Beyond the Pleasure Principle (39 page)
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Authors: Sigmund Freud
Beyond the Pleasure Principle
1
. [The terms ‘economic’, ‘dynamic’ and ‘topical’ are all used by Freud in a special sense within the context of his ‘metapsychological’ system. Cf. the opening paragraphs of Chapters II and IV of
The Unconscious
.]
3
. [The ‘reality principle’ – one of Freud's central notions – may be defined as ‘the regulatory mechanism that represents the demands of the external world, and requires us to forgo or modify gratification or postpone it to a more appropriate time. In contrast to the pleasure principle, which… represents the id or instinctual impulses, the reality principle represents the ego, which controls our impulses and enables us to deal rationally and effectively with the situations of life.’ (
The Longman Dictionary of Psychology and Psychiatry
).]
4
. [
Organisation
. See below,
The Ego and the Id
,
note 10
.]
5
. [
Addition 1925
:] The essence of the matter is presumably that pleasure and unpleasure, being conscious sensations, are tied to the ego. [See the first few paragraphs of Chapter II of
Inhibition, Symptom, and Fear
– which Freud wrote in the same year in which he added this footnote.]
6
. [Freud uses the word
modifizieren
, and clearly intends the less common meaning that occurs in both languages, and which in the case of English ‘modify’ is defined thus in the
OED
: To alter in the direction of moderation or lenity; to make less severe, rigorous, or decided; to qualify, tone down, moderate’.]
7
. [First World War.]
8
. Cf.
Zur Psychoanalyse der Kriegsneurosen [Psycho-Analysis and the War Neuroses]
. With contributions by Ferenczi, Abraham, Simmel and E. Jones (1919). [Freud wrote the Introduction to this volume.]
9
. [The original words are respectively
Schreck, Furcht
and
Angst.
The distinctions that Freud draws are lexically somewhat specious – particularly the purported distinction between
Furcht
and
Angst
– and this speciousness is duly reflected in the translation. See also
Inhibition, Symptom, and Fear
, Chapter XI, Addendum B: ‘Fear: Supplementary Remarks’.]
10
. [‘
fixate
… to cause (a person) to react automatically to stimuli in terms which relate to a previous strong emotional experience; to establish (a response) in this way.’ (
OED
).]
11
. [The final clause of this sentence (from ‘or’ to ‘ego’) was added by Freud in 1921.]
12
. This interpretation was then fully confirmed by a further observation.
One day when the child's mother had been absent for many hours, she was greeted on her return with the announcement ‘Bebi o-o-o-o!’, which at first remained incomprehensible. It soon turned out, however, that while on his own for this long period of time the child had found a way of making himself disappear. He had discovered his reflection in the full-length mirror reaching almost to the floor, and had then crouched down so that his reflection was ‘gone’.
13
. When the child was five and three-quarters his mother died. Now that she was really and truly ‘gone’ (o-o-o), the boy showed no signs of grief. However, a second child had been born in the meantime, provoking the most intense jealousy in him.
14
. Cf. ‘Eine Kindheitserinnerung aus
Dichtung und Wahrheit
’ (1917) [‘A Childhood Recollection from [Goethe's]
Dichtung und Wahrheit
’].
15
. [See Freud's footnote below,
note 20
.]
16
. See
Remembering, Repeating, and Working Through
(1914) [for example pp. 36f. in this volume].
17
. [‘
das Verdrängte
’; the inverted commas are Freud's.]
18
. [Freud radically altered his view on this matter: see below,
The Ego and the Id
,
note 40
. In this context, it might be noted that this phrase (‘especially the part we may term its nucleus’) did not figure at all in the original edition of the essay. The rest of the sentence
did
appear, but in somewhat different terms: ‘Much of the ego may itself be unconscious, and probably only part of that is covered by the term “pre-conscious”.’]
19
. [Freud will explicitly modify his position in
Inhibition, Symptom, and Fear
; see
Chapter XI
, Section A, Sub-section (a): ‘Resistance and counter-cathexis.’]
20
. [
Addition
1923:] I have made the point elsewhere that the compulsion to repeat is aided here by the ‘suggestion effect’ in psychoanalytic therapy, that is, by that amenability to the physician that has its roots deep in the patient's unconscious parent-complex. [Compare ‘Remarks on the Theory and Practice of Dream-Interpretation’ (1923),
Chapters VII
and (especially) VIII.]
21
. Cf. the apt remarks of C. G. Jung in his essay ‘Die Bedeutung des Vaters für das Schicksal des Einzelnen’ [‘The Significance of the Father in the Destiny of the Individual’] (1909).
22
. [This sentence is faithful to the original in its less than perfect clarity and logic!]
23
. [
Pcpt
represents the ‘perceptual system’, first proposed by Freud in
The Interpretation of Dreams
(1900).]
24
. This is based entirely on J[osef] Breuer's discussion of the topic in the
theoretical section of
Studien über Hysterie [Studies on Hysteria
; Sigmund Freud and Josef Breuer], 1895.
25
. [See
The Interpretation of Dreams
(in the Penguin Freud Library, vol. 4, p. 687).]
26
. [
Bahnung
(without inverted commas in Freud's original). The verb
bahnen
(cognate with English ‘bane’ in its etymological sense of ‘strike’ or ‘wound’) means ‘to strike a path through (snow, the jungle, a press of people, etc.)’. The
Standard Edition
bizarrely renders the word as ‘facilitation’.]
27
. [
gebunden
. The verb
binden
(past participle
gebunden
) is a key term in Freud's theory of the psyche – but it is not clear precisely how he visualized the metaphor, and it is therefore difficult to render it in English with any certainty; ‘annex’ seems the likeliest equivalent, and is generally used throughout this volume (the
Standard Edition
opts for ‘bind’ and ‘attach’). It is notable that in the course of the essay Freud twice feels obliged to enclose the word in inverted commas, suggesting that he himself did not regard the concept as either self-evident or self-explanatory.]
28
.
Studien über Hysterie [Studies on Hysteria]
, by Josef Breuer and Sigmund Freud (1895).
29
. Cf. “Triebe and Triebschicksale’ [‘Drives and Their Fates’] (1915).
30
. [
Angstbereitschaft
– literally ‘fear-preparedness’.]
31
. [
Angstträume
.]
32
. Introduction to
Zur Psychoanalyse der Kriegsneurosen [Psycho-analysis and the War Neuroses
] (1919) [see above,
note 8
].
33
. Cf. Chapter VII, ‘The Psychology of Dream Processes’, in my
Interpretation of Dreams
.
34
. [Freud's grammar is quite often slapdash, but in the case of this parenthesis it is garbled to the point of complete obscurity. The translation is therefore conjectural, and has been derived by reference to the penultimate sentence of Chapter II (see also the associated note concerning Freud's use of ‘modify’).]
35
. [This phrase directly renders Freud's mercifully unambiguous German (
zeigen
…
den dämonischen Charakter
); the
Standard Edition
, however, bowdlerizes this into ‘give the appearance of some “daemonic” force at work’. See also below,
note 37
.]
36
. [
Wunschphantasie
– yet another example, like ‘dream-work’ (
Traumarbeit
) in the second paragraph of this chapter, of Freud's zest for creating new words by shunting together two seemingly ill-assorted ones.]
37
. [The
Standard Edition
offers another revealing bowdlerization here: Freud uses the plain, no-nonsense words
dieser dämonische Zwang
– but
James Strachey felt obliged to render the phrase as ‘this compulsion with its hint of possession by some “daemonic” power’.]
38
. I have no doubt that similar suppositions as to the nature of ‘drives’ have already been expressed on numerous occasions.
39
. [
Addition 1925
:] The reader is asked to bear in mind that what follows is the elaboration of an extreme line of thought, which will be qualified and amended later on when the sex drives are taken into consideration.
40
. [
Partialtrieb
. The
Standard Edition
routinely renders the
Partial
-element of this term as ‘component…’, but there is no good reason to depart from the straightforward translation ‘partial…’ (cf. such standard technical terms as
Partialbruch, Partialdruck
– ‘partial fraction’, ‘partial pressure’).]
41
. [The phrase ‘these guardians of life’ presumably refers back to ‘the drives’ – but this is left unclear by Freud.]
42
. [
Addition
1923:] And yet it is to these alone that we can attribute an inner tendency towards ‘progress’ and higher development! (See below).
43
. [
Addition 1925
:] It should be clear from the whole context that the term ‘ego drives’ is intended here only as a provisional one that harks back to the original nomenclature of psychoanalysis.
44
. Ferenczi arrived at the same potential interpretation, but via a different route: ‘If we follow this line of thought to its logical conclusion, we must accustom ourselves to the idea that a tendency to stasis or regression also prevails in organic life, while the tendency to development, adaptation etc. is aroused only by external stimuli.’ (
Entwicklungsstufen des Wirklichkeits-sinnes
[
Stages in the Development of the Sense of Reality
], 1913, p. 137).
46
. [Freud is quoting from Schiller's dire tragedy,
The Bride of Messina
(I, 8).]
47
. Weismann (1884) [August Weismann,
Über Leben und Tod (On Life and Death
)].
48
. Weismann (1882, p. 38) [August Weismann,
Über die Dauer des Lebens (On the Duration of Life)]
.
49
. Weismann (1884, p. 84).
50
. Weismann (1882, p. 33).
51
. Weismann (1884, pp. 84ff.).
52
. Cf. Max Hartmann (1906) [
Tod und Fortpflanzung (Death and Reproduction)
], Alex[ander] Lipschütz (1914) [
Warum wir sterben (Why We Die)
], Franz Doflein (1919) [
Das Problem des Todes und der Unsterblichkeit bei den Pflanzen und Tieren (The Problem of Death and Immortality in Plants and Animals)
].
53
. Hartmann (1906, p. 29).
54
. For this and what follows, cf. Lipschütz (1914, pp. 26 and 52ff.).
55
.
Über die anscheinende Absichtlichkeit im Schicksale des Einzelnen [On Apparent Intentionality in the Destiny of the Individual]
.
56
. [These two sentences were added by Freud in 1921.]
57
. [See
On the Introduction of Narcissism
, above, pp. 24f.]
58
. [See
On the Introduction of Narcissism
, note 10, and
The Ego and the Id
, note 45.]
59
.
On the Introduction of Narcissism
(1914).
60
. [See above,
On the Introduction of Narcissism
,
note 20
.]
61
. [See above,
Beyond the Pleasure Principle
,
note 1
.]
63
. [This sentence and the one preceding it were added by Freud in 1921.]
64
. [Although he does not say so, Freud clearly means
ego
drives here.]
65
.
Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie [Three Essays on Sexual Theory]
, from the first edition onwards (1905).
66
. Cf.
Sexualtheorie [Sexual Theory]
and ‘Triebe und Triebschicksale’ [‘Drives and Their Fates’] (1915).
67
. These speculations have been anticipated to a very considerable extent by Sabina Spielrein in a paper that is rich in substance and ideas but not, to my mind, entirely lucid. Her term for the sadistic component of the sexual drive is ‘destructive’ (1912). Using yet another approach, A[ugust] Stärcke (1914) identified the libido concept itself with the theoretically supposable biological concept of an
impulsion to death
. (Cf. also Rank, 1907.) All these efforts, like those in the present text, bear witness to the urgent need to bring to the theory of drives the clarity that has so far proved elusive.
68
. Lipschütz (1914).
69
. [Barbara Low,
Psycho-Analysis
, London and New York, 1920, p. 75.]
71
. However, Weismann (1892) denies this advantage too: ‘Fertilization does not by any means signify a rejuvenation or renewal of life; it would not be in the least necessary for the continuation of life; it is solely and simply
a device for enabling two different heredity streams to merge
.’ But he does consider increased variability in the organism to be an outcome of such merging.