Concept
Pleasure principle
In Freud's metapsychology, the tendency of mental functioning to avoid unpleasure and obtain pleasure, understood economically as the lowering or discharge of excitation. Freud set it beside the reality principle in 1911 as the rule of the primary process. In Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920) he asked what lies beyond it, and found in the repetition compulsion, and behind it the death drive, a tendency that overrides it.
- Introduced by
- Sigmund Freud
- Key works
- 3
introduced by
- Sigmund Freud 1911 In 'Formulations on the Two Principles of Mental Functioning' (1911), Freud named the tendency governing the primary processes the pleasure-unpleasure principle, or pleasure principle, and set the reality principle beside it.
gave rise to
- Reality principle 1911 Freud presents the reality principle not as a rival to the pleasure principle but as its modification: it gives up a momentary pleasure, uncertain in its results, only to secure a later and surer one. Beyond the Pleasure Principle repeats that the reality principle replaces the pleasure principle under the ego's drives of self-preservation without abandoning its aim.
opposed by
- Repetition compulsion 1919 Freud describes a compulsion to repeat that springs from the drives and is strong enough to override the pleasure principle. Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920) works this out: the compulsion repeats even experiences that never brought pleasure, and so works beyond, and against, the pleasure principle.