at best.

The notion of a death instinct is a radical and fascinating notion, but I don't feel that he defends it in the most reasonable way possible, though his assertion that instinct may lead not towards evolution but rather towards regression is surprisingly well-defended and has consequences that are interesting to consider. However, while Freud admits that much of what he reasons may be off show more the mark (even though he defends those assertions with apparent biological proof, some of which is admittedly borderline non sequitur), it is his willingness to amend his previous theories and to speculate adventurously that should be his most recognized legacy.

To that end, this book is a fine look at a mind at work. To consider this as an accurate landmark in psychological studies, however, may be too great a leap. show less

Texto entrelaçado muito bem construído, primeiro apresentando um problema, relatando alguns casos, preparando o terreno para mostrar a necessidade de especular um princípio que complemente a situação e permita uma solução, para em seguida tecer comentários.

Há coisas que o princípio de prazer - a diminuição das tensões-excitações desprazerosas, não explicam. Princípio de realidade: renunciar ao prazer e tolerar o desprazer, adiar a satisfação para o bem maior da conservação. E então já há margem pra discordância. Mas e a neurose traumática? No caso de crianças e artistas, afetados passivamente por uma vivência desprazeirosa, a repetem como brincadeira ou arte; apossam-se assim da impressão imperiosa. Na show more clínica, o analista interpretava o que poderia ser trazido à tona e assim levar o paciente a capta-la e então dissolve-la. Mas não é tão simples lembrar do recalcado, e parece mais efetivo repeti-lo como vivência do que lembra-lo com distanciamento. Só que há desprazer nisso, e o princípio do prazer oferece resistência. Surge a hipótese do impulso como pressão para restabelecer um estado anterior das coisas orgânicas vivas, estado que teve de ser renunciado sob a influência de forças pertubadoras externas, expressão da inércia na vida orgânica. Hipótese do impulso de morte, os impulsos de autoconservação sendo parciais, a garantir a morte adequada, no seu tempo; os impulsos do eu provém da matéria inanimada e a ela querem voltar, enquanto os impulsos sexuais busção a fusão de células germinativas e a continuidade orgânica. show less

De tudo que Freud escreveu creio que a teoria das pulsões é a mais válida, o que diferencia o seu escrito para o artigo da Spielrein são suas analogias biológicas, enquanto ela fez um recorte mitológico. Menos mal que Freud cita Destruction as the Cause of Coming Into Being numa nota de rodapé. Rá!

In this work Freud presents his theory for a pyschological force that acts as the counterbalance of the sexual instinct, or libido, with which much of his previous work is concerned. Previously, he groups all forms of mpulse (such as self preservation and creativity) as being derived from the sexual instinct, which together with the other instincts such as feeding ourselves he categorises as the "Pleasure Principle". Whether we agree with this is not ever so important, it is partially a matter of semantics and redefining what is meant by libido and the sexual (Jung uses the term "libido" to refer to energy of the psyche in general).
The important development that is introduced here is Freud's introduction of a counter force, a "death show more instinct" or "death drive", that acts against the life forces of the libido. He asserts that its primary and most common manifestation is a compulsion to repeat, which is as much a product of the instincts and the unconscious as the libidinal impulses.
Freud presents various theoretical justifications for the death instinct, several from a biological /physical perspective: life originated from inanimate matter, and all life will die (and therefore this is its goal, thermodynamically speaking). The problem that I find in this is that from the point of view of a physicist, this is true, and there is no need to invoke a psychological principle to explain something that thermodynamics can explain, and from the point of view of a biologist, the idea of a universal death drive is not something that would have been selected for by natural selection. This, however, is not say that the death drive does not exist, only that some of Freud's justifications for his theory are ill-chosen. The clinical evidence, relating to masochism, and the link to repetition compulsion, however, does carry more weight.
Freud, throughout, acknowledges that this theory is speculative, in accord with his lack of evidence. As is said, the more remarkable a theory, the more remarkable the evidence that is needed to support it. Here there is no remarkable evidence, which is partly why this remains Freud's most controversial work. If one is interested in the thought of Freud, and psychology, then this is worth reading, however it raises more questions than it answers, and does not help the understanding of psychology like his other works. If, however, the reader wants to be given a difficult problem to think about, then this book is ideal. A previous knowledge of Freud's works, for example the material in his first volume of Introductory Lectures, would be more or less essential before reading this. show less

Beyond the Pleasure Principle is an extraordinary book, arguably one of the most important books ever written. Rather ashamed to admit this but I’ve never actually read Freud; given the amount of critiques, good and bad, that I’ve heard and read over the years, I decided it was time to read his work for myself. This book is really a short read that explores the “why” of our mind’s mechanics and his theory that we humans are guided by two instincts; the life instinct, Eros, which preserves all things, and the death instinct, served by the “pleasure principle” which seeks to return us to an inanimate state. This notion of the death instinct leads us to a most revolutionary theory-"The aim of all life is death". According to show more Feud, there is barely an aspect of life which is not exposed to the possibility of being harmed by its destructible force. Much of what Freud writes he himself admits is speculative yet the idea that there is a life and a death instinct in all organisms is certainly something that can be discussed on a deeper psychological level.

Beyond the Pleasure Principle, while short, is not an easy read, Freud sometimes packs too much information into each sentence. I frequently found myself wishing he would slow down and explain his theories in more detail, especially for those of us who have not studied psychology in any form. Being that this was one of his last texts, some of his earlier concepts seemed to be glossed over, making it difficult to understand, I would have benefited from a more detailed explanation in these areas. But, Freud is a fascinating writer, and it's interesting to read what he actually said compared to what I’ve heard about his theories.

**I received a complimentary advanced copy of this book from the publisher, Dover Publications and NetGalley in exchange for my honest review** show less