Freud - Complete Works (431 page)

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FORMULATIONS ON THE TWO PRINCIPLES OF MENTAL FUNCTIONING

(1911)

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2552

FORMULATIONS ON THE TWO PRINCIPLES OF MENTAL FUNCTIONING

We have long observed that every neurosis has
as its result, and probably therefore as its purpose, a forcing of
the patient out of real life, an alienating of him from reality.
Nor could a fact such as this escape the observation of Pierre
Janet; he spoke: of a loss of ‘
la fonction du
réel
’ [‘the function of reality’] as
being a special characteristic of neurotics, but without
discovering the connection of this disturbance with the fundamental
determinants of neurosis.¹ By introducing the process of
repression into the genesis of the neuroses we have been able to
gain some insight into this connection. Neurotics turn away from
reality because they find it unbearable - either the whole or parts
of it. The most extreme type of this turning away from reality is
shown by certain cases of hallucinatory psychosis which seek to
deny the particular event that occasioned the outbreak of their
insanity (Griesinger). But in fact every neurotic does the same
with some fragment of reality.² And we are now confronted with
the task of investigating the development of the relation of
neurotics and of mankind in general to reality, and in this way of
bringing the psychological significance of the real external world
into the structure of our theories.

   In the psychology which is
founded on psycho-analysis we have become accustomed to taking as
our starting-point the unconscious mental processes, with the
peculiarities of which we have become acquainted through analysis.
We consider these to be the older, primary processes, the residues
of a phase of development in which they were the only kind of
mental process. The governing purpose obeyed by these primary
processes is easy to recognize; it is described as the
pleasure-unpleasure [
Lust-Unlust
] principle, or more shortly
the pleasure principle. These processes strive towards gaining
pleasure; psychical activity draws back from any event which might
arouse unpleasure. (Here we have repression.) Our dreams at night
and our waking tendency to tear ourselves away from distressing
impressions are remnants of the dominance of this principle and
proofs of its power.

  
¹
Janet, 1909.

  
²
Otto Rank (1910) has recently drawn
attention to a remarkably clear prevision of this causation shown
in Schopenhauer’s
The World as Will and
Idea
.

Formulations On The Two Principles Of Mental Functioning

2553

   I shall be returning to lines of
thought which I have developed elsewhere¹ when I suggest that
the state of psychical rest was originally disturbed by the
peremptory demands of internal needs. When this happened, whatever
was thought of (wished for) was simply presented in a hallucinatory
manner, just as still happens to-day with our dream-thoughts every
night.² It was only the non-occurrence of the expected
satisfaction, the disappointment experienced, that led to the
abandonment of this attempt at satisfaction by means of
hallucination. Instead of it, the psychical apparatus had to decide
to form a conception of the real circumstances in the external
world and to endeavour to make a real alteration in them. A new
principle of mental functioning was thus introduced; what was
presented in the mind was no longer what was agreeable but what was
real, even if it happened to be disagreeable.³ This setting-up
of the
reality principle
proved to be a momentous step.

  
¹
In the General Section of
The
Interpretation of Dreams
.

  
²
The state of sleep is able to re-establish
the likeness of mental life as it was before the recognition of
reality, because a prerequisite of sleep is a deliberate rejection
of reality (the wish to sleep).

  
³
I will try to simplify the above schematic
account with some further details. It will rightly be objected that
an organization which was a slave to the pleasure principle and
neglected the reality of the external world could not maintain
itself alive for the shortest time, so that it could not have come
into existence at all. The employment of a fiction like this is,
however, justified when one considers that the infant - provided
one includes with it the care it receives from its mother - does
almost realize a psychical system of this kind. It probably
hallucinates the fulfilment of its internal needs; it betrays its
unpleasure, when there is an increase of stimulus and an absence of
satisfaction, by the motor discharge of screaming and beating about
with its arms and legs, and it then experiences the satisfaction it
has hallucinated. Later, as an older child, it learns to employ
these manifestations of discharge intentionally as methods of
expressing its feelings. Since the later care of children is
modelled on the care of infants, the dominance of the pleasure
principle can really come to an end only when a child has achieved
complete psychical detachment from its parents. - A neat example of
a psychical system shut off from the stimuli of the external world,
and able to satisfy even its nutritional requirements autistically
(to use Bleuler’s term), is afforded by a bird’s egg
with its food supply enclosed in its shell; for it, the care
provided by its mother is limited to the provision of warmth. - I
shall not regard it as a correction, but as an amplification of the
schematic picture under discussion, if it is insisted that a system
living according to the pleasure principle must have devices to
enable it to withdraw from the stimuli of reality. Such devices are
merely the correlative of ‘repression’, which treats
internal unpleasurable stimuli as if they were external - that is
to say, pushes them into the external world.

Formulations On The Two Principles Of Mental Functioning

2554

   (1) In the first place, the new
demands made a succession of adaptations necessary in the psychical
apparatus, which, owing to our insufficient or uncertain knowledge,
we can only retail very cursorily.

   The increased significance of
external reality heightened the importance, too, of the
sense-organs that are directed towards that external world, and of
the
consciousness
attached to them. Consciousness now
learned to comprehend sensory qualities in addition to the
qualities of pleasure and unpleasure which hitherto had alone been
of interest to it. A special function was instituted which had
periodically to search the external world, in order that its data
might be familiar already if an urgent internal need should arise -
the function of
attention
. Its activity meets the
sense-impressions half way, instead of awaiting their appearance.
At the same time, probably, a system of
notation
was
introduced, whose task it was to lay down the results of this
periodical activity of consciousness - a part of what we call
memory
.

   The place of repression, which
excluded from cathexis as productive of unpleasure some of the
emerging ideas, was taken by an
impartial passing of
judgement
, which had to decide whether a given idea was true or
false - that is, whether it was in agreement with reality or not -
the decision being determined by making a comparison with the
memory-traces of reality.

   A new function was now allotted
to motor discharge, which, under the dominance of the pleasure
principle, had served as a means of unburdening the mental
apparatus of accretions of stimuli, and which had carried out this
task by sending innervations into the interior of the body (leading
to expressive movements and the play of features and to
manifestations of affect). Motor discharge was now employed in the
appropriate alteration of reality; it was converted into
action
.

   Restraint upon motor discharge
(upon action), which then became necessary, was provided by means
of the process of
thinking
, which was developed from the
presentation of ideas. Thinking was endowed with characteristics
which made it possible for the mental apparatus to tolerate an
increased tension of stimulus while the process of discharge was
postponed. It is essentially an experimental kind of acting,
accompanied by displacement of relatively small quantities of
cathexis together with less expenditure (discharge) of them. For
this purpose the conversion of freely displaceable cathexes into
‘bound’ cathexes was necessary, and this was brought
about by means of raising the level of the whole cathectic process.
It is probable that thinking was originally unconscious, in so far
as it went beyond mere ideational presentations and was directed to
the relations between impressions of objects, and that it did not
acquire further qualities, perceptible to consciousness, until it
became connected with verbal residues.

Formulations On The Two Principles Of Mental Functioning

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   (2) A general tendency of our
mental apparatus, which can be traced back to the economic
principle of saving expenditure, seems to find expression in the
tenacity with which we hold on to the sources of pleasure at our
disposal, and in the difficulty with which we renounce them. With
the introduction of the reality principle one species of
thought-activity was split off; it was kept free from
reality-testing and remained subordinated to the pleasure principle
alone.¹ This activity is
phantasying
, which begins
already in children’s play, and later, continued as
day-dreaming
, abandons dependence on real objects.

   (3) The supersession of the
pleasure principle by the reality principle, with all the psychical
consequences involved, which is here schematically condensed into a
single sentence, is not in fact accomplished all at once; nor does
it take place simultaneously all along the line. For while this
development is going on in the ego-instincts, the sexual instincts
become detached from them in a very significant way. The sexual
instincts behave auto-erotically at first; they obtain their
satisfaction in the subject’s own body and therefore do not
find themselves in the situation of frustration which was what
necessitated the institution of the reality principle; and when,
later on, the process of finding an object begins, it is soon
interrupted by the long period of latency, which delays sexual
development until puberty. These two factors - auto-erotism and the
latency period - have as their result that the sexual instinct is
held up in its psychical development and remains far longer under
the dominance of the pleasure principle, from which in many people
it is never able to withdraw.

   In consequence of these
conditions, a closer connection arises, on the one hand, between
the sexual instinct and phantasy and, on the other hand, between
the ego-instincts and the activities of consciousness. Both in
healthy and in neurotic people this connection strikes us as very
intimate, although the considerations of genetic psychology which
have just been put forward lead us to recognize it as a
secondary
one. The continuance of auto-erotism is what makes
it possible to retain for so long the easier momentary and
imaginary satisfaction in relation to the sexual object in place of
real satisfaction, which calls for effort and postponement. In the
realm of phantasy, repression remains all-powerful; it brings about
the inhibition of ideas
in statu nascendi
before they can be
noticed by consciousness, if their cathexis is likely to occasion a
release of unpleasure. This is the weak spot in our psychical
organization; and it can be employed to bring back under the
dominance of the pleasure principle thought-processes which had
already become rational. An essential part of the psychical
disposition to neurosis thus lies in the delay in educating the
sexual instincts to pay regard to reality and, as a corollary, in
the conditions which make this delay possible.

  
¹
In the same way, a nation whose wealth
rests on the exploitation of the produce of its soil will yet set
aside certain areas for reservation in their original state and for
protection from the changes brought about by civilization. (E.g.
Yellowstone Park.)

Formulations On The Two Principles Of Mental Functioning

2556

   (4) Just as the pleasure-ego can
do nothing but
wish
, work for a yield of pleasure, and avoid
unpleasure, so the reality-ego need do nothing but strive for what
is
useful
and guard itself against damage.¹ Actually
the substitution of the reality principle for the pleasure
principle implies no deposing of the pleasure principle, but only a
safeguarding of it. A momentary pleasure, uncertain in its results,
is given up, but only in order to gain along the new path an
assured pleasure at a later time. But the endopsychic impression
made by this substitution has been so powerful that it is reflected
in a special religious myth. The doctrine of reward in the
after-life for the - voluntary or enforced - renunciation of
earthly pleasures is nothing other than a mythical projection of
this revolution in the mind. Following consistently along these
lines,
religions
have been able to effect absolute
renunciation of pleasure in this life by means of the promise of
compensation in a future existence; but they have not by this means
achieved a conquest of the pleasure principle. It is
science
which comes nearest to succeeding in that conquest; science too,
however, offers intellectual pleasure during its work and promises
practical gain in the end.