Formulations on the Two Principles of Mental Functioning

Freud's short paper of 1911 sets out how the mind comes to take account of the external world. It starts from the observation that every neurosis estranges the patient from some part of reality. The older, primary processes, which survive in the unconscious, obey the pleasure principle: they strive for pleasure, draw back from unpleasure, and at first satisfy a need by hallucinating its object. Only when the expected satisfaction fails to come is the mental apparatus forced to represent real circumstances and seek real change, and so the reality principle is installed. The paper lists the adaptations this brings: attention, a system of notation that forms part of memory, judgement in place of repression, motor discharge turned into action, and thinking as experimental acting that allows discharge to be delayed. Phantasying splits off and stays under the pleasure principle. The sexual drives, kept autoerotic and then halted by latency, are educated to reality later than the ego drives, which lays down a disposition to neurosis. The paper then treats religion, science, education and art as different settlements between the two principles, and ties the choice of neurosis to the phase at which development was inhibited. It closes by warning that in the unconscious, thought-reality counts as external reality, so the analyst must reckon in 'neurotic currency'.