Beyond the Pleasure Principle

113212 Beyond the Pleasure Principle Translated and edited by James Strachey Introduction and notes by Gregory Zilboo...

Author: Sigmund Freud | James Strachey | Peter Gay

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113212

Beyond the Pleasure Principle Translated and edited by James Strachey Introduction and notes by Gregory Zilboorg

By

SIGMUND FREUD

AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL STUDY BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE CIVILIZATION

AND ITS DISCONTENTS

THE COMPLETE INTRODUCTORY LECTURES ON PSYCHOANALYSIS THE EGO AND THE FIVE LECTURES

ID

ON PSYCHOANALYSIS

THE FUTURE OF AN ILLUSION

GROUP PSYCHOLOGY AND THE ANALYSIS OF THE EGO INHIBITIONS,

SYMPTOMS AND ANXIETY

INTRODUCTORY LECTURES ON PSYCHOANALYSIS JOKES AND THEIR RELATION TO THE UNCONSCIOUS

LEONARDO DA VINCI AND A MEMORY OF HIS CHILDHOOD

NEW INTRODUCTORY LECTURES ON PSYCHOANALYSIS ON DREAMS ON THE HISTORY OF THE PSYCHOANALYTIC MOVEMENT AN OUTLINE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS THE PSYCHOPATHALOGY OF EVERYDAY LIFE

THE QUESTION OF LAY ANALYSIS

TOTEM AND TABOO

THE STANDARD EDITION OF THE COMPLETE PSYCHOLOGICAL WORKS OF SIGMUND FREUD 24 VOLUMES

Beyond

the

Pleasure Principle

SIGMUND FREUD Translated and

Newly Edited

by

JAMES STRAGHEY Introduction by

GREGORY ZILBOORG

W-W-NORTON&COMPANY NEW YORK -LONDON

W. W. Norton

& Company, Inc.,

500 Fifth Avenue, N.Y. 10110 Company Ltd. 37 Great Russell Street,

New York, W. W. Norton

&

London COPYRIGHT

WC1B 3NU

1961 BY JAMES STRACHBY

Reprinted by arrangement with Liveright Publishing Corporation Introduction Copyright
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Published simultaneously in Canada by Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 2801 John Street, Markham, Ontario L3R 1B4.

&

W. W. Norton Company, Inc. is also the publisher of the works of Erik H. Erikson, Otto Fenichel, Karen Homey, Harry Stack Sullivan, and The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Freud, Sigmund, 1856-1939 Beyond the pleasure principle. Translation of Jenseits des Lust-Prinzips. Reprint of the ed. published by Liveright, New York. Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. Pleasure. 2.

BF173.F65

Psychoanalysis.

1975

150.19'52

I.

Title.

74-22476

Printed in the United States of America

67890

ISBN 0-3*13-0071^-3

CONTENTS Introduction Editor's

vii

Note

xvii ""

Beyond

the Pleasure Principle

1

List of Abbreviations

59

Bibliography and Author Index

60

General Index

64

INTRODUCTION by Gregory Zilboorg, M.D.

A

QUESTION which seems natural and almost unavoidable What can one say about a book, and a little one at that, which is forty years old, and which is supposedly not one of the most impressive or "spectacular" bits of Freud's many writings? The question presupposes the implied answer that forty years even in our swift-moving world is a long time, that the book in question is therefore more or less superannuated and deserves but a respectful historical glance before we put it back on the shelf to gather more dust. It is obvious that the above is a rhetorical way of saying arises:

that forty years after its appearance and twenty years after Freud's death, Beyond the Pleasure Principle still deserves considerable attention, and that the reader would do well if he reads it with studious curiosity. Of recent years we have become so accustomed to the atmosphere of controversy

which surrounds psychoanalysis and Freud that we have almost lost our capacity to pick up a book on psychoanalysis without wanting to know in advance whether the book is for or against it, or, if it is for it, whether it is for Freud or for Jung, or, if it is Freudian, whether it is orthodox or neoFreudian. If we dared to be frank with ourselves, we would have no difficulty in admitting that our judgment of psychoanalysis is actually fragmentary and not too profound. We could also admit that some sort of partisanship possesses us, and that therefore we are preoccupied with "taking sides"

we

get acquainted with the very first elements of the subject. because of the various prejudices which have incul-

long before

psychoanalysis It is

and the many-sidedness of

cated themselves into psychoanalytical and nonpsychoanalytical circles that it is pertinent to invite both the initiated and the uninitiated reader to suspend his fragmentary judgment vii

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

viii

for a short while and re-read afresh the little book that is here offered, and acquaint or re-acquaint himself with the sound of Freud's written voice, with his way of saying things, and then with the substance of what he has to say. An introduction is not supposed to explain in advance

what

said in the book;

is

still less is it

meant

to interpret

it.

intended to clarify some shadows and point to certain lights which will possibly set the book in a proper Rather,

it is

perspective.

Bearing this in mind, let us first recall that Freud wrote Beyond the Pleasure Principle when he was sixty-four years old a mature age indeed and at a time when psychoanalysis had already achieved considerable popularity, even though it was still possible to assess the degree of its importance by the number of enemies it had. The tone of the book, the mannerisms of

Freud

its

it

style are vigorous, poignant,

seems was

still

almost controversial; combatting his opponents rather than

trying to instruct his proponents. his life,

Freud preserved

this

Almost to the

last

years of

combative vigor of writing, and

in Beyond the Pleasure Principle this aspect of style stands out markedly, particularly when he emphasizes his claim that he is a partisan of no special philosophy and that he is indifferent as to whether what he has to say does or does not fit any

known philosophy.

This claim for independence casts

is

characteristic of Freud's

and of all his writings, but I believe aspersion on his originality or his genius,

personality

it

in

no way

if I

say that this declaratory independence should not be taken too seriously. No one, and particularly no genius, is free of the

really ideological inheritance which he carries within himself as a child of a given generation. He not be

aware of it, of may Freud would have been the last man in the world to equate not being aware of something with its nonexistence. For it was of course Freud himself who discovered and uncourse, but

folded before us the staggering richness and power within us many things of which we are not aware. It is of some interest in this connection to recall that Freud denied ever having been acquainted with the writings of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche before he formulated many of his ideas. It was beyond any doubt an honest denial. Yet it is a matter of record that Hitschmann, one of the earliest ad-

of so

INTRODUCTION

ix

herents of Freud, read a paper in Freud's house as early as 1905 (Freud being present, of course) on the very subject of Nietzsche's ideas as compared with some of Freud's theories.

There

no doubt

whether or not Freud ever read of Morals, his was the temperament and the aspiration of a proud iconoclast who, to paraphrase an old saying of Maxim Gorki's, was born to soar and not to crawl, and for whom soaring accomplishment was not a pleasure in itself but a temporary level from which he is

Nietzsche's

that,

The Genealogy

strove to attain ever-greater heights. If we cast but a glance at the rough sketch of a general psychology which we find in Freud's letters to Fliess, we

cannot help but be struck by the depth, diapason and immense horizons which Freud envisaged as the culmination of his system. And these letters, we must remember, were written before 1900, that is to say, before the first book (The Interpretation of Dreams) which really launched psychoanalysis into the stormy waters of a world which never was able to approach the study of the psychology of man without prejudice and considerable animosity and controversy be it religious, scientific,

or plain pedestrian.

which Freud's mind was

The ambition

with

from the very

outset, and his particular goal of discovering, or uncovering, the real nature of man's mind, predestined him as a thinker and a man to fired

become a storm center

for years to come. was also a daring paradox, giving the semblance of self-contradiction, of inconsistency, and of all-solidity. Freud's apparent readiness to change his mind added a great number of dissenters and detractorsas if the scientist who has the courage to change his mind about some of his own ideas has

He

gained a point against himself. The great majority of people do confuse stubbornness for consistency, and rigidity of scientific ideas for soundness of position. At any rate, Beyond the Pleasure Principle is one of the first great landmarks in Freud's ways of "changing his mind." I put these words in quotes to cast at least a little doubt on the traditional attitude that Freud did change his mind in this instance. He did not. What Freud did here was to add a path or two, a little curve or fork, in the tortuous intellectual road which he followed with dogged faith in his own intellectual independence. The additions or added trends of thought

.

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

x

cannot be fully grasped and even less understood unless one always bears in mind the inner psychological atmosphere in which Freud worked in order to express his ideas. His literary style was always terse, straightforward, clear and challengingly frank; but the same thing cannot be said about the emotional climate of his thought. First of all, Freud never gave up his belief I am tempted to say faith that the parallel he drew between Fechner's ideas in physics and his own in human psychology was not really a parallel but an actual proof that his concept of the mental apparatus and its energy was actually the same as Helmholtz' and Fechner's ideas about physical energy. To this faith he clung to the last, expressing the hope that some day the whole complexity of human reactions and relations could be reduced to some as yet undiscovered physico-chemical reactions. In other words, Freud remained an organicist throughout his scientific life. But genius and living paradox that he was, Freud was rejected by the materialists (conservative as well as Marxian) because of his alleged mysticism; and he was rejected by the idealists and religious thinkers because he was thought to be a materialist.

The

contradictions into which

Freud's detractors thus

stumbled remained unnoticed as a rule, but Freud was of course aware of them and saw in them merely a sign of general resistance. Yet it was not only that. To Freud the epithet, "mystic," was an expression of opprobrium, and yet it was Freud who stated that saints were saved from severe neuroses by their sainthood, their faith; he mentioned in this connection St. Francis of Assisi.

He who studies

the lives of the saints

would not a

easily issue to all of them, and without reservation, certificate of psychological health. They were saints because

they were able to stand the pressure of their respective neuroses rather than because they did not suffer from them. The lives of St. Ignatius

Loyola, or San Francisco Xavier, or St. Augustine for that matter, offer ample confirmation of my

viewpoint.

As one studies Freud, one can develop the strong suspicion he was more attracted by many mystics than by physicochemical hypotheses, and that he struggled with all the might that

of his great mind against openly giving in to the attraction of the mystical aspects of human life. In other words, the man

INTRODUCTION

xi

who less than twenty years after he wrote Beyond the Pleasure who Principle wrote his Moses and Monotheism, the man some five years before Beyond the Pleasure Principle wrote the article on Michelangelo's Moses, seems throughout this of span of time to have been preoccupied with the greatness human intuitions and the universality of human strivings not only to solve but to participate in the mysteries of life. And it is perhaps because of this inclination that Freud gave signs of "protesting too much." (Perhaps too this is one of the reasons why his article on Michelangelo's Moses appeared

first

anonymously;

it

was only much

later that

it

was admitted

that Freud, the Editor-in-chief of the Zeitschrift fur Psychoanalyse, was the real author of the article.)

While the complex question of Freud's intellectual strugwith his own ideas is far from solved, there is little doubt

gles

that the aggressive, trenchant, emphatic tone of his writings, full of conviction and devoid of doubt, does

which seem to be

not fully convey Freud's struggle with his own ideas, which at times must have reached heroic dimensions. It is because of Freud's aggressive candor, it seems to me, that his earliest followers seem more to have stood in awe, listening to his pronouncements, than actually to have assimilated his

thought like true disciples, ready to ask friendly

critical

questions in order to deepen and broaden the understanding of their master's thought. The very few of his followers who

were endowed with truly original minds and truly ambitious perspicacity and intuition soon broke with Freud; Jung is one of the few one can cite in this respect. The majority became either surly, hostile enemies rather than scientific opponentsor admiring, enthusiastic followers rather than scientific collaborators. It is therefore of particular interest to note that there was hardly a psychoanalyst outside Freud himself who ever made an original contribution to the theory and practice of psychoanalysis; this is particularly true of the time when Freud wrote his Beyond the Pleasure Principle. The one exception one can cite with certainty was Karl Abraham, who made an inestimable contribution to the clinical understanding of character formation and of depression, a contribution which

was spontaneously and "painlessly" incorporated into the body of psychoanalytic knowledge some five years before the

xii

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

appearance of Beyond the Pleasure Principle. But even in the case of Abraham things were not all clarity and sunshine; many of his colleagues were not very kindly disposed to the

man, and Freud himself, as Jones has written, said that he was suspicious of his "Prussian mind" Abraham being a Berliner.

All of the above amounts to saying that the constant and "true" followers of Freud were not very original minds; they were not mediocrities, but for some reason they would not

or perhaps could not "speak up'* until Freud spoke first. It is partly because of this that Beyond the Pleasure Principle acquired such significance in the history of the development of Freudian psychoanalysis. It acquired the reputation of a landmark in how Freud changed his mind and how daring he was in doing so. As a matter of cold fact, the book is an important contribution, a thrust forward in the growth of Freudian thought; but if one reads it carefully one will easily see that Freud did not change his mind, and that Beyond the Pleasure Principle did not overthrow any old psychoanalytic regime nor did it establish any new one. It was not even a small village revolution; it was and is a landmark of further development and a consolidation of the older pathways. Beyond the Pleasure Principle is what it says; it goes a little further beyond, but it does not abandon whatever preceded it. This writer lays no claim to an understanding of Freud's writing better than anyone's else who approaches Freud with the earnestness he deserves and the tolerance which is imperative, even now some twenty years after Freud's death. I say "even now" for the following reason; at the beginning

Freud had to

suffer from the many whose quick and ever misjudgment of him multiplied by thousands the number of his antagonists in every walk of the world's intellectual life. Today, with the full text of Freud at the disposal of every curious reader of the world, everybody claims Freud as his own, because everybody just as alertly is ready to interpret Freud in his own ivay. Thus a plethora of "schools" has mush-

alert

roomed

in the psychological literature, each claiming

its

philosophical, moral and scientific right to consider Freud its fons et origo, and its own exclusive right to understand Freud in its own exclusively correct way. This splintering of interpreters and misinterpreters of Freud is not unnatural, of

INTRODUCTION

xiii

course; the process will undoubtedly continue for some time before the real Freud will stand out in the history of our intellectual

development

we may look calmly and Since

it is

as a figure at

into

whom

not in anyone's power to slow down or to accelit cannot be the ambition

erate the salutary passage of time, of this writer to attempt to do so.

mate

whom and

objectively.

But

this

much

it is legiti-

him

to essay to do: to point out that the vigor of Freud's thought, stimulating as it has always been and is, is

for

frequently obscured by his at times too hasty terminological innovations. Not that one objects to such innovations, or that

one ought to insist on semantic hair-splitting; but Freud, whose clarity of thought and daring intellectual improvisations were always impressive and enlightening, suffered not infrequently from a certain confusion, at first unnoticeable but at length presenting an impediment to easy or clear understanding. Beyond the Pleasure Principle serves as an excellent example. First, there is the tendency which imperceptibly grew into assertive tradition that, having gone beyond the pleasure principle, he abandoned that principle. This, as I have already said, is not true. The reader, bearing this in mind, cannot fail but see it once the text is perused without prejudice, without the unwitting psychological twist which makes him read Beyond the Pleasure Principle and assume that the pleasure principle was left behind. We might as well state right here that the assiduous and faithful translators of Freud, in bringing before the English-speaking readers Freud's version of the pleasure-pain theory, did not help matters when they coined a neologism, "unpleasure." This awkward term is supposed to render somewhat accurately the German term Unlust. It is not an exactly successful rendition (except

etymologically, perhaps). The feeling of pain, of discomfort, of that disagreeable malaise which Freud has in mind is not

perceived as t/n-pleasure, for what we feel in this malaise we feel positively, and not negatively as a lack of something else. This point need not be labored; it is brought out here merely to illustrate how difficult it is to tell the reader what a given writer wants to say in a language his own, but not yours.

Now

let

allegedly

us ask ourselves what appears to be new and not as old in Beyond the Pleasure Principle.

abandoned

xiv

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

The concept of "compulsive repetition" or "repetition compulsion." Some still quarrel with this concept, some no longer do. The arguments for and against it are of no particular importance here. What is important is that new concepts, newly formulated, require greater clarity of definition. Freud discovered the repetitiveness of certain patterns of human behavior and the inevitability or, if you wish, the inescapable nature of this repetitiveness. And he called this

phenomenon

"repetition compulsion" or "compulsive repe-

tition."

We have become accustomed to the term "compulsion" when we speak of compulsion neuroses in other words, a neurosis which makes the sufferer therefrom aware that he is "compelled by something" to make this or that gesture or this or that turn or else he feels uncomfortable, uneasy, at

hardly necessary to go into more compulsive element of which Freud speaks when he speaks of compulsive repetition is something that the individual is not conscious of, that the compulsive element in this concept is something which is not neurotic at all, or not necessarily, and that it is just as or no more compulsive than breathing or the changing of the seasons. To use the term "compulsive" here connotes something that it is not and implies things which are not necessarily there a rather strange semantic fuzziness on the part of that uniquely clear-minded thinker. Such unclarities are strewn throughout many of Freud's writings and translations, and if they do not always confuse the casual reader or even the student, one would do well in being forewarned and therefore in reading and studying Freud with considerable caution and prudence. One more example: the second major innovation which Freud introduced into psychoanalytic thinking was the concept of the death instinct. Now we have become accustomed, particularly since Freud emphasized the role of instincts in the conscious and unconscious life of man, to consider an instinct a drive, an impulsive or perpetually compelling aspiration to gratify a need. In German, Freud uses the words Trieb and Trie b haft, which mean instinct, instinctual drive, a sense of being driven toward a certain even though not times plainly anxious.

It is

detail to observe that the

always comprehended goal. Under the circumstances, the term "death instinct" ought to mean an aspiration, a drive to

INTRODUCTION

xv

be dead. Perhaps Freud was right, even though neither the biologist nor the theologian would find it possible to agree with him. Let us assume that Freud was right; he certainly did not prove his case, because there is nothing instinctual about dying, even though the end is inevitable. Here again we find a strange semantic or terminological confusion, a tendency to use terms which are familiar to us in the psychoanalytic glossaries, but which in certain contexts become

somewhat confusing

The above

labels.

considerations

may

serve as a

warning that

it is

not easy to understand great minds even when they appear to speak simply, or perhaps especially when their language appears simple and the terminology familiar.

EDITOR'S NOTE JENSEITS DES LUSTPRINZIPS (a)

1920

GERMAN

EDITIONS:

Leipzig,

Vienna and Zurich; Interaationaler Psycho

analytischer Verlag. Pp. 60.

Same publishers. Pp. 64. Same publishers. Pp. 94.

1921

2nd

1923

3rd ed.

1925

G.S., 6, 191-257.

ed.

1931

Theoretische Schriften, 178-247.

1940

G.W., 13,3-69.

(b]

ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS: Beyond

1922

the Pleasure Principle

London and Vienna: Press. Pp. viii

+

International Psycho-Analytical

90. (Tr. G. J.

M. Hubback;

Pref.

Ernest Jones.)

1924 1942

New York: Boni and Liveright London: Hogarth Press and Institute of Psycho-Analy(Re-issue of above.) Publishers. Pp. vi 97. (Tr. J. Strachey.) S.K, 18, 3-64. (Modified version of above.) sis.

1950

1955

Same

+

Freud made a number of additions in the second

edition,

but

subsequent alterations were negligible. The present translation is a corrected reprint of the Standard Edition version.

As is shown by his correspondence, Freud had begun working on a first draft of Beyond the Pleasure Principle in March, 1919, and he reported the draft as finished in the following May. During the same month he was completing his paper on 'The Uncanny* (1919A), which includes a paragraph setting out much of the gist of the present work in a few sentences. In this paragraph he refers to the 'compulsion to repeat' as a phenomenon exhibited in the behaviour of children and in psychoanalytic treatment; he suggests that this compulsion is something derived from the most intimate nature of the instincts; and he declares that it is powerful enough to disregard the xvii

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

xviii

no allusion to the 'death pleasure principle. There is, however, He adds that he has already completed a detailed

instincts*.

The paper on 'The Uncanny' consummary was published in the autumn of 1919.

exposition of the subject. taining this

But Freud held back Beyond the Pleasure Principle for another In the early part of 1920 he was once more at work on it, and now, for the first time apparently, there is a reference to the 'death instincts' in a letter to Eitingon of February 20. He was still revising the work in May and June and it was finally completed by the middle ofJuly, 1920. On September 9, he gave an address to the International Psycho-Analytical Congress

year.

The Hague, with the title 'Supplements to the Theory of Dreams' (Ergdnzungen zur Traumlekre), in which he announced the approaching publication of the book; it was issued early in December. An 'author's abstract' of the address appeared in Int. %. PsychoawL, 6 (1920), 397-8. (A translation of this was published in Int. J. Psycho-Anal^ 1, 354.) It does not seem certain that this abstract was in fact by Freud himself, but it may be of interest to reprint it here (in a new translation). at

'Supplements to the Theory of Dreams

9

The speaker dealt in his brief remarks with three points touching upon the theory of dreams. The first two of these were concerned with the thesis that dreams are wish-fulfilments and brought forward some necessary modifications of it. The third point related to material which brought complete confirmation of his rejection of the alleged "prospective" purposes of dreams. 1 "The speaker explained that, alongside the familiar wishful dreams and the anxiety dreams which could easily be included in the theory, there were grounds for recognizing the existence of a third category, to which he gave the name of "punishment dreams". If we took into account the justifiable assumption of the existence of a special self-observing and critical agency in the ego (the ego ideal, the censor, conscience), these punishment dreams, too, should be subsumed under the theory of wish-fulfilment; for they would represent the fulfilment of a wish on the part of this critical agency. Such dreams, he said, had approximately the same relation to ordinary wishful dreams 1

[See The Interpretation of Dreams, 1900
506-7

.]

VI

(I),

Standard Ed., 5,

EDITOR'S NOTE

xix

symptoms of obsessional neurosis, which arise from rehad to those of hysteria. 'Another class of dreams, however, seemed to the speaker to present a more serious exception to the rule that dreams are

as the

action formation,

wish-fulfilments.

These were the so-called "traumatic" dreams.

in patients suffering from accidents, but they also occur during psycho-analyses of neurotics and bring back to them forgotten traumas of childhood. In connection with the

They occur

fitting these dreams into the theory of wish-fulfilment, the speaker referred to a work shortly to be published under the title of Beyond the Pleasure Principle. 'The third point of the speaker's communication related to an investigation that had not yet been published, by Dr. Varendonck of Ghent. This author had succeeded in bringing under his conscious observation the production of unconscious phantasies on an extensive scale in a half-sleeping state a process which he described as "autistic thinking". It appeared from this enquiry that looking ahead at the possibilities of the next

problem of

day, preparing attempts at solutions and adaptations, etc., lay wholly within the range of this preconscious activity, which also created latent dream-thoughts, and, as the speaker had x always maintained, had nothing to do with the dream-work.'

In the

of Freud's metapsychological writings, Beyond may be regarded as introducing the final phase of his views. He had already drawn attention to the 'compulsion to repeat* as a clinical phenomenon, but here he attributes to it the characteristics of an instinct; here too for the first time he brings forward the new Dichotomy between Eros and the death instincts which found its full elaboration in The Ego and the Id (1923). In Beyond the Pleasure Principle, too, we can see signs of the new picture of the anatomical structure of the mind which was to dominate all Freud's later writings. Finally, the problem of destructiveness, which played an ever series

the Pleasure Principle

more prominent part explicit appearance.

in his theoretical works, makes its first derivation of various elements in the

The

present discussion from his earlier metapsychological works Two Principles of Mental Functioning' (191 1),

such as 'The

1 Cf. Freud's own preface to this book of Varendonck's (Freud, 1921 b, Standard Ed., 18, 271).

xx

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

(1914*:) and 'Instincts and their Vicissitudes' will be obvious. But what is particularly remarkable (1915^) is the closeness with which some of the earlier sections of the present work follow the 'Project for a Scientific Psychology* (19500), drafted by Freud twenty-five years earlier, in 1895.

'Narcissism*

Extracts from the earlier (1922) translation of this work were included in Rickman's General Selection from the Works of Sigmund Freud (1937, 162-194). Editorial additions, whether to the text or the footnotes, are

printed in square brackets.

Beyond the Pleasure Principle

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE IN the theory of psycho-analysis we have no hesitation in assuming that the course taken by mental events is automatically regulated by the pleasure principle. We believe, that is to say, that the course of those events

is

unpleasurable tension, and that

invariably set in motion by an it takes a direction such that

outcome coincides with a lowering of that tension that with an avoidance of unpleasure or a production of pleasure. In taking that course into account in our consideration of the mental processes which are the subject of our study, we are introducing an 'economic' point of view into our work; and if, its final is,

in describing those processes, we try to estimate this 'economic' factor in addition to the 'topographical' and 'dynamic* ones,

we

shall, I think,

be giving the most complete description of

them of which we can at present conceive, and one which deserves to be distinguished by the term 'metapsychologicaT. 1 It far,

is

of no concern to us in this connection to enquire how this hypothesis of the pleasure principle, we have

with

approached or adopted any particular,

historically established,

We

have arrived at these speculative philosophical system. assumptions in an attempt to describe and to account for the of daily observation in our field of study. Priority and originality are not among the aims that psycho-analytic work facts

and the impressions that underlie the hypothesis of the pleasure principle are so obvious that they can scarcely be overlooked. On the other hand we would readily express our sets itself;

gratitude to any philosophical or psychological theory which was able to inform us of the meaning of the feelings of pleasure

and unpleasure which act point

we

are, alas, offered

so imperatively upon us. But on this nothing to our purpose. This is the

most obscure and inaccessible region of the mind, and, since avoid contact with it, the least rigid hypothesis, it seems to me, will be the best. We have decided to relate

we cannot 1

[See Section

IV

of 'The Unconscious' (1915*).] 1

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

2

and unpleasure to the quantity of excitation that is * is not in any way 'bound*; and to present in the mind but relate them in such a manner that unpleasure corresponds to an increase in the quantity of excitation and pleasure to a diminution. What we are implying by this is not a simple relation

pleasure

feelings ^f pleasure and unpleasure and the corresponding modifications in the quantity of excitain view of all we have been taught by psychotion; least of all

between the strength of the

physiology are we suggesting any directly proportional ratio: the factor that determines the feeling is probably the amount of increase or diminution in the quantity of excitation in a given

Experiment might possibly play a part here; but not advisable for us analysts to go into the problem further so long as our way is not pointed by quite definite

period of time. it

is

observations.*

We cannot, however, remain indifferent to the discovery that an investigator of such penetration as G. T. Fechner held a view on the subject of pleasure and unpleasure which coincides in all essentials with the one that has been forced upon us by psycho-analytic work. Fechner's statement is to be found contained in a small work, Einige Idem zur Schopfiings- und Entwick1873 (Part XI, Supplement, 94), and reads as follows: 'In so far as conscious impulses always have some relation to pleasure or unpleasure, pleasure and

lungsgeschichte der Organismen,

unpleasure too can be regarded as having a psycho-physical relation to conditions of stability and instability. This provides a

a hypothesis into which I propose to enter in greater According to this hypothesis, every psychophysical motion rising above the threshold of consciousness is attended by pleasure in proportion as, beyond a certain limit, it approximates to complete stability, and as attended by unpleasure in proportion as, beyond a certain limit, it deviates from complete stability; while between the two limits, which may be described as qualitative thresholds of pleasure and

basis for

detail elsewhere.

1 [The concepts of 'quantity* and of 'bound* excitation, which run through the whole of Freud's writings, found what is perhaps their most detailed discussion in the early 'Project* (1950<x [1895]). See in particular the long discussion of the term 'bound* near the end of Section 1 of Part III of that work. See also p. 28 f. below.] 1 [This point is again mentioned below on p. 57 and further developed in 'The Economic Problem of Masochism* (1924s).]

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE unpleasure, 1 ence. . . .'

The

facts

there

is

3

a certain margin of aesthetic indiffer-

which have caused us to believe in the dominance

of the pleasure principle in mental life also find expression in the hypothesis that the mental apparatus endeavours to keep the quantity of excitation present in it as low as possible or at keep it constant. This latter hypothesis is only another

least to

of stating the pleasure principle; for if the work of the mental apparatus is directed towards keeping the quantity of excitation low, then anything that is calculated to increase that quantity is bound to be felt as adverse to the functioning of the

way

apparatus, that is as unpleasurable. The pleasure principle from the principle of constancy: actually the latter principle was inferred from the facts which forced us to adopt

follows

the pleasure principle.* Moreover, a more detailed discussion will show that the tendency which we thus attribute to the

mental apparatus is subsumed as a special case under Fechner's principle of the 'tendency towards stability', to which he has brought the feelings of pleasure and unpleasure into relation. It must be pointed out, however, that strictly speaking it is incorrect to talk of the dominance of the pleasure principle over the course of mental processes. If such a dominance existed, the immense majority of our mental processes would have to be accompanied by pleasure or to lead to pleasure, whereas universal experience completely contradicts any such con-

The most that can be said, therefore, is that there exists mind a strong tendency towards the pleasure principle, but that that tendency is opposed by certain other forces or circumstances, so that the final outcome cannot always be in harmony clusion.

in the

1 'Aesthetic* is here used in [Cf. 'Project', end of Section 8 of Part I. the old sense of 'relating to sensation or perception'.] * [The 'principle of constancy' dates back to the very beginning of Freud's psychological studies. The first published discussion of it of any length was by Breuer (in semi-physiological terms) towards the end of Section 2 (A) of his theoretical part of the Studies on Hysteria (Breuer and Freud, 1895). He there defines it as 'the tendency to keep intracerebral excitation constant*. In the same passage he attributes this principle to Freud and there in fact exist one or two earlier very brief references to it by Freud himself, though these were not published until after his

death. (See Freud, 1941* [1892] and Breuer and Freud, 1940 [1892].) subject is also discussed at length at the beginning of Freud's 'Project', under the name of 'neuronic inertia*.]

The

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLB

4

We

with the tendency towards pleasure. may compare what Fechner (1873, 90) remarks on a similar point: 'Since however a tendency towards an aim does not imply that the aim is attained,

and

since in general the

tions.

*

.

aim

is

attainable only

by approxima-

.'

If we turn

now to the question of what circumstances are able

to prevent the pleasure principle from being carried into effect, we find ourselves once more on secure and well-trodden ground

and, in framing our answer, we have at our disposal a rich fund of analytic experience. The first example of the pleasure principle being inhibited in this way is a familiar one which occurs with regularity. We know that the pleasure principle is proper to a primary method of working on the part of the mental apparatus, but that, from the point of view of the self-preservation of the organism among the difficulties of the external world, it is from the very outset inefficient and even highly dangerous. Under the influence of the ego's instincts of self-preservation, the pleasure principle is 1 replaced by the reality principle, This latter principle does not abandon the intention of ultimately obtaining pleasure, but it nevertheless demands and carries into effect the postponement of satisfaction, the abandonment of a number of possibilities of gaining satisfaction and the temporary toleration of unpleasure as a step on the long indirect road to pleasure. The pleasure principle long persists, however, as the method of working employed by the sexual instincts, which are so hard to 'educate*, and, starting from those instincts, or in the ego itself, it often succeeds in overcoming the reality principle, to the detriment of the organism as a whole. There can be no doubt, however, that the replacement of the reality principle can only be made number, and by no means the most intense, of unpleasurable experiences. Another occasion of the release of unpleasure, which occurs with no less regularity, is to be found in the conflicts and dissensions that take place in the mental apparatus while the ego is passing through its develop-

pleasure principle

by the

responsible for a small

ment into more highly composite organizations. Almost all the energy with which the apparatus is filled arises from its innate instinctual impulses. But these are not all allowed to reach 1

[See 'Formulations

Freud 191 U.]

on the

Two

Principles of

Mental Functioning',

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

5

same phases of development. In the course of things it that individual instincts or parts of happens again and again instincts turn out to be incompatible in their aims or demands the

with the remaining ones, which are able to combine into the The former are then split off from this unity by the process of repression, held back at lower levels

inclusive unity of the ego.

of psychical development and cut off, to begin with, from the of satisfaction. If they succeed subsequently, as can possibility so easily happen with repressed sexual instincts, in struggling through, by roundabout paths, to a direct or to a substitutive

which would in other cases have been an is felt by the ego as unpleasure. As a consequence of the old conflict which ended in repression, a

satisfaction, that event,

opportunity for pleasure,

new breach has occurred in the pleasure principle at the very time when certain instincts were endeavouring, in accordance with the principle, to obtain fresh pleasure. The details of the process by which repression turns a possibility of pleasure into a source of unpleasure are not yet clearly understood or cannot be clearly represented; but there is no doubt that all neurotic 1 unpleasure is of that kind pleasure that cannot be felt as such. The two sources of unpleasure which I have just indicated are very far from covering the majority of our unpleasurable But as regards the remainder it can be asserted with

experiences.

some show ofjustification that their presence does not contradict the dominance of the pleasure principle. Most of the unpleasure that we experience is perceptual unpleasure. It may be perception of pressure by unsatisfied instincts; or it may be external perception which is either distressing in itself or which excites un-

pleasurable expectations in the mental apparatus that is, 1 is recognized by it as a 'danger . The reaction to these

which

instinctual

demands and

threats of danger, a reaction

which

constitutes the proper activity of the mental apparatus, can then be directed in a correct manner by the pleasure principle

or the reality principle by which the former is modified. This does not seem to necessitate any far-reaching limitation of the mental pleasure principle. Nevertheless the investigation of the reaction to external danger is precisely in a position to produce new material and raise fresh questions bearing upon our

present problem. i

[Footnote added 1925:]

No

doubt the

and unpleasure, being conscious

essential point is that pleasure attached to the ego.

feelings, are

II

A CONDITION has long been known

and described which occurs

mechanical concussions, railway disasters and other accidents involving a risk to life; it has been given the name of after severe

The terrible war which has just ended gave a great number of illnesses of this kind, but it at least put an end to the temptation to attribute the cause of the disorder to organic lesions of the nervous system brought about by 'traumatic neurosis'.

rise to

mechanical force. 1 The symptomatic picture presented by traumatic neurosis approaches that of hysteria in the wealth of its similar motor symptoms, but surpasses it as a rule in its strongly marked signs of subjective ailment (in which it resembles hypochondria or melancholia) as well as in the evidence it gives of a far more comprehensive general enfeeblement and disturbance of the mental capacities. No complete explanation has yet been reached either of war neuroses or of the traumatic neuroses of peace. In the case of the war neuroses, the fact that the

same symptoms sometimes came about without the

inter-

vention of any gross mechanical force seemed at once enlightening and bewildering. In the case of the ordinary traumatic neuroses two characteristics emerge prominently: first, that the chief weight in their causation seams to rest upon the factor of surprise, of fright; and secondly, that a wound or injury inflicted simultaneously works as a rule against the development 9 of a neurosis. 'Fright , 'fear* and 'anxiety' 2 are improperly used as synonymous expressions; they are in fact of clear dis-

capable

tinction in their relation to danger. 'Anxiety' describes a particular state of expecting the danger or preparing for it, even

may be an unknown one. Tear' requires a definite object of which to be afraid. 'Fright', however, is the name we give to the state a person gets into when he has run into danger

though

it

without being prepared for it; it emphasizes the factor of surprise. I do not believe anxiety can produce a traumatic neuro1 Cf. the discussion on the psycho-analysis of war neuroses by Freud, Fcrenczi, Abraham, Simmel and Jones (1919) [to which Freud provided the introduction (1919
6

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

7

There is something about anxiety that protects its subject shall return against fright and so against fright-neuroses. 1 to this point later [p. 25 f.].

sis.

We

The study of dreams may be considered the most trustworthy method of investigating deep mental processes. Now dreams occurring in traumatic neuroses have the characteristic of repeatedly bringing the patient back into the situation of his accident, a situation from which he wakes up in another fright. This astonishes people far too litde. They think the fact that the traumatic experience is constantly forcing itself upon the patient even in his sleep is a proof of the strength of that experience: the patient is, as one might say, fixated to his traumaFixations to the experience which started the illness have long been familiar to us in hysteria. Breuer and Freud declared in 1893 * that 'hysterics suffer mainly from reminiscences'. In the war neuroses, too, observers like Ferenczi and Simmel have been able to explain certain motor symptoms by fixation to the moment at which the trauma occurred. I am not aware, however, that patients suffering from traumatic neurosis are much occupied in their waking lives \vith

memories of then* accident Perhaps they are more concerned with not thinking of it. Anyone who accepts it as something selfevident that their dreams should put them back at night into

them to fall ill has misunderstood the nature of dreams. It would be more in harmony with their nature if they showed the patient pictures from his healthy past or of the cure for which he hopes. If we are not to be shaken in our belief in the wish-fulfillinfi tenor of dreams by the dreams of traumatic neurotics, we still have one resource open to us: we may argue that the function of dreaming, like so much else, is upset in this condition and diverted from its purposes, or we the situation that caused

1

is very far indeed from always carrying out the distinche makes here. More often than not he uses the word Angst* to denote a state of fear without any reference to the future. It seems not unlikely that in this passage he is beginning to adumbrate the distinction drawn in Inhibitions^ Symptoms and Anxiety (1926^) between anxiety as a reaction to a traumatic situation probably equivalent to what is here called Sckrech and anxiety as a warning signal of the approach of* such an event. See also his use of the phrase 'preparedness for anxiety* on

[Freud

4

tion

p. 25.] *

['On the Psychical Mechanism of Hysterical Phenomena*, end of

Section

I.]

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

8

be driven to oTthe egoT1

may

reflect

on the mysterious masochistic Jrcnds :

At this point I propose to leave the dark and dismal subject of the traumatic neurosis and pass on to examine the method of working employed by the mental apparatus in one of its earliest normal activities

The

I

mean

in children's play.

have only recently been summarized and discussed from the psycho-analytic point of view by Pfeifer (1919), to whose paper I would refer my readers. These theories attempt to discover the motives which different theories of children's play

lead children to play, but they fail to bring into the foreground the economic motive, the consideration of the yield of pleasure involved. Without wishing to include the whole field covered

by these phenomena, I have been able, through a chance opportunity which presented itself to throw some light upon the first game played by a little boy of one and a half and invented was more than a mere fleeting observation, for I under the same roof as the child and his parents for some weeks, and it was some time before I discovered the meaning of the puzzling activity which he constantly repeated. The child was not at all precocious in his intellectual development. At the age of one and a half he could say only a few comprehensible words; he could also make use of a number of sounds which expressed a meaning intelligible to those around him. He was, however, on good terms with his parents and their one servant-girl, and tributes were paid to his being a 'good boy*. He did not disturb his parents at night, he conscientiously

by

himself. It

lived

obeyed orders not to touch certain things or go into certain rooms, and above all he never cried when his mother left him for a few hours. At the same time, he was greatly attached to

who had not only fed him herself but had also him without any outside help. This good little boy, however, had an occasional disturbing habit of taking any small objects he could get hold of and throwing them away from him into a corner, under the bed, and so on, so that hunting for his toys and picking them up was often quite a business. As he did

his

mother, looked after

he gave vent to a loud, long-drawn-out e o-o-o-o*, accompanied by an expression of interest and satisfaction. His mother this

1

[The last 15 words of this sentence were added in 1921. see The Interpretation of Dreams (IQQQa),. Standard Ed., 5, 550

For ff.]

all this

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

9

and the writer of the present account were agreed in thinking was not a mere interjection but represented the German word 'for? ['gone']. I eventually realized that it was a game and that the only use he made of any of his toys was to with them. One day I made an observation which play 'gone' confirmed my view. The child had a wooden reel with a piece of string tied round it. It never occurred to him to pull it along the floor behind him, for instance, and play at its being a carriage. What he did was to hold the reel by the string and very skilfully throw it over the edge of his curtained cot, so that it disappeared into it, at the same time uttering his expressive o-o-o-o*. He then pulled the reel out of the cot again by the string and hailed its reappearance with a joyful da* ['there*]. that this

(

(

This, then, was the complete game disappearance and return. As a rule one only witnessed its first act, which was repeated

untiringly as a

in itself, though there is no doubt that the was attached to the second act. 1 The interpretation of the game then became obvious. It was related to the child's great cultural achievement the in-

game

greater pleasure

stinctual renunciation (that

is,

the renunciation of instinctual

which he had made in allowing his mother to go away without protesting. He compensated himself for this, as it were, by himself staging the disappearance and return of the

satisfaction)

objects within his reach. It is of course a matter of indifference from the point of view of judging the effective nature of the game whether the child invented it himself or took it over on

suggestion. Our interest is directed to another point. The child cannot possibly have felt his mother's departure as something agreeable or even indifferent. then does his repetition of this distressing experience as a game fit in with the pleasure principle? It may perhaps be said in reply that her

some outside

How

departure had to be enacted as a necessary preliminary to her joyful return, and that it was in the latter that lay the true purpose

*A

further observation subsequently confirmed this interpretation the child's mother had been away for several hours and on her return was met with the words 'Baby o-o-o-ol* which was at first incomprehensible. It soon turned out, however, that during this long period of solitude the child had found a method of making himself disappear. He had discovered his reflection in a full-length mirror which did not quite reach to the ground, so that by crouching down he could make his mirror-image 'gone'. [A further reference to this story will be found in The Interpretation of Dreams, Standard Ed., 5, 46 In.] fully.

One day

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

10

of the game. But against

this

must be counted the observed

fact that the first act, that of departure, was staged as a game in itself and far more frequently than the episode in its entirety,

with

its

pleasurable ending. certain decision can be reached

from the analysis of a an unprejudiced view one gets an imsingle case like this. a game from pression that the child turned his experience into

No

On

another motive. At the outset he was in a passive situation he was overpowered by the experience; but, by repeating it, unpleasurable though it was, as a game, he took on an active to an instinct for mastery part. These efforts might be put down that was acting independently of whether the memory was in itself pleasurable or not. But still another interpretation may be attempted. Throwing away the object so that it was 'gone' might satisfy an impulse of the child's, which was suppressed in his actual life, to revenge himself on his mother for going away from him. In that case it would have a defiant meaning: *A11 right, then, go away! I don't need you. I'm sending you away myself.' A year later, the same boy whom I had observed at his first game used to take a toy, if he was angry with it, and throw it on the floor, exclaiming: 'Go to the fwont!' He had heard at that time that his absent father was *at the front', and was far from regretting his absence; on the contrary he made it quite clear that he had no desire to be disturbed in his sole possession of his mother. 1

We know of other children who liked to express

similar hostile impulses by throwing away objects instead of 8 are therefore left in doubt as to whether the persons.

We

impulse to work over in the mind some overpowering experience so as to make oneself master of it can find expression as a primary event, and independently of the pleasure principle. For, in the case we have been discussing, the child may, after all, only have been able to repeat his unpleasant experience in play because the repetition carried along with it a yield of pleasure of another sort but none the less a direct one.

Nor shall we be helped in our hesitation between these two views by further considering children's play. It is clear that in 1

When

Now

was five and three-quarters, his mother died. really 'gone' ('o-o-o'), the little boy showed no signs of grief. It is true that in the interval a second child had been born and had roused him to violent jealousy* that sire

1

Cf.

this child

was

my note on a childhood memory of Goethe's

(1917 b).

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

11

their play children repeat everything that has made a great impression on them in real life, and that in doing so they abreact the strength of the impression and, as one might put

make themselves master of the situation. But on the other hand it is obvious that all their play is influenced by a wish that dominates them the whole time the wish to be grown-up and to be able to do what grown-up people do. It can also be observed that the unpleasurable nature of an experience does it,

not always unsuit it for play. If the doctor looks down a child's throat or carries out some small operation on him, we may be quite sure that these frightening experiences will be the subject

we must not in that connection overlook a yield of pleasure from another source. As the child passes over from the passivity of the experience to the activity of the game, he hands on the disagreeable experiof the next game; but the fact that there

is

ence to one of his playmates and in on a substitute.

this

way

revenges himself

Nevertheless, it emerges from this discussion 'that there is no need to assume the existence of a special imitative instinct in order to provide a motive for play. Finally, a reminder may be added that the artistic play and artistic imitation carried out by adults, which, unlike children's, are aimed at an audience, do not spare the spectators (for instance, in tragedy) the most painful experiences and can yet be felt by them as highly enjoyable. 1 This is convincing proof that, even under the dominance of the pleasure principle, there are ways and means enough of making what is in itself unpleasurable into a subject to be recollected and worked over ih the mind. The consideration of these cases and situations, which have a yield of pleasure as their final outcome, should be undertaken by some system of aesthetics with an economic approach to its subject-matter.

They

no use for our purposes, since they presuppose the and dominance of the pleasure principle; they give

are of

existence

no evidence of the operation of tendencies beyond the pleasure more primitive than it and inprinciple, that is, of tendencies dependent of it. * his posthumously [Freud had made a tentative study of this point in on the Stage' (1942a) published paper on 'Psychopathic Characters which was probably written in 1905 or 1906.]

Ill

years of intense work have had as their result that the immediate aims of psycho-analytic technique are quite

TWENTV-HVE

other to-day than they were at the outset. At first the analysing more than discover the unconscious physician could do no material that was concealed from the patient, put it together, and, at the right moment, communicate it to him. Psycho-

was then

analysis

first

and foremost an

art of interpreting.

Since this did not solve the therapeutic problem, a further aim to oblige the patient to confirm the quickly came in view: from his own memory. In that endeavour construction analyst's

upon the patient's resistances: the art in uncovering these as quickly as possible, in out to the patient and in inducing him by human

the chief emphasis lay consisted

now

pointing them

was where suggestion operating as 'transference* to abandon his resistances. But it became ever clearer that the aim which had been set up the aim that what was unconscious should become conis not scious completely attainable by that method. The remember the whole of what is repressed in him, cannot patient and what he cannot remember may be precisely the essential part of it. Thus he acquires no sense of conviction of the correctness of the construction that has been communicated to

influence

played

its

this

part

He is obliged to repeat the repressed material as a contemporary experience instead of, as the physician would prefer 1 to see, remembering it as something belonging to the past. These reproductions, which emerge with such unwished-for exactitude, always have as their subject some portion of infantile

him.

of the Oedipus complex, that is, and its derivatives; life and they are invariably acted cut in the sphere of the trans-

sexual

When

ference, of the patient's relation to the physician. things have reached this stage, it may be said that the earlier neurosis

has 1

now been replaced by a fresh,

'transference neurosis'. It has

paper on 'Recollecting, Repeating and Working Through* (1914). [An early reference will be found in this same paper to the 'compulsion to repeat', which is one of the principle topics discussed in the present work. (See also the Editor's Note above, p. xi.) The term See

my

'transference neurosis' in the special sense in down also appears in that paper.]

lower

12

which

it is

used a few lines

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

13

been the physician's endeavour to keep this transference neurowithin the narrowest limits: to force as much as possible into the channel of memory and to allow as little as possible to emerge as repetition. Th$ ratio between what is remembered and what is reproduced varies from case to case. The physician cannot as a rule spare his patient this phase of the treatment. He must get him to re-experience some portion of his forgotten life, but must see to it, on the other hand, that the patient retains some degree of aloofness, which will enable him, in spite of everything, to recognize that what appears to be reality is in fact only a reflection of a forgotten past. If this can be successfully achieved, the patient's sense of conviction is won, together sis

with the therapeutic success that is dependent on it. In order to make it easier to understand this 'compulsion to repeat', which emerges during the psycho-analytic treatment of neurotics, we must above all get rid of the mistaken notion that what we are dealing with in our struggle against resistances is resistance on the part of the unconscious. The unconscious offers no resistance whatever to that is to say, the 'repressed* the efforts of the treatment. Indeed, it itself has no other endeavour than to break through the pressure weighing down on it and force its way either to consciousness or to a discharge through some real action. Resistance during treatment arises from the same higher strata and systems of the mind which originally carried out repression. But the fact that, as we know from experience, the motives of the resistances, and indeed the resistances themselves, are unconscious at first -during the treatment, is a hint to us that we should correct a shortcoming in our terminology. We shall avoid a lack of clarity if we make our contrast not between the conscious and the unconscious but between the coherent ego l and the repressed. It is certain that much of the ego is itself unconscious, and notably what we may describe as its nucleus; 2 only a small part of it is covered by the

term 'preconscious'. 3 Having replaced a purely descriptive 1

[Cf. a discussion of this in the Editor's Introduction to The Ego and Id (1923ft), Standard Ed., 19, 7-8; I.P.L., 12, xiii-xiv.] [This is corrected in a footnote at the beginning of Chapter III of The Ego and the Id, ibid., 28, and ibid., 16.] 3 [In its present form this sentence dates from 192 1 In the first edition (1920) it ran: 'It may be that much of the ego is itself unconscious; only a part of it, probably, is covered by the term "preconscious'V]

the

*

.

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

14

terminology by one which is systematic or dynamic, we can say 1 that the patient's resistance arises from his ego, and we then at once perceive that the compulsion to repeat must be ascribed to the unconscious repressed. It seems probable that the comitself after

pulsion can only express

the

work of treatment has

meet it and has loosened the repression. 2 gone There is no doubt that the resistance of the conscious and unconscious ego operates under the sway of the pleasure prinavoid the unpleasure which would be produced ciple: it seelcs to of the repressed. Our efforts, on the other hand, liberation the by half-way to

are directed towards procuring the toleration of that unpleasure by an appeal to the reality principle. But how is the compulsion to repeat the manifestation of the power of the repressed related to the pleasure principle? It is clear that the greater part of what is re-experienced under the compulsion to repeat must

cause the ego unpleasure, since it brings to light activities of repressed instinctual impulses. That, however, is unpieasure of a kind we have already considered and does not contradict the pleasure principle : unpleasure for one system and simultaneously 3 satisfaction for the other. But we come now to a new and re-

markable fact, namely that the compulsion to repeat also recalls from the past experiences which include no possibility of pleasure, and which can never, even long ago, have brought satisfaction even to instinctual impulses which have since been '

repressed.

The early efflorescence of infantile sexual life is doomed to extinction because its wishes are incompatible with reality and with the inadequate stage of development which the child has comes to an end in the most disand to the accompaniment of the most painful feelings. Loss of love and failure leave behind them a permanent injury to self-regard in the form of a narcissistic scar, which in my opinion, as well as in Marcinowski's (1918), contributes more than anything to the 'sense of inferiority' reached.

That

efflorescence

tressing circumstances

1

[A fuller and somewhat different account of the sources of resistance be found in Chap.

XI

Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety (1926^).] have argued elsewhere [1923<] that what thus comes to the help of the compulsion to repeat is the factor of

\vill

*

of

[Footnote added 1923:] I

"suggestion' in the treatment which has its roots

physician,

that

is,

deep in

*

the patient's submissiveness to the his unconscious parental complex.

[C Freud's allegorical use of the fairy tale of the 'Three Wishes* at the beginning of Lecture of his Introductory Lectures (1916-17).]

XIV

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

15

which is so common in neurotics. The child's sexual researches, on which limits are imposed by his physical development, lead to no satisfactory conclusion; hence such later complaints as *I

can't accomplish anything; I can't succeed in anything*. The of affection, which binds the child as a rule to the parent of

tie

succumbs to disappointment, to a vain exof satisfaction or to jealousy over the birth of a new pectation baby unmistakable proof of the infidelity of the object of the child's affections. His own attempt to make a baby himself, carried out with tragic seriousness, fails shamefully. The lessening amount of affection he receives, the increasing demands the opposite sex,

of education, hard words and an occasional punishment these at last the full extent to which he has been scorned.

show him

These are a few typical and constantly recurring instances of the ways in which the love characteristic of the age of childhood is brought to a conclusion. Patients repeat all of these unwanted situations and painful emotions in the transference and revive them with the greatest ingenuity. They seek to bring about the interruption of the treatment while it is still incomplete; they contrive once more to feel themselves. scorned, to oblige the physician to

them and

speak

them

coldly; they discover approfor their jealousy; instead of the passionately priate objects desired baby of their childhood, they produce a plan or a

severely to

treat

some grand present which turns out as a rule to be promise of less unreal. None of these tilings can have produced pleasure in the past, and it might be supposed that they would cause less unpleasure to-day if they emerged as memories or dreams instead of taking the form of fresh experiences. They are of course the activities of instincts intended to lead to satisfaction; but no lesson has been learnt from the old experience of these 1 activities having led instead only to unpleasure. In spite of that, a of are under compulsion. they pressure repeated, What psycho-analysis reveals in the transference phenomena of neurotics can also be observed in the lives of some normal is of being pursued by a maligpeople. The impression they give nant fate or possessed by some 'daemonic' power; but psychoanalysis has always taken the view that their fate is for the most themselves and determined by early infantile part arranged by influences. The compulsion which is here in evidence differs in 1 [This sentence was added in 192 1.] no

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE no way from the compulsion to repeat which we have found in neurotics, even though the people we are now considering have 16

never shown any signs of dealing with a neurotic conflict by Thus we have come across people all of producing symptoms. whose human relationships have the same outcome: such as the benefactor who is abandoned in anger after a time by each of his protigiS) however much they may otherwise differ from one another, and who thus seems doomed to taste all the bitterness

of ingratitude; or the man whose friendships all end in betrayal by his friend; or the man who time after time in the course of his life raises someone else into a position of great private or certain interval, himself uppublic authority and then, after a sets that authority and replaces him by a new one; or, again, the lover each of whose love affairs with a woman passes

through the same phases and reaches the same conclusion. This 'perpetual recurrence of the same thing* causes us no astonishment when it relates to active behaviour on the part of the person concerned and when we can discern in him an essential character-trait which always remains the same and which is comof the same experiences. pelled to find expression in a repetition

We are much more impressed by cases where the subject appears to have a passive experience, over which he has no influence, but in which he meets with a repetition of the same fatality. There is the case, for instance, of the woman who married three successive husbands each of whom fell ill soon afterwards and had to be nursed by her on their death-beds. 1 The most moving poetic picture of a fate such as this is given by Tasso in his romantic epic Gerusalemme Liberate. Its hero, Tancred, unwittingly frillg his beloved Clorinda in a duel while she is disguised in the armour of an enemy knight. After her burial he

makes

his

way into a army with

strange magic forest which

terror. He slashes with his but blood streams from the cut and the voice of Clorinda, whose soul is imprisoned in the tree, is heard complaining that he has wounded his beloved once again. If we take into account observations such as these, based upon behaviour in the transference and upon the life-histories of men and women, we shall find courage to assume that there really does exist in the mind a compulsion to repeat which overrides the pleasure principle. Now too we shall be inclined to 1 Cf. the apt remarks on this subject by C, G. Jung (1909). strikes

the Crusaders*

sword at a

tall tree;

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

17

compulsion the dreams which occur in traumatic neuroses and the impulse which leads children to play. But it is to be noted that only in rare instances can we observe the pure effects of the compulsion to repeat, unsupported by other motives. In the case of children's play we have already laid stress on the other ways in which the emergence of the compulsion may be interpreted; the compulsion to repeat and relate to this

instinctual satisfaction which is immediately pleasurable seem to converge here into an intimate partnership. The phenomena

of transference are obviously exploited by the resistance which the ego maintains in its pertinacious insistence upon repression; the compulsion to repeat, which the treatment tries to bring into its service is, as it were, drawn over by the ego to its side 1 (clinging as the ego does to the pleasure principle). great deal of what might be described as the compulsion of destiny seems intelligible on a rational basis; so that we are under no necessity to call in a new and mysterious motive force to explain it. The least dubious instance [of such a motive force] is perhaps that of traumatic dreams. But on maturer reflection we shall be forced to admit that even in the other instances the whole ground is not covered by the operation of the familiar motive forces. Enough is left unexplained to justify the hypothesis of a compulsion to repeat something that seems more primitive, more elementary, more instinctual than the pleasure principle which it over-rides. But if a compulsion to repeat does operate in the mind, we should be glad to know something about it, to learn what function it corresponds to, under what conditions

A

it

can emerge and what to which, after all,

its

relation

is

to the pleasure principle

we have hitherto ascribed dominance over

the course of the processes of excitation in mental 1

life.

[Before 1923 the last clause read: 'the compulsion to repeat is as it to its help by the ego, clinging as it does to the pleasure

were called principle.*]

IV

WHAT

follows

speculation, often far-fetched speculation,

is

which the reader will consider or dismiss according to his individual predilection. It is further an attempt to follow out an idea consistently, out of curiosity to see where it will lead. Psycho-analytic speculation takes as its point of departure the impression, derived from examining unconscious processes,

may be, not the most universal attribute of mental processes, but only a particular function of them.

that consciousness

Speaking in metapsychological terms, it asserts that consciousis a function of a particular system which it describes as C$. 1 What consciousness yields consists essentially of percep-

ness

of excitations coming from the external world and of of pleasure and unpleasure which can only arise from within the mental apparatus; it is therefore possible to assign to tions

feelings

the system Pcpt.-Cs.* a position in space. It must lie on the borderline between outside and inside; it must be turned to-

wards the external world and must envelop the other psychical systems. It will be seen that there is nothing daringly new in these assumptions; we have merely adopted the views on localization held

by cerebral anatomy, which

of consciousness in the cerebral cortex

locates the 'seat

1

the outermost, envelop-

ing layer of the central organ. Cerebral anatomy has no need to consider why, speaking anatomically, consciousness should be lodged on the surface of the brain instead of being safely

housed somewhere in

more

its

inmost interior. Perhaps we shall be

successful in accounting for this situation in the case of

our system

Pcpt.-Cs.

Consciousness

is

not the only distinctive character which

we

On

the basis of impresascribe to the processes in that system. sions derived from our psycho-analytic experience, we assume that all excitatory processes that occur in the other systems leave *[See Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams (1900a), Standard Ed., 5, 610 ff., and "The Unconscious* (1915*), Section II.] 1 [The system Pcpt. (the perceptual system) was first described by Freud in The Interpretation of Dream, Standard Ed., 5, 536 ff In a later paper (1917
system Gr.] IB

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

19

permanent traces behind in them which form the foundation of memory. Such memory-traces, then, have nothing to do with the fact of becoming conscious; indeed they are often most powerful and most enduring when the process which left them behind was one which never entered consciousness. We find it hard to believe, however, that permanent traces of excitation such as these are also left in the system Pcpt.-Cs. If they re-

mained constantly conscious, they would very soon

set limits

to the system's aptitude for receiving fresh excitations. 1 If,

on

the other hand, they were unconscious, we should be faced with the problem of explaining the existence of unconscious

whose functioning was otherwise accompanied by the phenomenon of consciousness. We should, so to say, have altered -nothing and gained nothing by our hypothesis relegating the process of becoming conscious to a special system. Though this consideration is not absolutely conclusive, it neverprocesses in a system

theless leads us to suspect that

becoming conscious and leaving

behind a memory-trace are processes incompatible with each other within one and the same system. Thus we should be able to say that the excitatory process becomes conscious in the system Cs. but leaves no permanent trace behind there; but

that the excitation is transmitted to the systems lying next within and that it is in them that its traces are left. I followed these same lines in the schematic picture which I included in the speculative section of my Interpretation of Dreams. 2 It must

be borne in mind that little enough is known from other sources of the origin of consciousness; when, therefore, we lay down the proposition that consciousness arises instead of a memory-trace^ the assertion deserves consideration, at all events on the ground of

being framed in fairly precise terms. is so, then, the system Cs. is characterized by the peculiarity that in it (in contrast to what happens in the other

its

If this

psychical systems) excitatory processes do not leave behind any permanent change in its elements but expire, as it were, in the phenomenon of becoming conscious. An exception of this sort * What follows is based throughout on Breuer's views in [the second section of his theoretical contribution to] Studies on Hysteria (Breuer and Freud, 1895). [Freud himself discussed the subject in The Interpretation of Dreams, Standard Ed. t 5, 538 and it had previously been fully considered in his 'Project' of 1895 (19500), Part I, Section 3. He returned to 1 the topic later in his paper on the 'Mystic Writing-Pad (1925a).] a \Standard Ed.. 5. 538.1

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

20

to the general ride requires to be explained by some factor that Such a factor, which is applies exclusively to that one system.

absent in the other systems, might well be the exposed situation of the system Cs., immediately abutting as it does on the external world. Let us picture a living organism in its most simplified possible form as an undifferentiated vesicle of a substance that is susceptible to stimulation. Then the surface turned towards the its very situation be differentiated and an organ for receiving stimulL Indeed embryology

external world will from will serve as

s

capacity as a recapitulation of developmental history, actually shows us that the central nervous system originates in

its

from the ectoderm; the grey matter of the cortex remains a derivative of the primitive superficial layer of the organism and may have inherited some of its essential properties. It would be easy to suppose, then, that as a result of the ceaseless impact of external stimuli on the surface of the vesicle, its substance to a certain depth may have become permanently modified, so that excitatory processes run a different course in it from what they run in the deeper layers. A crust would thus be formed which would at last have been so thoroughly 'baked through' by stimulation that it would present the most favourable possible conditions for the reception of stimuli and become incapable of any further modification. In terms of the system Cy., this would mean that its elements could undergo no further permanent modification from the passage of excitation, because they had already been modified in the respect in question to the greatest possible extent: now, however, they would have become capable of giving rise to consciousness. Various ideas may be formed which cannot at present be verified as to the nature of this modification of the substance and of the excitatory process. It may be supposed that, in passing from one element to another, an excitation has to overcome a resistance, and that the diminution of resistance thus effected is what lays down a permanent trace of the excitation, that is, a facilitation. In the system Cs. 9 then, resistance of this kind to passage from one

element to another would no longer exist. 1 This picture can be brought into relation with Breuer's distinction between quiescent (or bound) and mobile cathectic energy in the elements 1 [This passage is foreshadowed in the later half of Section 3 of Part I of the 'Project'.]

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE of the psychical systems; carry no

1

21

the elements of the system Cs. would

bound energy but only energy capable of

free dis-

charge. It seems best, however, to express oneself as cautiously as possible on these points. None the less, this speculation will have enabled us to bring the origin of consciousness into some sort of connection with the situation of the system Cs. and with the peculiarities that must be ascribed to the excitatory processes taking place in it.

But we have more to say of the living vesicle with its receptive This little fragment of living substance is susmiddle of an external world charged with the most powerful energies; and it would be killed by the stimulation emanating from these if it were not provided with a cortical layer. pended in the

protective shield against stimuli. It acquires the shield in this way: its outermost surface ceases to have the structure proper to living matter, becomes to some degree inorganic and thence-

forward functions as a special envelope or membrane resistant to stimuli. In consequence, the energies of the external world are able to pass into the next underlying layers, which have remained living, with only a fragment of their original intensity; and these layers can devote themselves, behind the protective shield, to the reception of the amounts of stimulus which have been allowed through it. By its death, the outer layer has saved all the deeper ones from a similar fate unless, that is to say, stimuli reach it which are so strong that they break through the protective shield. Protection against stimuli is an almost more important function for the living organism than reception

of stimuli.

store of energy

The

protective shield

and must above

is

supplied with

its

own

endeavour to preserve the special modes of transformation of energy operating in it against the effects threatened by the enormous energies at work in the external world effects which tend towards a levelling out of them and hence towards destruction. The main purpose of the reception of stimuli is to discover the direction and nature of the all

external stimuli; and for that it is enough to take small specimens of the external world, to sample it in small quantities. In highly developed organisms the receptive cortical layer of the former vesicle has long been withdrawn into the depths of 1

Breuer and Freud, 1895. [See Section 2 of Brevier's theoretical con-

tribution, and in particular the footnote at the beginning of that section. Cf. also footnote 1 on p. 2 above.]

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

22

the interior of the body, though portions of it have been left behind on the surface immediately beneath the general shield against stimuli. These are the sense organs, which consist

of apparatus for the reception of certain specific but which also include special arrangements for further protection against excessive amounts of stimulation and for excluding unsuitable kinds of stimuli. 1 It is characteristic of them that they deal only with very small quantities of external stimulation and only take in samples of the external world. They may perhaps be compared with feelers which are all the time making tentative advances towards the external world and then drawing back from it. At this point I shall venture to touch for a moment upon a subject which would merit the most exhaustive treatment. As a result of certain psycho-analytic discoveries, we are to-day in a position to embark on a discussion of the Kantian theorem that time and space are 'necessary forms of thought*. We have learnt that unconscious mental processes are in themselves 'timeless*. 2 This means in the first place that they are not ordered temporally, that time does not change them in any way and that the idea of time cannot be applied to them. These are negative characteristics which can only be clearly understood if a comparison is made with conscious mental processes. On the other hand, our abstract idea of time seems to be wholly derived from the method of working of the system Pcpt.-Cs. and to correspond to a perception on its own part of that method of working. This mode of functioning may perhaps constitute another way of providing a shield against stimuli. I know that these remarks must sound very obscure, but I must limit myself to these hints. 8 We have pointed out how the living vesicle is provided with a shield against stimuli from the external world; and we had previously shown that the cortical layer next to that shield must be differentiated as an organ for receiving stimuli from without. This sensitive cortex, however, which is later to become the essentially

effects of stimulation,

system Cs., also receives excitations from within. The situation of the system between the outside and the inside and the differ* 1

[Cf. 'Project*, Part I, Sections 5

[See Section

8

V of

and

9.]

"The Unconscious' (1915*).] [Freud recurs to the origin of the idea of time at the

on "The Mystic Writing-Pad

1

end of his paper

(1925s). The same paper -contains a further discussion of the 'shield against stimuli'.]

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

23

encc between the conditions governing the reception of excitations in the two cases have a decisive effect on the functioning of the system and of the whole mental apparatus. Towards the outside it is shielded against stimuli, and the amounts of excitation impinging on it have only a reduced effect. Towards the inside there can be no such shield; 1 the excitations in the deeper layers extend into the system directly and in undiminished amount, in so far as certain of their characteristics give rise to feelings

in

the

pleasure-unpleasure

coming from within

series.

The

excitations

however, in their intensity and in in their amplitude, perhaps more other, qualitative, respects commensurate with the system's method of working than the stimuli which stream in from the external world. 2 This state of things produces two definite results. First, the feelings of pleasure and unpleasure (which are an index to what is happening in the interior of the apparatus) predominate over all external stimuli. And secondly, a particular way is adopted of dealing with any internal excitations which produce too great an increase of unpleasure: there is a tendency to treat them as though they were acting, not from the inside, but from the outside, so that it may be possible to bring the shield against stimuli into operation as a means of defence against them. This is the origin of projection, which is destined to play such a large part in the causation of pathological processes. I have an impression that these last considerations have brought us to a better understanding of the dominance of the pleasure principle; but no light has yet been thrown on the cases that contradict that dominance. Let us therefore go a step further. We describe as 'traumatic* any excitations from outside which are powerful enough to break through the protective shield. It seems to me that the concept of trauma necessarily implies a connection of this kind with a breach in an otherwise are,

efficacious barrier against stimuli.

Such an event

as

an

ex-

to provoke a disturbance on a large scale in the functioning of the organism's energy and to^ set in motion every possible defensive measure. At the same time, the is pleasure principle is for the moment put out of action. There ternal

trauma

is

bound

possibility of preventing the mental apparatus from being flooded with large amounts of stimulus, and another

no longer any i

[Cf. 'Project', beginning of Section 10 of Part I.] Part I.] [Cf. 'Project*, later part of Section 4 of

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

24

problem arises instead the problem of mastering the amounts of stimulus which have broken in and of binding them, in the psychical sense, so that they can then be disposed of. The specific unpleasure of physical pain is probably the result of the protective shield having been broken through in a limited area. There is then a continuous stream of excitations

from the part of the periphery concerned to the central apparatus of the mind, such as could normally arise only from within the apparatus. And how shall we expect the mind to react to this invasion? Gathectic energy is summoned from all sides to provide sufficiently high cathexes of energy in the 1

environs of the breach.

An

'anticathexis'

on a grand

scale

is

set

up, for whose benefit all the other psychical systems are impoverished,, so that the remaining psychical functions are extenmust endeavour to draw a sively paralysed or reduced.

We

and use them as a basis for our metapsychological speculations. From the present case, then, we infer that a system which is itself highly cathected is capable of taking up an additional stream of fresh inflowing energy and of converting it into quiescent cathexis., that is of binding it psychically. The higher the system's own quiescent cathexis, the greater seems to be its binding force; conversely, therefore, the lower its cathexis, the less capacity will it have for s taking up inflowing energy and the more violent must be the consequences of such a breach in the protective shield against stimuli. To this view it cannot be justly objected that the increase of cathexis round the breach can be explained far more simply as the direct result of the inflowing masses of excitation. If that were so, the mental apparatus would merely receive an increase in its cathexes of energy, and the paralysing character of pain and the impoverishment of all the other systems would remain unexplained. Nor do the very violent phenomena of discharge to which pain gives rise affect our explanation, for they occur in a reflex manner that is, they follow without the intervention of the mental apparatus. The indefiniteness of all our discussions on what we describe as metapsychology is of course due to the fact that we know nothing of the nature of the excitatory process that takes place in the elements of the lesson

1

from examples such

Cf. 'Instincts

Inhibitions , *

and

as this

their Vicissitudes' (1915*:) [and-

Addendum C

of

Symptoms and Anxiety (1926^)].

[Cf. the 'principle of the insusceptibility to excitation of uncathected systems* in a footnote near the end of Freud, 1917'd.]

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

25

psychical systems, and that we do not feel justified in framing any hypothesis on the subject. We are consequently operating all the time with a large unknown factor, which we are

obliged to carry over into every new formula. It may be reasonably supposed that this excitatory process can be carried out with energies that vary quantitatively, it may also seem probable

has more than one quality (in the nature of amplitude, As a new factor we have taken into consideration Breuer's hypothesis that charges of energy occur in two forms [see pp. 20-1]; so that we have to distinguish between two kinds that

it

for instance).

of cathexis of the psychical systems or their elements a freely flowing cathexis that presses on towards discharge and a quiescent cathexis. We may perhaps suspect that the binding of the energy that streams into the mental apparatus consists in its change from a freely flowing into a quiescent state.

We may, I think, tentatively venture to regard the common traumatic neurosis as a consequence of an extensive breach being made in the protective 'shield against stimuli. This would seem to reinstate the old, naive theory of shock, in apparent contrast to the later and psychologically more ambitious theory which attributes aetiological importance not to the effects of mechanical violence but to fright and the threat to life. These opposing views are not, however, irreconcilable; nor is the psycho-analytic view of the traumatic neurosis identical with the shock theory in its crudest form. The latter regards the essence of the shock as being the direct damage to the molecular structure or even to the histological structure of the elements of the nervous system; whereas what we seek to understand are the effects produced on the organ of the mind by the breach in the shield against stimuli and by the problems that follow in its And we still attribute importance to the element of fright.

train.

It is caused by lack of any preparedness for anxiety, * including lack of hypercathexis of the systems that would be the first to receive the stimulus. Owing to their low cathexis those

systems are not in a good position for binding the inflowing amounts of excitation and the consequences of the breach in the protective shield follow all the more easily. It will be seen, then, that preparedness for anxiety and the hypercathexis of the receptive systems constitute the last line of defence of the shield against stimuli. In the case of quite a number of traumas, the 1

[Cf. footnote

1

on

p. 7 above.]

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

26

between systems that are unprepared and systems that are well prepared through being hypercathected may be a decisive factor in determining the outcome; though where the strength of a trauma exceeds a certain limit this factor will no difference

doubt cease to carry weight. The fulfilment of wishes is, as we know, brought about in a hallucinatory manner by dreams, and under the dominance of the pleasure principle this has become their function. But it is not in the service of that principle that the dreams of patients suffering from traumatic neuroses lead them back with such regularity to the situation in which the trauma occurred. We may assume, rather, that dreams are here helping to carry out another task, which must be accomplished before the dominance of the pleasure principle can even begin. These dreams are endeavouring to master the stimulus retrospectively, by developing the anxiety whose omission was the cause of the traumatic neurosis. They thus afford us a view of a function of the mental apparatus which, though it does not contradict the pleasure principle, is nevertheless independent of it and seems to be more primitive than the purpose of gaining

and avoiding unpleasure. This would seem to be the place, then, at which to admit for the first time an exception to the proposition that dreams are fulfilments of wishes. Anxiety dreams, as I have shown repeatedly and in detail, offer no such exception. Nor do 'punishment dreams', for they merely replace the forbidden pleasure

wish-fulfilment

by the appropriate punishment for

it;

that

is

to

say, they fulfil the wish of the sense of guilt which is the reaction to the repudiated impulse. 1 But it is impossible to classify as

wish-fulfilments the

dreams we have been discussing which

occur in traumatic neuroses, or the dreams during psychoanalyses which bring to memory the psychical traumas of childhood. They arise, rather, in obedience to the compulsion to repeat, though

it is

true that in analysis that compulsion

is

a supported by the wish (which is encouraged by 'suggestion') to conjure up what has been forgotten and repressed. Thus it would seem that the function of dreams, which consists in i [Sec The Interpretation of Dreams (1900a), Standard Ed., 5, 557, and Section 9 of Freud's 'Remarks on the Theory and Practice of Dream-

Interpretation* (1923*:).] 8 [The clause in brackets is

was substituted in 1923 for the words 'which not unconscious* which appeared in the earlier editions.]

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

27

any motives that might interrupt sleep, by fulfilling the wishes of the disturbing impulses, is not their original function. It would not be possible for them to perform that

setting aside

function until the whole of mental

life had accepted the dominance of the pleasure principle. If there is a 'beyond the pleasure principle', it is only consistent to grant that there was also a time before the purpose of dreams was the fulfilment of wishes. This would imply no denial of their later function. But if once this general rule has been broken, a further question arises. May not dreams which, with a view to the psychical binding of traumatic impressions, obey the compulsion to repeat may not such dreams occur outside analysis as well? And the reply can only be a decided affirmative. I have argued elsewhere * that 'war neuroses' (in so far as that term implies something more than a reference to the circumstances of the illness's onset) may very well be traumatic neuroses which have been facilitated by a conflict in the ego. The fact to which I have referred on page 6, that a gross physical injury caused simultaneously by the trauma diminishes the chances that a neurosis will develop, becomes intelligible if one bears in mind two facts which have been stressed by psycho-analytic research: firstly, that mechanical agitation must be recognized as one of the sources of sexual excitation, 3 and secondly, that painful and feverish illnesses exercise a powerful effect, so long as they last, on the distribution of libido. Thus, on the one hand, the mechanical violence of the trauma would liberate a quantity of sexual excitation which, owing to the lack of preparation for anxiety, would have a traumatic effect; but, on the other hand, the simultaneous physical injury, by calling for a narcissistic hypercathexis of the injured organ, 3 would bind the excess of excitation. It is also well known, though the libido theory has not yet made sufficient use of the fact, that such severe disorders in the distribution of libido as melancholia are temporarily brought to an end by intercurrent organic illness, and indeed that even a fully developed condition of dementia praecox is capable of a temporary remission in these

same circumstances. 1

See

2

Cf.

my introduction (I9l9d) to Psycho-Analysis and the War Neuroses. my remarks elsewhere (Three Essays [Standard Ed., 7, 201-2; on the effect of swinging and railway-travel. paper on narcissism (19 14*:) [Beginning of Section II].

I.P.L., 57, 67-8]) 3

See

my

V THE fact that the cortical layer which receives stimuli is without any protective as

its

shield against excitations

from within must have of stimulus have a

result that these latter transmissions

preponderance in economic importance and often occasion economic disturbances comparable with traumatic neuroses. The most abundant sources of this internal excitation are what are described as the organism's 'instincts*

the representatives

of all the forces originating in the interior of the body and transmitted to the mental apparatus at once the most important and the most obscure element of psychological research. It will perhaps not be thought too rash to suppose that the impulses arising from the instincts do not belong to the type of bound nervous processes but of freely mobile processes which

The best part of what we know of these derived from our study of the dream- work. there discovered that the processes in the unconscious systems were press towards discharge.

processes

We

is

fundamentally different from those in the preconscious (or conscious) systems. In the unconscious, cathexes can easily be completely transferred, displaced and condensed. Such treatment, however, could produce onfy invalid results if it were applied to preconscious material; and this accounts for the familiar peculiarities exhibited by manifest dreams after the preconscious residues of the preceding day have been worked over in accordance with the laws operating in the unconscious.

of process found in the unconscious as the 'primary' psychical process, in contradistinction to the 'secondary' process which is the one obtaining in our normal I described the type

waking

impulses have the unconscious systems as their point of impact, it is hardly an innovation to say that they obey the primary process. Again, it is easy to

life.

Since

the

primary psychical process with Breuer's

all instinctual

identify

cathexis

freely mobile in his bound or

and the secondary process with changes it would be the task of the higher

tonic cathexis. 1 If so,

strata of

the mental apparatus to bind the instinctual excitation reaching 1

Cf.

Cf. also

my Interpretation of Dreams,

Chapter VII [Standard Ed., 5, 588 ff. Breuer and Freud, 1895 (Section 2 of Breuer's theoretical con-

tribution)].

28

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

29

A

failure to effect this binding would the primary process. provoke a disturbance analogous to a traumatic neurosis; and only after the binding has been accomplished would it be

dominance of the pleasure principle (and of its modification, the reality principle) to proceed unhindered. Till then the other task of the mental apparatus, the task of mastering or binding excitations, would have precedence not, indeed, possible for the

in opposition to the pleasure principle, but independently of and to some extent in disregard of it.

it

The manifestations of a compulsion to repeat (which we have described as occurring in the early activities of infantile mental life as well as among the events of psycho-analytic treatment) exhibit to a high degree an instinctual 1 character and, when they act in opposition to the pleasure principle, give the appear-

ance of some 'daemonic' force at work. In the case of children's play we seemed to see that children repeat unpleasurable experiences for the additional reason that they can master a powerful impression far more thoroughly by being active than they could by merely experiencing it passively. Each fresh repetition seems to strengthen the mastery they are in search of. Nor can children have their pleasurable experiences repeated often enough, and they are inexorable in their insistence that the repetition shall be an identical one. This character trait disappears later on. If a joke is heard for a second time it produces almost no effect; a theatrical production never creates so great an impression the second time as the first; indeed, it is hardly possible to persuade an adult who has very much enjoyed reading a book to re-read it immediately. Novelty is always the condition of enjoyment. But children will never tire of asking an adult to repeat a game that he has shown them or played with them, till he is too exhausted to go on. And if a child has been told a nice story, he will insist on hearing it over and over again rather than a new one; and he will remorselessly stipulate that the repetition shall be an identical one and will correct any alterations ofwhich the narrator may be guilty though they may 8 actually have been made in the hope of gaining fresh approval. 1

['Triebhaf? here

word

*

Trieb* bears

the next paragraph. The of a feeling of urgency than the English

and at the beginning of

much more

'instinct*.] * [Cf. some remarks on this towards the end of the Chapter VII of Freud's book on jokes (1905
sixth section of

5U

tfiiYUJND

THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

None of

this contradicts the pleasure principle; repetition, the re-experiencing of something identical, is clearly in itself a source of pleasure. In the case of a person in analysis, on the contrary, the compulsion to repeat the events of his childhood in the transference evidently disregards the pleasure

principle in ev^ry way. The patient behaves in a purely infantile fashion and thus shows us that the repressed memory-traces of his primaeval experiences are not present in him in a bound

and are indeed in a sense incapable of obeying the secondary process. It is to this fact of not being bound, moreover, that they owe their capacity for forming, in conjunction with the residues of the previous day, a wishful phantasy that emerges in a dream. This same compulsion to repeat frequently meets us as an obstacle to our treatment when at the end of an analysis we try to induce the patient to detach himself completely from his physician. It may be presumed, too, that when people una dread of rousing familiar with analysis feel an obscure fear state

something that, so they feel, is better left sleeping what they are afraid of at bottom is the emergence of this compulsion with its hint of possession by some 'daemonic* power. But how is the predicate of being 'instinctual' 1 related to the compulsion to repeat? At this point we cannot escape a suspicion that we may have come upon the track of a universal attribute of instincts and perhaps of organic life in general which has not hitherto been clearly recognized or at least not explicitly stressed. 2 It seems, then, that an instinct is an urge inherent in organic

an earlier state of things which the living entity has been obliged to abandon under the pressure of external disturbing forces; that is, it is a kind of organic elasticity, or, to put it another way, the expression of the inertia inherent in life to restore

3

organic life. This view of instincts strikes us as strange because we have become used to see in them a factor impelling towards change

and development, whereas we are now asked to recognize in them the precise contrary an expression of the conservative nature of living substance. On the other hand we soon call to mind examples from animal life which seem to confirm the 1

[See the last footnote but one.] [The last six words were added in 1921.] * I have no doubt that similar notions as to the nature of have already been put fonvard repeatedly. *

'instincts*

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

31

view that instincts are historically determined. Certain fishes, for instance, undertake laborious migrations at spawning-time in order to deposit their spawn in particular waters far removed

from their customary haunts. In the opinion of many biologists what they are doing is merely to seek out the localities in which their species formerly resided but which in the course of time they have exchanged for others. The same explanation is believed to apply to the migratory flights of birds of passage but we are quickly relieved of the necessity for seeking for further examples by the reflection that the most impressive proofs of there being an organic compulsion to repeat lie in the

phenomena of heredity and the how the germ of a living animal

facts is

of embryology.

We

see

obliged in the course of its

if only in a transient and abbreviated fashion) the structures of all the forms from which it is sprung, instead of proceeding quickly by the shortest path to its final shape. This behaviour is only to a very slight degree attributable to mechanical causes, and the historical explanation cannot accordingly be neglected. So too the power of regenerating a lost organ by growing afresh a precisely similar one extends far up into the animal kingdom. We shall be met by the plausible objection that it may very well be that, in addition to the conservative instincts which impel

development to recapitulate (even

towards repetition, there may be others which push forward towards progress and the production of new forms. This argument must certainly not be overlooked, and it will be taken into account at a later stage. 1 But for the moment it is tempting to pursue to its logical conclusion the hypothesis that all instincts tend towards the restoration of an earlier state of things. The outcome may give an impression of mysticism or of sham profundity; but we can feel quite innocent of having had any such purpose in view. We seek only for the sober results of research or of reflection based on it; and we have no wish to find in those 3 results any quality other than certainty. Let us suppose, then, that all the organic instincts are conservative, are acquired historically and tend towards the half of this sentence was added in 1921.] The reader should not overlook the fact that what follows is the development of an extreme line of thought. Later on, when account is taken of the sexual instincts, it will be found that the necessary limitations and corrections are applied to it. i

[The

3

[Footnote added 1925:]

last

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

32

restoration of an earlier state of things. It follows that the pheno niena of organic development must be attributed to externa

and diverting influences. The elementary living would from its very beginning have had no wish tc change; if conditions remained the same, it would do no mor< than constantly repeat the same course of life. In the last resort what has left its mark on the development of organisms must be the history of the earth we live in and of its relation to the sun. Every modification which is thus imposed upon the course oi disturbing entity

the organism's life is accepted by the conservative organic and stored up for further repetition. Those instincts are therefore bound to give a deceptive appearance of being forces instincts

tending towards change and progress, whilst in fact they are merely seeking to reach an ancient goal by paths alike old and new. Moreover it is possible to specify this final goal of all organic striving. It would be in contradiction to the conservative nature of the instincts if the goal of life were a state of things which had never yet been attained. On the contrary, it must be an old state of things, an initial state from which the living entity has at one time or other departed and to which it is

striving to return by the circuitous paths along leads. If we are to take it as a truth that

development

which its knows no

exception that everything living dies for internal reasons then we shall be compelled to say that 'the aim of all life is death and, looking backwards, that

becomes inorganic once again

9

9

'inanimate things existed before living ones . The attributes of life were at some time

evoked in inanimate matter by the action of a force of whose nature we can form no conception. It may perhaps have been a process similar in type to that which later caused the development of consciousness in a particular stratum of living matter. The tension which then arose in what had hitherto been an inanimate substance endeavoured to cancel itself out. In this way the first instinct came into being: the instinct to return to the inanimate state. It was still an easy matter at that time for a living substance to die; the course of its life was probably only a brief one, whose direction was determined by the chemical structure of the young life. For a long time, perhaps, living substance was thus being constantly created afresh and easily dying, till decisive external influences altered in such a way as to oblige the still surviving substance to diverge ever more widely from its original course

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

33

life and to make ever more complicated detours before reaching its aim of death. These circuitous paths to death, faithfully kept to by the conservative instincts, would thus present us to-day with the picture of the phenomena of life. If we firmly maintain the exclusively conservative nature of instincts, we cannot arrive at any other notions as to the origin and aim

of

of life.

The

implications in regard to the great groups of instincts we believe, lie behind the phenomena of life in

which, as

organisms must appear no

less

bewildering.

such as

The

hypothesis of

we

attribute to all living opposition to the idea that instinctual

self-preservative instincts,

beings, stands in marked as a whole serves to bring about death. Seen in this light, the theoretical importance of the instincts of self-preservation,

life

of self-assertion and of mastery greatly diminishes. They are

component

instincts

whose function

it

is

to assure that the

organism shall follow its own path to death, and to ward off any possible ways of returning to inorganic existence other than those which are immanent in the organism itself. We have no longer to reckon with the organism's puzzling determination (so hard to fit into any context) to maintain its own existence in the face of every obstacle. What we are left with is the fact that the

organism wishes to die only in its own fashion. Thus these guardians of life, too, were originally the myrmidons of death.

Hence

the paradoxical situation that the living organism most energetically against events (dangers, in fact) which might help it to attain its life's aim rapidly by a kind of short-circuit. Such behaviour is, however, precisely what chararises

struggles

acterizes

purely instinctual

as

contrasted

with intelligent

efforts. 1

But

The

let

us pause for a

moment and

reflect. It

cannot be

so.

sexual instincts, to which the theory of the neuroses gives

a quite special place, appear under a very different aspect. The external pressure which provokes a constantly increasing extent of development has not imposed itself upon every organism. Many have succeeded in remaining up to the present time at their lowly level. Many, though not all, such creatures, which must resemble the earliest stages of the higher animals 1

[In the editions before 1925 the following footnote appeared at this 'A correction of this extreme view of the self-preservative instincts

point.

follows.*]

34

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

and plants, are, indeed, living to-day. In the same way, the whole path of development to natural death is not trodden by all the elementary entities which compose the complicated body of one of the higher organisms. Some of them, the germ-cells, probably retain the original structure of living matter and, after a certain time, with their full complement of inherited and freshly acquired instinctual dispositions, separate themselves from the organism as a whole. These two characteristics may be precisely what enables them to have an independent existence. Under favourable conditions, they begin to develop that is, to repeat the performance to which they owe their existence; and in the end once again one portion of their substance pursues its development to a finish, while another portion harks back once

again as a fresh residual germ to the beginning of the process of development. These germ-cells, therefore, work against the death of the living substance and succeed in winning for it

what we can only regard as potential immortality, though that may mean no more than a lengthening of the road to death. We must regard as in the highest degree significant the fact that this function of the germ-cell possible, if it coalesces with

differing from it. The instincts which

is

another

reinforced, or only

made

cell similar to itself and

yet

watch over the destinies of these elemen-

tary organisms that survive the whole individual, which provide them with a safe shelter while they are defenceless against the stimuli of the external world, with other germ-cells, and so

which bring about their meeting on these constitute the group of

They are conservative in the same sense other instincts in that they bring back earlier states of living substance; but they are conservative to a higher degree in that they are peculiarly resistant to external influences; and they are conservative too in another sense in that they preserve the sexual instincts. as the

life itself

for a comparatively long period. 1

They are the true They operate against the purpose of the other instincts, which leads, by reason of their function, to death; and this fact indicates that there is an opposition between them and

life instincts.

the other instincts, an opposition whose importance was long ago recognized by the theory of the neuroses. It is as though the 1 [Footnote added 1923:] Yet it is to them alone that we can attribute an internal impulse towards 'progress' and towards higher development! (See below [pp. 42-3].)

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

35

of the organism moved with a vacillating rhythm. One group of instincts rushes forward so as to reach the final aim of life as swiftly as possible; but when a particular stage in the advance has been reached, the other group jerks back to a certain point to make a fresh start and so prolong the journey. And even though it is certain that sexuality and the distinction between the sexes did not exist when life began, the possibility remains that the instincts which were later to be described as sexual may have been in operation from the very first, and it may not be true that it was only at a later time that they started life

upon their work of opposing the Let us now hark back for a whether there is any basis at

activities

moment

of the 'ego-instincts'. 1 and consider

ourselves

all for these speculations. Is it really the case that, apart from the sexual instincts there are no instincts that do not seek to restore an earlier state of things?

f

none that aim at a state of things which has never yet been attained? I know of no certain example from the organic world that would contradict the characterization I have thus proposed. There is unquestionably no universal instinct that there are

towards higher development observable in the animal or plant world, even though it is undeniable that development does in fact occur in that direction. But on the one hand it is often merely a matter of opinion when we declare that one stage of development is higher than another, and on the other hand biology teaches us that higher development in one respect is very frequently balanced or outweighed by involution in another. Moreover there are plenty of animal forms from whose early stages we can infer that their development has, on the contrary, assumed a retrograde character. Both higher development and involution might well be the consequences of adapta-

tion to the pressure of external forces; and in both cases the part played by instincts might be limited to the retention (in the form of an internal source of pleasure) of an obligatory

modification. 3 1 [Footnote added 1925:] It should be understood from the context that the term *ego-instincts* is used here as a provisional description and derives from the earliest psycho-analytical terminology. [See below,

pp. 44-5 and 55.] 1 [These five words were italicized from 1921 onwards.] 8 Ferenczi (1913, 137) has reached the same conclusion along different lines: *If this thought is pursued to its logical conclusion, one must make oneself familiar with the idea of a tendency to perseveration or

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

36 It

may

be

difficult, too, for

many of us,

to

abandon the

belief

an instinct towards perfection at work in human beings, which has brought them to their present high level of intellectual achievement and ethical sublimation and which may be expected to watch over their development into supermen. I have no faith, however, in the existence of any such internal instinct and I cannot see how this benevolent illusion is to be preserved. The present development of human beings requires, as it seems to me, no different explanation from that of that there

animals.

is

What

appears in a minority of

human

individuals as

an untiring impulsion towards further perfection can

easily be understood as a result of the instinctual repression upon which is based all that is most precious in human civilization. The repressed instinct never ceases to strive for complete satisfaction, which would consist in the repetition of a primary experience of satisfaction. No substitutive or reactive formations and no

sublimations will suffice to remove the repressed instinct's persisting tension; and it is the difference in amount between the pleasure of satisfaction which is demanded and that which is actually achieved that provides the driving factor which will permit of no halting at any position attained, but, in the poet's

words, 'ungebandigt immer vorwdrts

1

dringt'.

The backward path

that leads to complete satisfaction is as a rule obstructed by the resistances which maintain the repressions. So there is no alternative but to advance in the direction in which growth is free though with no prospect of bringing the process to a conclusion or of being able to reach the goal. The processes involved in the formation of a neurotic phobia, which is nothing still

else

than an attempt at

from the satisfaction of an instinct, manner of origin of this suptowards perfection' an instinct which canflight

present us with a model of the posititious 'instinct

not possibly be attributed to conditions for

its

every

human

being.

The

dynamic

are, indeed, universally present; only in rare cases that the economic situation appears

development

but it is to favour the production of the phenomenon. I will add only a word to suggest that the efforts of Eros to

regression dominating organic life as well, while the tendency to further development, to adaptation, etc., would become active only as a result

of external stimuli.' 1 [Tresses ever forward unsubdued,'] Mephistopheles in Faust, Part [Scene 4].

I

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE combine organic substances into ever larger

unities

37

probably

provide a substitute for this 'instinct towards perfection' whose existence we cannot admit. The phenomena that are attributed to it seem capable of explanation by these efforts of Eros taken in conjunction with the results of repression. 1 1 [This paragraph, which was added in 1923, anticipates the account of Eros that is to follow in the next chapter, p. 44 fF.]

VI

THE

upshot of our enquiry so far has been the drawing of 2 sharp distinction between the 'ego-instincts' and the sexual instincts, and the view that the former exercise pressure toward* death and the latter towards a prolongation of life. But thii conclusion is bound to be unsatisfactory in many respects ever to ourselves. Moreover, it is actually only of the former group oi instincts that we can predicate a conservative, or rather retrograde, character corresponding to a compulsion to repeat. Foi

on our hypothesis the

ego-instincts arise from the coming tc of inanimate matter and seek to restore the inanimate state; whereas as regards the sexual instincts, though it is true that life

they reproduce primitive states of the organism, what the^ are clearly aiming at by every possible means is the coalescence of two germ-cells which are differentiated in a particular way, If this union is not effected, the germ-cell dies along with all the other elements of the multicellular organism. It is only on this condition that the sexual function can prolong the cell's life and lend it the appearance of immortality. But what is the important event in the development of living substance which is being repeated in sexual reproduction, or in its fore-runner, the conl jugation of two protista? We cannot say; and we should con-

sequently feel relieved if the whole structure of our argument turned out to be mistaken. The opposition between the ego or death instincts s and the sexual or Hfe instincts would then cease to hold and the compulsion to repeat would no longer possess the importance we have ascribed to it. Let us turn back, then, to one of the assumptions that we have already made, with the expectation that we shall be able

We

to give it a categorical denial. have drawn far-reaching conclusions from the hypothesis that all living substance is bound to die from internal causes. made this assumption thus carelessly because it does not seem to us to be an

We

tion. 1

We

assump-

are accustomed to think that such

[In what follows Freud appears

to use the

is

the fact, and

terms 'protista* and 'pro-

tozoa* indifferently to signify unicellular organisms. follows the original.] 1

[The

first

published appearance of the term.]

38

we

The

translation

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

39

are strengthened in our thought by the writings of our poets. Perhaps we have adopted the belief because there is some com-

we are to die ourselves, and first to lose in death are dearest to us, it is easier to submit to a remorselaw of nature, to the sublime 'Avdyxrj [Necessity], than to

fort in

those less

it.

If

who

a chance which might perhaps have been escaped. It may be, however, that this belief in the internal necessity of dying is only another of those illusions which we have created 'urn die Schwere des Daseins zu belief.

The notion of

1

ertragen'.'

It

is

'natural death'

certainly not a primaeval is

quite foreign to primi-

they attribute every death that occurs among them to the influence of an enemy or of an evil spirit. We must therefore turn to biology in order to test the validity of the tive races;

belief.

If we do so, we may be astonished to find how little agreethere is among biologists on the subject of natural death and in fact that the whole concept of death melts away under their hands. The fact that there is a fixed average duration of

ment

at least among the higher animals naturally argues in favour of there being such a thing as death from natural causes. But this impression is countered when we consider that certain large animals and certain gigantic arboreal growths reach a very life

advanced age and one which cannot at present be computed. According to the large conception of Wilhelm Fliess [1906], all the phenomena of life exhibited by organism and also, no doubt, their death

are linked with the completion of fixed

which express the dependence of two kinds of living substance (one male and the other female) upon the solar year. When we see, however, how easily and how extensively the periods,

influence of external forces

is able to modify the date of the appearance of vital phenomena (especially in the plant world) to precipitate them or hold them back doubts must be cast upon the rigidity of Fliess's formulas or at least upon whether

the laws laid

down by him

are the sole determining factors.

The

greatest interest attaches from our point of view to the treatment given to the subject of the duration of life and the death of organisms in the writings of Weismann (1882, 1884,

1892, etc.) It was he who introduced the division of living substance into mortal and immortal parts. The mortal part is 1

['To bear the burden of existence.' (Schiller, Die Braut von Messina,

1,8.]

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

40 the

body in the narrower

sense

the 'soma'

which alone

is

subject to natural death. The germ-cells, on the other hand, are potentially immortal, in so far as they are able, under certain

favourable conditions, to develop into a new individual, or, in other words, to surround themselves with a new soma. (Weis-

mann,

1884,)

What strikes us in this is the unexpected analogy with our own view, which was arrived at along such a different path. Weismann, regarding living substance morphologically, sees in one portion which is destined to die the soma, the body apart from the substance concerned with sex and inheritance and an immortal portion the germ-plasm, which is concerned with the survival of the species, with reproduction. We, on the

it

other hand, dealing not with the living substance but with the it, have been led to distinguish two kinds of

forces operating in

which seek to lead what is living to death, and which are perpetually attempting and achieving a renewal of life. This sounds like a dynamic corollary to Weismann's morphological theory. But the appearance of a significant correspondence is dissipated as soon as we discover Weismann's views on the problem of death. For he only relates the distinction between the mortal soma and the immortal germ-plasm to multicellular organisms; in unicellular organisms the individual and the reproductive cell are still one and the same (Weismann, 1882, 38). Thus he considers that unicellular organisms are potentially immortal, and that death only makes its appearance with the multicellular

instincts: those

others, the sexual instincts,

metazoa. It is true that this death of the higher organisms is a natural one, a death from internal causes; but it is not founded on any primal characteristic of living substance (Weismann, 1884, 84) and cannot be regarded as an absolute necessity with basis in the very nature of life (Weismann, 1882, 33). Death is rather a matter of expediency, a manifestation of adaptation to the external conditions of life; for, when once the cells of the its

soma and germ-plasm, an unwould become a quite pointless luxury. When this differentiation had been made in the multicellular organisms, death became possible and expedient. Since then, the soma of the higher organisms has died at fixed

body have been divided

into

limited duration of individual

life

periods for internal reasons, while the protista have remained immortal. It is not the case, on the other hand, that reproduc-

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

41

On

tion was only introduced at the same time as death. the contrary, it is a primal characteristic of living matter, like

growth (from which it originated), and life has been continuous from its first beginning upon earth. (Weismann, 1884, 84 f.) It will be seen at once that to concede in this way that higher organisms have a natural death is of very little help to us. For if death is a late acquisition of organisms, then there can be no question of there having been death instincts from the very beginning of life on this earth. Multicellular organisms may die for internal reasons, owing to defective differentiation or to imperfections in their metabolism, but the matter is of no

from the point of view of our problem. An account of the origin of death such as this is moreover far less at variance with our habitual modes of thought than the strange assumption

interest

of *death

The

instincts'.

led, so far as I

Some

which followed upon Weismann's suggestions can see, to no conclusive results in any direction. 1

discussion

who reHartmann

writers returned to the views of Goette (1883),

garded death as a direct

result of reproduction.

a (1906, 29) does not regard the appearance of a *dead body* as the criterion of death, living substance

dead portion of the

but defines death as 'the termination of individual development*. In this sense protozoa too are mortal; in their case death always coincides with reproduction, but is to some extent obscured by it, since the whole substance of the parent animal may be transmitted directly into the young offspring. Soon afterwards research was directed to the experimental

on unicellular organisms of the alleged immortality of living substance. An American biologist, Woodruff, experimenting with a ciliate infusorian, the *slipper-animalcule ,

testing

s

which reproduces by fission into two individuals, persisted until the 3029th generation (at which point he broke off the experiment), isolating one of the part-products on each occasion and placing it in fresh water. This remote descendent of the first slipper-animalcule was just as lively as its ancestor and showed no signs of ageing or degeneration. Thus, in so far as figures of this kind prove anything, the immortality of the protista seemed to be experimentally demonstrable. 2 Other experimenters arrived at different results. Maupas, i

Cf.

For

Hartmann (1906), Lipschiitz (1914) and Doflein (1919). this and what follows see Lipschiitz (1914, 26 and 52 fF.).

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

42

Calkins and others, in contrast to Woodruff, found that after a

number of divisions these infusoria become weaker, diminish in size, suffer the loss of some part of their organization and eventually die, unless certain recuperative measures are certain

applied to them. If this is so, protozoa would appear to die after a phase of senescence exactly like the higher animals thus completely contradicting Weismann's assertion that death is a

of living organisms. the aggregate of these experiments two facts emerge which seem to offer us a firm footing. First: If two of the animalculae, at the moment before they show signs of senescence, are able to coalesce with each other,

late acquisition

From

(soon after which they once more 'conjugate' from growing old and become *reare saved they separate), juvenated*. Conjugation is no doubt the fore-runner of the sexual reproduction of higher creatures; it is as yet unconnected with propagation, and is limited to the mixing of the substances of the two individuals. (Weismann's 'amphimixis'.) The recuperative effects of conjugation can, however, be replaced by that

is

to

certain stimulating agents, by alterations in the composition of the fluid which provides their nourishment, by raising their

temperature or by shaking them. We are reminded of the celebrated experiment made by J. Loeb, in which, by means of certain chemical stimuli, he induced segmentation in sea-urchins' eggs a process which can normally occur only after fertilization. Secondly: It is probable nevertheless that infusoria die a natural death as a result of their own vital processes. For the

and the others is due having provided each generation with fresh nutrient fluid. If he omitted to do so, he observed the same signs of senescence as the other experimenters. He concluded that the animalculae were injured by the products of metabolism which they extruded into the surrounding fluid. He was then able to prove conclusively that it was only the products of its own metabolism which had fatal results for the particular kind of animalcule. For the same animalculae which inevitably perished if they were

contradiction between Woodruff's findings to his

crowded together in their own nutrient fluid flourished in a solution which was over-saturated with the waste products of a distantly related species. An infusorian, therefore, if it is left to itself, dies a natural death owing to its incomplete voidance of

the products of its

own metabolism.

(It

may

be that the same

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE incapacity

is

the ultimate cause of the death of

43 all

higher

animals as well.)

At this point the question may well arise in our minds whether any object whatever is served by trying to solve the problem of natural death from a study of the protozoa. The primitive organization of these creatures may conceal from our eyes important conditions which, though in fact present in them too, only become visible in higher animals where they are able to find morphological expression.

And if we abandon the morpho-

of view and adopt the dynamic one, it becomes a matter of complete indifference to us whether natural death can be shown to occur in protozoa or not. The substance which is later recognized as being immortal has not yet become separated in them from the mortal one. The instinctual forces which seek to conduct life into death may also be operating in protozoa from the first, and yet their effects may be so completely concealed by the life-preserving forces that it may be very hard to find any direct evidence of their presence. We have logical point

made by biologists allow us to assume that internal processes of this kind leading to death do occur also in protista. But even if protista turned out to be seen, moreover, that the observations

immortal in Weismann's sense, his assertion that death is a late acquisition would apply only to its manifest phenomena and would not make impossible the assumption of processes tending towards it. Thus our expectation that biology would flatly contradict the recognition of death instincts has not been fulfilled. We are at liberty to continue concerning ourselves with their possibility,

we have other reasons for doing so. The striking similarity between Weismann*s distinction of soma and germ-plasm and our separation of the death instincts from the life instincts persists and retains its significance. We may pause for a moment over this pre-eminently dualistic view of instinctual life. According to E. Hering's theory, two kinds of processes are constantly at work in living substance, operating in contrary directions, one constructive or assimilatory and the other destructive or dissimilatory. May we venture to recognize in these two directions taken by the vital processes the activity of our two instinctual impulses, the life instincts and the death instincts? There is something else, at any rate, that we cannot remain blind to. We have unwittingly if

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

44

steered our course into the

sophy. For him death

is

harbour of Schopenhauer's philo-

the 'true result

and

to that extent the

1 instinct is the embodiment of purpose of life', while the sexual the will to live. [Cf. the Appendix to Freud, 19250.] Let us make a bold attempt at another step forward. It is that the union of a number of cells into generally considered a vital association the multicellular character of organismshas become a means of prolonging their life. One cell helps to preserve the life of another, and the community of cells can survive even if individual cells have to die. We have already heard that conjugation, too, the temporary coalescence of two unicellular organisms, has a life-preserving and rejuvenating effect on both of them. Accordingly, we might attempt to apply the libido theory which has been arrived at in psycho-analysis to the mutual relationship of cells. We might suppose that the life instincts or sexual instincts which are active in each cell take the other cells as their object, that they partly, neutralize the death

is, the processes set up by them) in those cells and thus preserve their life; while the other cells do the same for them, and still others sacrifice themselves in the performance of this libidinal function. The germ-cells themselves would behave to use the phrase that we in a completely 'narcissistic* fashion

instincts (that

are accustomed to use in the theory of the neuroses to describe a whole individual who retains his libido in his ego and pays

none of it out in object-cathexes. The germ-cells require

their

libido, the activity of their life instincts, for themselves, as a reserve against their later momentous constructive activity.

(The cells of the malignant neoplasms which destroy the organism should also perhaps be described as narcissistic in this same sense: pathology is prepared to regard their germs as innate and to ascribe embryonic attributes to them.) 2 In this way the libido of our sexual instincts would coincide with the Eros of the poets and philosophers which holds all living things together. Here then is an opportunity for looking back over the slow development of our libido theory. In the first instance the analysis of the transference neuroses forced upon our notice the opposition between the 'sexual instincts', which are directed towards an object, and certain other instincts, with which we were very insufficiently acquainted and which we described 1 2

Schopenhauer (1851; Samtliche Werke, ed. Hubscher, 1938, 5, 236). [This sentence was added in 1921.]

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE 1

45

A

foremost place among provisionally as the 'ego-instincts'. these was necessarily given to the instincts serving the selfwhat preservation of the individual. It was impossible to say

other distinctions were to be

drawn among them. No knowledge would have been more valuable as a foundation for true psychological science than an approximate grasp of the common characteristics and possible distinctive features of the instincts. But in no region of psychology were we groping more in the dark. Everyone assumed the existence of as many instincts or 'basic instincts' as he chose, and juggled with them like the ancient Greek natural philosophers with their four elements and water. Psycho-analysis, which could not

earth, air, fire

escape making some assumption about the instincts, kept at first to the popular division of instincts typified in the phrase 'hunger arid love'. At least there was nothing arbitrary in this; and by its help the analysis of the psychoneuroses was carried forward 1 quite a distance. The concept of 'sexuality , and at the same time of the sexual instinct, had, it is true, to be extended so as to cover many things which could not be classed under the

reproductive function; and this caused no little hubbub in an austere, respectable or merely hypocritical world.

The

next step was taken

when

psycho-analysis

closer towards the psychological ego, which it know only as a repressive, censoring agency,

had

felt its first

way come to

capable of erecting

protective structures

seeing minds had,

and

reactive formations. Critical

and

far-

true, long since objected to the concept of libido being restricted to the energy of the sexual instincts directed towards an object. But they failed to explain how they it is

had arrived at their better knowledge or to derive from it anything of which analysis could make use. Advancing more cautiously, psycho-analysis observed the regularity with which libido is withdrawn from the object and directed on to the ego (the process of introversion); and, by studying the libidinal development of children in its earliest phases, came to the conclusion that the ego is the true and Original reservoir of libido, 8 x [So, for instance, in the account of this opposition given in Freud's paper on psychogenic disturbances of vision (1910i).] * [This idea was fully stated by Freud in his paper on narcissism (1914*), Section I. See, however, his later footnote, near the beginning of Chapter III of The Ego and the Id (1923), in which he corrects this

statement and describes the id as 'the great reservoir of libido'.]

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

46

and that

it is

to objects.

only from that reservoir that libido

The ego now found

its

is

extended on

among sexual place among them.

position

and was at once given the foremost Libido which was in this way lodged in the ego was described as Narcissistic*. 1 This narcissistic libido was of course also a manifestation of the force of the sexual instinct in the analytical sense of those words, and it had necessarily to be identified with objects

the 'self-preservative instincts' whose existence had been recogfirst. Thus the original opposition between the ego-instincts and the sexual instincts proved to be

nized from the

inadequate. portion of the ego-instincts was seen to be libidinal; sexual instincts probably alongside others operated in the ego. Nevertheless we are justified in saying that the old formula

A

which lays it down that psychoneuroses are based on a conflict between ego-instincts and sexual instincts contains nothing that we need reject to-day. It is merely that the distinction between the two kinds of instinct, which was originally regarded as in some sort of way qualitative) must now be characterized differently namely as being topographical. And in particular it is still true that the transference neuroses, the essential subject of psycho-analytic study, are the result of a conflict between the ego and the libidinal cathexis of objects.

But it is all the more necessary for us to lay stress upon the libidinal character of the self-preservative instincts now that we are venturing

upon

the further step of recognizing the sexual

instinct as Eros, the preserver of all things, and of deriving the narcissistic libido of the ego from the stores of libido means

of which the

we now

by

of the

soma

are attached to one another. But find ourselves suddenly faced by another question. If cells

the self-preservative instincts too are of a libidinal nature, are there perhaps no other instincts whatever but the libidinal ones? At all events there are none other visible. But in that case we shall after all

be driven to agree with the

from the first that psycho-analysis explains

critics

who

suspected

everything by sexuality,

or with innovators like Jung who, making a hasty judgement, have used the word 'libido' to mean instinctual force in general. Must not this be so? It was not our intention at all events to produce such a result. Our argument had as its point of departure a sharp distinction between ego-instincts, which we equated with death instincts, i See my paper on narcissism (1914
BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE and sexual

instincts,

which we equated with

47

life instincts.

(We

were prepared at one stage [p. 33] to include the so-called selfinstincts of the ego among the death instincts; but preservative

we subsequently

[p. 46] corrected ourselves

on

this

point and

withdrew it.) Our views have from the very first been dualistict and to-day they are even more definitely dualistic than before now that we describe the opposition as being, not between egoinstincts and sexual instincts but between life instincts and death instincts. Jung's libido theory

is

on the contrary

monistic;

the fact that he has called his one instinctual force *libido* bound to cause confusion, but need not affect us otherwise. 1

is

We

suspect that instincts other than those of self-preservation operate in the ego, and it ought to be possible for us to point to them.

Unfortunately, however, the analysis of the ego has made so little

headway that

it is

very

difficult for us to

do

so. It is possible, in-

deed, that the libidinal instincts in the ego may be linked in a 2 peculiar manner with these other ego-instincts which are still strange to us. Even before we had any clear understanding of narcissism, psycho-analysts had a suspicion that the 'ego-instincts' had libidinal components attached to them. But these are very uncertain possibilities, to which our opponents will pay very attention. The difficulty remains that psycho-analysis has not enabled us hitherto to point to any [ego-] instincts other than the libidinal ones. That, however, is no reason for our falling in with the conclusion that no others in fact exist. In the obscurity that reigns at present in the theory of the instincts, it would be unwise to reject any idea that promises to started out from the great opposition throw light on it. between the life and death instincts. Now object-love itself presents us with a second example of a similar polarity that between love (or affection) and hate (or aggressiveness). If only we could succeed in relating these two polarities to each other and in deriving one from the other! From the very first we recognized the presence of a sadistic component in the sexual little

We

As we know, it can make itself independent and can, form of a perversion, dominate an individual's entire

instinct. 3

in the 1

were added in 1921.] [The two preceding sentences * by instinctual "confluence", to tiorrow [In the first edition only: a term used by Adler [1908] '.] * This was already so in the first edition of Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality in 1905 [Standard Ed., 7, 157 ff.; I.P.I., 57, 23 ff.]. *

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

48

sexual activity. It also emerges as a predominant component instinct in one of the 'pregenital organizations', as I have named them. But how can the sadistic instinct, whose aim it is the object, be derived from Eros, the preserver of life? to injure

not plausible to suppose that this sadism is in fact a death under the influence of the narcissistic libido, has been forced away from the ego and has consequently only emerged in relation to the object? It now enters the service of the sexual function. During the oral stage of organization of the libido, the act of obtaining erotic mastery over an object coincides with that object's destruction; later, the sadistic instinct separates off, and finally, at the stage of genital primacy, it takes on, for the purposes of reproduction, the function of overpowerIs

it

instinct which,

ing the sexual object to the extent necessary for carrying out the sexual act. It might indeed be said that the sadism which has been forced out of the ego has pointed the way for the libidinal components of the sexual instinct, and that these follow after it to the object. Wherever the original sadism has undergone no mitigation or intermixture, we find the familiar ambivalence of

and hate in erotic life. 1 an assumption as this

love

If such

demand

the

that

is permissible, then we have met we should produce an example of a death

though, it is true, a displaced one. But this way of looking at things is very far from being easy to grasp and creates a positively mystical impression. It looks suspiciously as though we were trying to find a way out of a highly embarrassing situation at any price. may recall, however, that there is nothing instinct

We

an assumption of this kind. We put one forward on an earlier occasion, before there was any question of an embarrass-

new

in

ing situation. Clinical observations led us at that time to the view that masochism, the component instinct which is complementary to sadism, must be regarded as sadism that has been turned round upon the subject's own ego. 2 But there is no difference in principle between an instinct turning from an object to the ego and its turning from the ego to an object which is the new point now under discussion. Masochism, the turning round of the instinct upon the subject's own ego, would 1

[This foreshadows Freud's discussion

Chap. IV of The Ego and 2

and

See

my

the

of instinctual 'fusion* in

Id (19236).]

Three Essays (1905
'Instincts

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

49

be a return to an earlier phase of the instinct's The account that was formerly given of masochism requires emendation as being too sweeping in one be such a thing as primary masochism respect: there might in that case

history, a regression.

a possibility which I had contested at that time. 1 Let us, however, return to the self-preservative sexual instincts. The experiments upon protista have already shown us that conjugation that is, the coalescence of two individuals

which separate soon afterwards without any subsequent cellhas a strengthening and rejuvenating effect 3 upon both of them. In later generations they show no signs of degenerating and seem able to put up a longer resistance to the injurious effects of their own metabolism. This single observation may, I think, be taken as typical of the effect produced by sexual union as well. But how is it that the coalescence of two only slightly different cells can bring about this renewal of life? The experiment which replaces the conjugation of protozoa by the application of chemical or even of mechanical stimuli (cf. Lipschtitz, 1914) enables us to give what is no doubt a conclusive reply to this question. The result is brought about by the influx of fresh amounts of stimulus. This tallies well with the hypothesis that the life process of the individual leads for internal reasons to an abolition of chemical tensions, that is to say, to death, whereas union with the living substance of a division occurring

different individual increases those tensions, introducing what may be described as fresh 'vital differences* which must then

be lived off. As regards this dissimilarity there must of course be one or more optima. The dominating tendency of mental life, and perhaps of nervous life in general, is the effort to reduce, to keep constant or to remove internal tension due to 1 A considerable portion of these speculations have been anticipated by Sabina Spielrein (1912) in an instructive and interesting paper which, however, is unfortunately not entirely clear to me. She there describes the sadistic components of the sexual instinct as 'destructive'. A. Starke (1914), again, has attempted to identify the concept of libido itself with the biological concept (assumed on theoretical grounds) of an impetus towards death. See also Rank (1907). All these discussions, like that in the text, give evidence of the demand for a clarification of the [A later theory of the instincts such as has not yet been achieved. discussion of the destructive instinct by Freud himself occupies Chapter VI of Civilization and its Discontents (1930a).] * See the account quoted above, pp. 41-2, from Lipschxitz (1914).

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

50

stimuli (the 'Nirvana principle', to

Low

borrow a term from Barbara

a tendency which finds expression in the * pleasure principle; and our recognition of that fact is one of our strongest reasons for believing in the existence of death [1920, 73])

instincts.

But we

still feel

our

line

of thought appreciably hampered by

we cannot

ascribe to the sexual instinct the characteristic of a compulsion to repeat which first put us on the

the fact that

track of the death instincts. The sphere of embryonic developmental processes is no doubt extremely rich in such phenomena of repetition; the two germ-cells that are involved in sexual

reproduction and their life history are themselves only repetitions of the beginnings of organic life. But the essence of the processes to which sexual life is directed is the coalescence of two cell-bodies. That alone is what guarantees the immortality of the living substance in the higher organisms. In other words, we need more information on the origin of sexual reproduction and of the sexual instincts in general. This

a problem which is calculated to daunt an outsider and which the specialists themselves have not yet been able to solve. We shall therefore give only the briefest summary of whatever seems relevant to our line of thought from among the many discordant assertions and opinions. One of these views deprives the problem of reproduction of its mysterious fascination by representing it as a part manifestais

tion of growth.

(Cf. multiplication

by

fission,

sprouting or

gemmation.) The origin of reproduction by sexually differentiated germ-cells might be pictured along sober Darwinian lines by supposing that the advantage of amphimixis, arrived at on some occasion by the chance conjugation of two protista, was

and further exploited in later development.* On this would not be anything very ancient; and the extraordinarily violent instincts whose aim it is to bring about retained

view

*sex

s

1 [Cf. p. 1 ff. The whole topic is further considered in 'The Economic Problem of Masochism* (1924<:).] * Though Weismann (1892) denies this advantage as well: 'In no case

does fertilization correspond to a rejuvenescence or renewal of life, nor occurrence necessary in order tha* life may endure: it is merely an arrangement which renders possible the intermingling of two different

is its

hereditary tendencies.' [English translation, 1893, 231.] He nevertheless believes that an intermingling of this kind leads to an increase in the variability of the organism concerned.

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE sexual union

51

would be repeating something that had once and had since become established as

occurred by chance being advantageous.

The question arises here, as in the case of death [p. 43], whether we do right in ascribing to protista those characteristics alone which they actually exhibit, and whether it is correct to assume that forces and processes which become visible only in the for the first higher organisms originated in those organisms time. The view of sexuality we have just mentioned is of little be raised against it help for our purposes. The objection may that it postulates the existence of life instincts already operating in the simplest organisms; for otherwise conjugation, which works counter to the course of life and makes the task of ceasing to live more difficult, would not be retained and elaborated but would be avoided. If, therefore, we are not to abandon the them to be hypothesis of death instincts, we must suppose associated from the very first with life instincts. But it must be admitted that in that case we shall be working upon an equation with two unknown quantities. Apart from this, science has so little to tell us about the to a darkorigin of sexuality that we can liken the problem ness into which not so much as a ray of a hypothesis has penetrated. In quite a different region, it is true, we do meet with such a hypothesis; but it is of so fantastic a kind a myth rather than a scientific explanation that I should not venture to produce it here, were it not that it fulfils precisely the one condition whose fulfilment we desire. For it traces 5

the origin of

an

instinct to a need

to restore

an

earlier state

of

things.

What put

I

have in mind

into the

is,

of course, the theory which Plato

mouth of Aristophanes in the Symposium, and which

deals not only with the origin of the sexual instinct but also with the most important of its variations in relation to its object. 'The original human nature was not like the present, but different. In the first place, the sexes were originally three in number, not two as they are now; there was man;, woman, and the union of the two. . .* Everything about these primaeval .

double: they had four hands and four feet, two faces, two privy parts, and so on. Eventually Zeus decided to cut these men in two, 'like a sorb-apple which is halved for pickAfter the division had been made, 'the two parts of man,

men was

ling'.

52

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

each desiring his other half, came together, and threw their arms about one another eager to grow into one'. 1 Shall we follow the hint given us by the poet-philosopher, and venture upon the hypothesis that living substance at the time of its coming to life was torn apart into small particles, which have ever since endeavoured to reunite through the sexual instincts? that these instincts, in which the chemical affinity of inanimate matter persisted, gradually succeeded, as they developed through the kingdom of the protista, in overcoming the difficulties put in the way of that endeavour by an environment

charged with dangerous stimuli stimuli which compelled them to form a protective cortical layer? that these splintered fragments of living substance in this way attained a multicellular condition and finally transferred the instinct for reuniting, in the most highly concentrated form, to the germ-cells? But here, I think, the moment has come for breaking off. 1 Qowett's translation. Footnote added 1921 :] I have to thank Professor Hcinrich Gomperz, of Vienna, for the following discussion on the origin of the Platonic myth, which I give partly in his own words. It is to be

remarked that what is essentially the same theory is already to be found in the Upanishads. For we find the following passage in the Brihaddranyoka-upanishad, 1, 4, 3 [Max-Mullcr's translation, 2, 85 f.], where the origin of the world from the Atman (the Self or Ego) is described: *But he felt no delight. Therefore a man who is lonely feels no delight. He wished for a second. He was so large as man and wife together. He then made this his Self to fall in two, and then arose husband and wife. Therefore Yagflavalkya .said:''" We two are thus (each of us) like half a shell.*' Therefore the void which was there, is filled by the wife.* The Brihaddranyaka-upanishadis, the most ancient of all the Upanishads, and no competent authority dates it later than about the year 800 B.C. In contradiction to the prevailing opinion, I should hesitate to give an unqualified denial to the possibility of Plato's myth being derived, even if it were only indirectly, from the Indian source, since a similar possibility cannot be excluded in the case of the doctrine of transmigration. But even if a derivation of this kind (through the Pythagoreans in the first instance) were established, the significance of the coincidence between the two trains of thought would scarcely be diminished. For Plato would not have adopted a story of this kind which had somehow reached him through some oriental tradition to say nothing of giving it so important a place unless it had struck him as containing an element of truth. In a paper devoted to a systematic examination of this line of thought before the time of Plato, Ziegler (1913) traces it back to Babylonian origins.

[Freud had already alluded to Plato's Standard Ed., 7, 136; I.P.L., 57, 2.]

myth

in his Three Essays,

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

53

Not, however, without the addition of a few words of critical

may be asked whether and how far I am myself convinced of the truth of the hypotheses that have been set out answer would be that I am not convinced in these pages. myself and that I do not seek to persuade other people to believe in them. Or, more precisely, that I do not know how far I believe in them. There is no reason, as it seems to me, why the emotional factor of conviction should enter into this question reflection. It

My

at all. It is surely possible to throw oneself into a line of thought and to follow it wherever it leads out of simple scientific curiosity, or, if the reader prefers, as an advocatus diaboli, who is not on that account himself sold to the devil. I do not dispute the fact that the third step in the theory of the instincts, which I have taken here, cannot lay claim to the same degree of certainty as the two earlier ones the extension of the concept of sexuality and the hypothesis of narcissism. These two innovations were a direct translation of observation into theory and were no more open to sources of error than is inevitable in all such cases. It is

assertion of the regressive character of instincts namely on the facts of the

true that

my

also rests

upon observed material

may be, however, that I have overestimated their significance. And in any case it is impossible to pursue an idea of this kind except by repeatedly combining factual material with what is purely speculative and thus diverging widely from empirical observation. The more frequently this is done in the course of constructing a theory, the more compulsion to repeat. It

untrustworthy, as we know, must be the final result. But the degree of uncertainty is not assignable. One may have made a lucky hit or one may have gone shamefully astray. I do not think a large part is played by what is called 'intuition* in work of this kind. From what I have seen of intuition, it seems to

me

to

be the product of a kind of

intellectual impartiality.

Unfortunately, however, people are seldom impartial where ultimate things, the great problems of science and life, are concerned. Each of us is governed in such cases by deep -rooted internal prejudices, into whose hands our speculation unwittingly plays. Since we have such good grounds for being distrustour attitude towards the results of our own deliberations cannot well be other than one of cool benevolence. I hasten to

ful,

add, however, that self-criticism such as this is far from binding to any special tolerance towards dissentient opinions. It is

one

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

54

perfectly legitimate to reject remorselessly theories which are contradicted by the very first steps in the analysis of observed

while yet being aware at the same time that the validity of one's own theory is only a provisional one. We need not feel greatly disturbed in judging our speculation upon the life and death instincts by the fact that so many bewildering and obscure processes occur in it such as one instinct being driven out by another or an instinct turning from the ego to an object, and so on. This is merely due to our being obliged to operate with the scientific terms, that is to say with facts,

the figurative language, peculiar to psychology (or, more precisely, to depth psychology). We could not otherwise describe the processes in question at all, and indeed we could not have become aware of them. The deficiencies in our description would probably vanish if we were already in a position to replace the psychological terms by physiological or chemical ones. It is true that they too are only part of a figurative language; but it is one with which we have long been familiar

and which

perhaps a simpler one as well. it should be made quite clear that the uncertainty of our speculation has been greatly increased by the necessity for borrowing from the science of biology. Biology is truly a land of unlimited possibilities. We may expect it to give us the most surprising information and we cannot guess what answers it will return in a few dozen years to the questions we have put to it. They may be of a kind which will blow away the whole of our artificial structure of hypotheses. If so, it may be asked why I have embarked upon such a line of thought as the present one, and in particular why I have decided to make I cannot deny that some of the analogies, it public. Well

On

is

the other hand

and connections which deserve consideration. 1

correlations

it

contains seemed to

me to

1 1 will add a few words to clarify our terminology, which has undergone some development in the course of the present work. We came to know what the 'sexual instincts' were from their relation to the sexes

and

to the reproductive function.

We retained

this

name

after

we had

been obliged by the findings of psycho-analysis to connect them less closely with reproduction. With the hypothesis of narcissistic libido and the extension of the concept of libido to the individual cells, the sexual was transformed for us into Eros, which seeks to force together and hold together the portions of living substance. What are commonly called the sexual instincts are looked upon by us as the part of Eros instinct

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

55

directed towards objects. Our speculations have suggested that Eros operates from the beginning of life and appears as a *Jife instinct* in opposition to the *death instinct* which was brought into being by the coming to life of inorganic substance. These speculations seek to solve the riddle of life by supposing that these two instincts were struggling with each other from the very first. [Added 1921 :] It is not so easy, perhaps, to follow the transformations through which the concept of the *ego-instincts* has passed. To begin with we applied that name to all the instinctual trends (of which we had no closer knowledge) which could be distinguished from the sexual instincts directed towards an object; and we opposed the ego-instincts to the sexual instincts of which the libido is the manifestation. Subsequently we came to closer grips with the analysis of the ego and recognized that a portion of the 'ego1 instincts is also of a Hbidinal character and has taken the subject's own ego as its object. These narcissistic self^preservative instincts had thenceforward to be counted among the iibidinal sexual instincts. The opposition between the ego-instincts and the sexual instincts was transformed into one between the ego-instincts and the object-instincts, both of a Iibidinal nature. But in its place a fresh opposition appeared between the

which

is

Iibidinal (ego- and object-) instincts and others, which must be presumed to be present in the ego and which may perhaps actually be observed in the destructive instincts. speculations have transformed this opposition into one between the life instincts (Eros) and the death

Our

instincts. [

For a general account of the development of Freud's views on the the Editor's Note to 'Instinc'ts and their Vicissitudes"

instincts, see ),

Standard Ed. t 14, 111.]

VII really the case that seeking to restore an earlier state of such a universal characteristic of instincts, we need not things be surprised that so many processes take place in mental life

IF

it is

is

independently of the pleasure principle. This characteristic would be shared by all the component instincts and in their

would aim at returning once more to a particular stage in the course of development. These are matters over which the pleasure principle has as yet no control; but it does not follow

case

that any of them are necessarily opposed to it, and we have still to solve the problem of the relation of the instinctual processes of repetition to the dominance of the pleasure principle.

We

have found that one of the

earliest

and most important

functions of the mental apparatus is to bind the instinctual impulses which impinge on it, to replace the primary process prevailing in them by the secondary process and convert their freely mobile cathectic energy into a mainly quiescent (tonic) cathexis. While this transformation is taking place no

can be paid to the development of unpleasure; but does not imply the suspension of the pleasure principle. the contrary, the transformation occurs on behalf of the

attention this

On

pleasure principle; the binding is a preparatory act which introduces and assures the dominance of the pleasure principle.

Let us make a sharper distinction than we have hitherto made between function and tendency. The pleasure principle, then, is a tendency operating in the service of a function whose business it is to free the mental apparatus entirely from excitation or to keep the amount of excitation in it constant or to cannot yet decide with certainty keep it as low as possible.

We

in favour of any of these ways of putting it; but it is clear that the function thus described would be concerned with the most universal endeavour of

all living substance to the quiescence of the inorganic world. enced how the greatest pleasure attainable

namely to return have all experi-

We

sexual act,

is

by us, that of the momentary extinction of a highly The binding of an instinctual impulse

associated with a

intensified excitation.

would be a preliminary function designed to prepare the excitation for

its final

elimination in the pleasure of discharge. 56

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

57

of whether feelings of pleasure and This can be produced equally from bound and from unpleasure unbound excitatory processes. And there seems to be no doubt whatever that the unbound or primary processes give rise to far more intense feelings in both directions than the bound or secondary ones. Moreover the primary processes are the earlier in time; at the beginning of mental life there are no others, and raises the question

we may infer that if the pleasure principle had not already been operative in them it could never have been established for the thus reach what is at bottom no later ones.

We

very simple

conclusion, namely that at the beginning of mental life the struggle for pleasure was far more intense than later but not so unrestricted: it had to submit to frequent interruptions. In later

dominance of the pleasure principle is very much it itself has no more escaped the process of taming than the other instincts in general. In any case, whatever it is that causes the appearance of feelings of pleasure and unpleasure in processes of excitation must be present in the times the

more

secure, but

secondary process just as it is in the primary one. Here might be the starting-point for fresh investigations.

Our

consciousness communicates to us feelings from within not only of pleasure and unpleasure but also of a peculiar tension which in its turn can be either pleasurable or unpleasurable. Should the difference between these feelings enable us to distinguish between bound and "unbound processes of energy? or is the feeling of tension to be related to the absolute magnitude, or

perhaps to the level, of the cathexis, while the pleasure and unpleasure series indicates a change in the magnitude of the cathexis within a given unit of time? * Another striking fact is that the life instincts have so much more contact with our internal perception emerging as breakers of the peace and constantly

producing tensions whose release is felt as pleasure while the death instincts seem to do their work unobtrusively. The pleasure principle seems actually to serve the death instincts. It is true that it keeps watch upon stimuli from without, which are regarded as dangers by both kinds of instincts; but it is more especially on guard against increases of stimulation from

within, which would make the task of living more difficult. This in turn raises a host of other questions to which we can at 1 [Cf. above, p. 2. These questions had already been touched on by Freud in his 'Project', e.g. in Part I, Section 8 and Part III, Section L]

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

58

no answer. We must be patient and await fresh methods and occasions of research. We must be ready, too, to abandon a path that we have followed for a time, if it seems to be leading to no good end. Only believers, who demand that science shall be a substitute for the catechism they have given up, will blame an investigator for developing or even transforming his views. We may take comfort, too, for the slow advances of our scientific knowledge in the words of the poet: present find

Was man Die

nicht erfliegen kann,

Schrift sagt, es

ist

muss

man

erhinken.

keine Siinde zu hinken. 1

1 The ['What we cannot reach flying we must reach limping. Book tells us U is no sin to limp.' The last lines of 'Die beiden Gulden', a version by Riickert of one of the Maqdmdt of al-Hariri. Freud also .

.

.

quoted these lines in a letter to FUess of Oct. 20, 1895 (Freud 1950a Letter 32).]

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS = Freud, Gesammclte Schriften (12 vols.), Vienna, 1924-34. = Freud, Gesarnmdtc W&rke (18 vols), London, from 1940.

G

QW. '

--

P

^" ,

j

TJ\

Standard Ed.) /.

PX.

Freud,

Collected Papers (5 vols.),

London, 1924-50.

= Freud, Standard Edition (24 vols.), London, from 1953. = International Psycho-Analytical Library, Hogarth Press and Institute of Psycho-Analysis,

Theoretische SehrifUn

= Freud,

London, from 1921.

Theoretischt Schriften (79/7-^5),

1931,

59

Vienna,

BIBLIOGRAPHY AND AUTHOR INDEX books and periodicals are in italics; tides of papers are in commas. Abbreviations are in accordance with the World List

[Titles of

inverted

of Scientific Periodicals (London, 1952). Further abbreviations used in this volume \vill be found in the List on page 59. Numerals in thick type refer to volumes; ordinary numerals refer to pages. The figures in round brackets at the end of each entry indicate the page or pages of this volume on which the work in question is mentioned. In the case of the Freud entries, the letters attached to the dates of publication are in accordance with the corresponding entries in the complete bibliography of Freud's writings to be included in the last volume of the Standard Edition.

For non-technical authors, and for technical authors where no work is mentioned, see the General Index.]

specific

ABLER, A.

'Der Aggressionsbetrieb im Leben und in der Neurose', Mid., No. 19, (47)

(1 908)

Forisckr.

J., and FREUD, S. (1893) See FREUD, S. (1893
BREUER,

(1940) See FREUD, S.(1940<0 DOFLEIN, F. (1919) Das Problem des Todes und der Unsterblichkeit bd dm Pflanzen und Tieren, Jena. (41) FECHNER, G. T. (1873) Einige Ideen zur Schopfungs- und Entwicktungsgeschichte der Organismen, Leipzig. (2, 4) J

FERENCZI,S. (1913) 'EntwicklungssUifendesWirklichkeitssinnes ,/n^<;. 1, 124. (35)

PsychoanaL,

[Trans.: 'Stages in the

Development of the Sense of Reality', London, 1952, Chap. VIII.]

First Contributions to Psycho-Analysis,

FUESS,

W.

FREUD,

S. (1893a)

(1906) DerAblaufdesLebens, Vienna. (39)

With BREUER, J.,'t)ber den psychischcn Mechanismus Phanomene: Vorlaufige Mittcilung', G.S., 1, 7;

hysterischer

2,3.] (1895rf)

G.W.,

With BREUER, 1, 75.

J.,

Stodun uber Hysterie, Vienna, G.S.,

Omitting Breuer's contributions.

(3, 19,

1;

21, 28)

[Trans.: Studies on Hysteria, Standard Ed., 2; I.P.L., 50. Including

Breuer*s contributions.]

(1900a) Die Traumdtutung, Vienna,

O, 2-3; G.W., 2-3.

(x,

8-9,

18-19, 26, 28) [Trans.:

The

Interpretation

5; Standard Ed.,

of Dreams, London and

-S.]

60

New

York,

BIBLIOGRAPHY FREUD,

61

S. (cont.)

Der Witz and seine Beziehung zum Unbewussten, Vienna. G.S., G. W., 6. (29) [Trans.: Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious, London, 1960;

(1905c) 9, 5;

Standard Ed., 8.] (1905
Vienna. G.S.,

5, 3;

G. W.,

47-8, 52)

[Trans.: Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, London, 1949; Standard Ed., 7, 125; I.P.L., 57.] (1910:) 'Die psychogene Sehstorung in psychoanalytischer Auffassung', G.S., 5, 301; G.W., 8, 94. (45) [Trans.: 'The Psycho-Analytic View of Psychogenic Disturbance of Vision', C.P., 2, 105; Standard Ed., 11, 211.] (19116) 'Formulierungen iiber die zwei Prinzipien des psychischen Geschehens', G.S., 5, 409; G.W., 8, 230. (xi, 4) [Trans.: *Formulations on the Two Principles of Mental Functioning', C.P., 4, 13; Standard Ed., 12, 215.] (1914c) 'Zur Einfuhrung des Narzissmus', G.S., 6, 155; G.W., 10, 138. (xii, 27, 45-6) [Trans.: 'On Narcissism: Ed., 14, 69.]

an

Introduction', C.P., 4, 30; Standard

(1914^) *Weitere Ratschlage zur Technik der Psychoanalyse: II Erinnern, Wiederholen und Durcharbeiten', G.S. t 6, 109; G. W., 10, 126. (12) [Trans.:

(Further

Repeating and Working Through Recommendations on the Technique of Psycho-

'Recollecting,

Analysis, II)', C.P., 2, 366; Standard Ed., 12, 147.] (1915c) 'Triebe und Triebschicksale', G.S., 5, 443; G.W., 10, 210. (xii, 24, 48, 55) [Trans.: Instincts and their Vicissitudes', C.P., 4, 60; Standard Ed., 14, 111.] (1915*) 'Das Unbewusste', G.S.> 5, 480; G.W., 10, 264. (1, 18, 22) [Trans.: 'The Unconscious', C.P 4, 98; Standard Ed., 14, 161.] in die Psychoanalyse, Vienna. 11. (14) [Trans.: Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis, revised ed., Lon-, York, don, 1929 (A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis,

(1916-17) Vorlesungen zur Einfuhrung G.S.,

7;G.W.,

New

1935); Standard Ed., 15-16.] (19176) *Eine Kindheitserinnerung aus Dichtung und Wahrheif, G.S., 10, 357; G.W., 12, 15. (10) [Trans.: 'A Childhood Recollection from Dichtung und Wahrhdt\ C.P., 4, 357; Standard Ed., 17, 147.]

5 (1917^) 'Metapsychologische Erganzung zur Traumlehre*, G.S., t 520;
Dreams', OP., 4, 137; Standard Ed., 15, 219.] der Kriegsneurosm, Vienna. (1919 12, 321. (6, 27)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

62

FREUD,

S. (cont.)

and the War Neuroses, [Trans.: Introduction to Psycho-Analysis London and York, 1921. C.P., 5, 83; Standard Ed., 17, 207.] G.S. y 10, 369; G.W., 12, 229. (ix-x) (19194) 'Das Unheimliche', Standard Ed., 17, 219.] [Trans.: 'The Uncanny*, C.P., 4, 368;

New

of Congress (1920/) 'Erganzungen zur Traumlehre' (Abstract Address), Int. %. Psychoan., 6, 397. of Dreams', Standard Ed., [Trans.: 'Supplements to the Theory 18, 4; I.P.L., 4, x.]

(1920^) Jenseitsdes Lustprinzips, Vienna. G.S., 6, 191; G.W., 13, 3. Standard Ed., 18, 7; [Trans.: Beyond the Pleasure Principle, I.P.L., 4.]

(1921) Introduction in English to J. Varendonck's The Psycho271. (xi) logy of Day-Dreams, London; Standard Ed., 18, [German Text (part only): G.S., 11, 264; G.W., 13, 439.] (1923) Das Ich und das Es, Vienna. G.S., 6, 353; G.W., 13, 237. 13,45,43) Ego and the Id, Standard Ed,, 19, 3; I.P.L., 12.] (1923c [1922]) 'Bemerkungcn zur Theorie und Praxis der Traumdeutung', G.S., 3, 305; G.W., 13, 301. (14, 26) [Trans.: 'Remarks on the Theory and Practice of DreamInterpretation*, C?., 5, 136; Standard Ed., 19, 109.] (1924c) 'Das okonomische Problem des Masochismus', G.S., 5, 374; G.W., 13, 371. (2, 50) [Trans.: 'The Economic Problem of Masochism', C.P., 2, 255; (xi,

[Trans.: The

Standard Ed,, 19, 157.]

(1925a [1924]) 'Notiz uber den "Wunderblock" *, G.S., 6, 415; G.W., 14,3. (19,22) [Trans.: 'A Note upon the "Mystic Writing-Pad" ', C.P., 5, 175; Standard Ed., 19,227.] (1925* [1924]) 'Die Widerstande gegen die Psychoanalyse', GJS., 11, 224; G.W., 14, 99. (44) [Trans.: *The^ ^Resistance to Psycho-Analysis', C.P., 5, 163; Standard Ed., 19,213.] (1926rf) Hemmung, Symptom und Angst, Vienna. G.S. t 11, 23; G.W.,

14,113.

(7,

14,24)

[Trans.: Inhibitions^ Symptoms and Anxiety, Standard Ed., 20, 77; I.P.L., 28.] (1930a) Das Unbehagen in der Kuttur, Vienna. G.S., 12, 29; G.W., 14, 421. (49)

[Trans.: Civilization and its Discontents, 1930; Standard Ed., 21, 59.]

--

London and New York,

(1940<0 With BREUER, J., 'Zur Theorie des hysterischen Anfalls',

G.W., 17,

9. (3)

'On the Theory of

Hysterical Attacks', C.P., 5, 27; Standard Ed., 1.] (1941s) Brief an Josef Breuer, G.W., 17, 5. (3) Letter to Josef Breuer, OP., 5, 25; Standard Ed., 1.] [Trans.: (1942
A

BIBLIOGRAPHY

63

S. (cont.)

FREUD,

305. Translation of 'Psychopathische Personen auf der Buhne', which has not been published in German. (11)

Aus den Anfangen der Psychoanalyse, London. [Includes 'Entwurf einer Psychologic' (1895).] (xii, 2-3, 19-20, 22-4,

(19500)

57-8) [Trans.: The Origins of Psycho-Analysis, 1954. (Partly, including 'A Project for

in Standard Ed., 1.)] (1955c) 'Gutachten iiber die elektrische [Trans.:

a

Scientific Psychology',

Behandlung der Kriegs-

German

text unpublished. (6) Memorandum on the Electrical

neurotiker'; *

London and New York,

Treatment of

War

Neuroses', Standard Ed., 17, 211.]

FREUD,

S.,

FERENCZI,

S.,

and

others* (1919)

%ur Psychoanalyse

der Krieg$~

neurosm, Vienna. (6) [Trans.: Psycho-Analysis

and

the

War

Neuroses,

London and New

York, 1921.] GOETTE, A. (1883) Uber den Ursprung des Todes, Hamburg. (41) HARTMANN, M. (1906) Tod und Fortpflanzung, Munich. (41) JUNG, C. G. (1909) 'Die Bedeutung des Vaters fur das Schicksal dcs Einzelnen', Jb. psychoanal. psychopath. Forsch., 1, 155. (16) [Trans.: "The Significance of the Father in the Destiny of the Individual', Collected Papers on Analytical Psychology, London, 1916, 156.]

Warum wir sterben, Stuttgart. (41, 49) Low, B. (1920) Psycho-Analysis, London. (50) MARCINOWSKI, J. (1918) 'Die erotischen Quellen der Minderwertig. Sexualwiss., 4, 313. (14) keitsgefuhle', LIPSCHUTZ, A. (1914)

1

PFEIFER, S. (1919) 'Ausserungen infantil-erotischer Triebe im Spiele , Imago, 5, 243. (8) RANK, O. (1907) Der Kunstler, Vienna. (49) RICKMAN, J. (ed.) (1937) A General Selection from the Works of Sigmund Freud, London, (xii) SCHOPENHAUER, A. (1851)

't^ber die anscheinende Absichtlichkeit

im

Schicksale des Einzelnen', Parerga und Paralipomena, 1 (Sdmtliche Werke, ed. Hubscher, Leipzig, 1938, 5, 213). (44) SPIELREIN, S. (1912) 'Die Destruktion als Ursache des Werdens', Jb. psychoanaL psychopath. Forsch., 4, 465. (49) STARCKE, A. (1914) Introduction to Dutch translation of Freud's '

"Civilized"

Sexual Morality and Modern Nervous

Illness',

Leyden. (49) Psychology of Day-Dreams, London, (xi) (1882) Uber die Dauer des Lebens, Jena. (39) (1884) DberLeben und Tod, Jena. (39-41) (1892) Das fCeimplasma, Jena. (39HM), 50) [Trans.: The Germ-Plasm, London, 1893.] klass. ZIEGLER, K. (1913) 'Menschen- und Weltenwerden', Neue Jb.

VARENDONCK, J. (1921) The

WEBMANN, A.

Altert.,

31, 529. (52)

GENERAL INDEX This index includes the names of non-technical authors. It also includes the names of technical authors where no reference is made in the text to specific works. For references to specific technical works, the Bibliography should be consulted. Abraham, K., 6 n. I Abreaction, 11 Active and passive in children's play,

Child, desire to have,

KM 1,29

compulsion to repeat 8-11, 17,29-30 play of, 8-11, 17,29

Ambivalence and the opposition between the life and death instincts, 47-8 Amphimixis, 42, 50

sexual researches

47-9, 56 Compulsion to repeat as an attribute of organic 30-2, 34, 38, 50-3, 56

ality,51-2

life,

12during psycho-analysis, 17, 29-30 in children, ix, xi, 8-1 1, 1 7, 29-30 in dreams during traumatic neuroses, 7, 17, 26-7 in normal people, 15-16

conservative nature of instinct in,

ix, xi,

29-34, 36 death of, 39-43 duration of life in, 39-44 Anticathexis, 24

Fear;

15

Component instincts,

Animals

also

of,

in, ix, xi,

Ctorinda (in Gerusalenane Liberata), 16

Analogy, Plato's myth of bisexu-

(set

15

ality)

Aggressiveness, 47

Anxiety

by father,

Childhood, traumas of, xi, 26 Children (sec also Infantile sexu-

Fright;

instinctual character of, ix, xi, 14-

defined,

6-7

15,17,29-31,50-3,56 Condensation, 28 Confluence of instincts, 47

preparedness for, 7 n. 1, 25-7 Anxiety dreams, x, 7, 26 Aristophanes, 51-2 Art, 11

Atman

(in the Upanishads), 1 'Autistic thinking , xi

52

.

1

Biological

concept of death, 39-43, 49 n.

Cs. (see

Conscious system)

51-2 1

'Daemonic force , 15, 29-30 Danger, perception of, 5-6, 33, 52 Darwin, Charles, 50 Day's residues, 28, 30

'Bound*

energy (see psychical Energy, psychical, bound and

unbound) Brain, anatomy of the, 18 Braut mm Messina, Die,- 39 Breutr, 7. (see also Bibliography),

Death aim oflife is, 32-4, 3&-9, 49

20-1, 25, 28

biological

49 Calkins,

also

m 2,

56

1

54

Bisexuality,

2

Constancy, principle of (see Excitatory processes), 3, 3

Beiden Gulden, Die, 58

factors,

n.

Conscience, x Conscious system, 18-22, 28 Consciousness admissibility to, 12-13, 19 origin of, 19-21

Cathexis

(set

42

concept

of,

39-43,

n. 1

internal necessity of, 32, 38-41, 43 'natural', 34, 39-43

Excitatory processes)

Wtismanrfs views on, 39-43

Censorship, x, 45

64

GENERAL INDEX Death instinct (seealso Ego-instincts),

54 ix, 32-5, 38, 40-1, 43-51, equated with ego-instinct, 38, 46,

54.

in opposition to life instinct, xi, 34-5, 38, 43, 47, 54 n.

Dementia praecox, 27 Destiny, compulsion of, 15-17 Destructiveness, xi, 49 n. 1 Displacement in dreams, 28 Dream-content, manifest, 28

65

External world, 18, 20-2

Fairy tales, 14 Father

3

daughter's desire for a child by, 15 jealousy of, 10 Faust (Goethe), 36

Fear

also (see Anxiety; Fright; Phobia), 6, 7 . Fechnert G. T. (see also Bibliography), 2 4 >.

Dreams and sleep, 26-7

Ferencziy S.

6

n. 1,

(see also

26-7,

39,

58

Bibliography),

7

Fliess, Wilhelm

26

anxiety-, x, 7, as wish-fulfilments, x~xi, 7,

B.

(see also

Bibliography),

n.

censorship of, x, 45

Forgetting, 26 Fright (see also Anxiety; Fear), 6-7,

displacement in, 28 during psycho-analysis, 15, 26 hallucinatory character of, 26 'prospective* function of, x

Genital primacy, 48 Gervsalemme Liberata (Tasso), 16

punishment-, x, 26

Goethe, 10 n. 2,

30

traumatic, xi,

7, 17,

26

Dream-thoughts, latent, xi

Dream-work,

xi,

25

36

Gompcrz, H., 52 n. Guilt, sense of, 26

1

28 Hague, The, x Hallucinatory character of dreams,

Ego and

pleasure principle, 14, 17 as reservoir of libido, 44-6, 48 masochistic trends of, 7-8, 48-9 nucleus of, 13 repressive forces of, 13-14, 17 unconscious part of, 13-14 unification of, 4-5, 13, 27

Ego

ideal,

x

Ego-instincts (see also Death instinct; Self-preservation, instinct of),

38,4^7 equated with death 46,

54

instinct, 38,

n.

26 Hereditary factors, 31 Hering, E. t 43

Hunger, 45 Hypochondria, 6 Hysteria, x, 6-7 Id, the, 45 . 2 Inertia, neuronic, principle of, 3 Infantile sexuality, 1 2, 14-15, 45 Inferiority, sense of, 14-15 Instincts

also

(see

stincts;

Death

Component

.

in-

Ego-

instinct;

in opposition to sexual instinct, 35, 38, 44-9, 54 n. Eitingon, Dr. Af., ix

instincts; Life instinct; Self-preservation, instinct of; Sexual

Embryology, 20, 31, 50

45-7, 49

Energy, psychical, bound and unbound, 1-2, 20-5, 27-30, 56-7 Eros (see also Libido; Life instinct; Sexual instinct), xi, 36-7, 44, 46, 48, Excitations

54

external, 20-6, 34, 35 n. 3, 49-50,

instinct),

4-5, n. 1,

14-15,

28-38,

53-7

'conservatism' of, 30-5, 38 Instinctual character of the compulsion to repeat, ix, xi, 14-15, 17, 29-31, 50-3, 56 International Psycho-Analytical Congress, x

Introversion,

45

52,57 internal, 22-3, 28, 57 Excitatory processes, 1, 3, 17, 30,

56-7

Jealousy of father, 10 of younger child, 10

B. 1,

15

GENERAL INDEX

66 Jokes, 29

Jones, E.,6n. I Jowctt, B., 52 n. I Jung, C. G. (see also Bibliography),

46-7

Oedipus complex, 12, 14-15 Oral phase, 48 Organic injury, and neurosis, 6, 27 life, and the compulsion to repeat, 30-2, 34, 38, 53, 56

Kant,

/.,

22

Libido

48

as reservoir of, 44-6,

ego Jung's view

46-7

of,

54 n. Libido theory, 27, 44-8, 49 n. Narcissistic, 46, 48,

54 n.

1 ,

Life

aim of,

death, 32, 34, 38-9, 49 duration of, 39-44 origin of, 32-3, 35, 50 Life instinct (see also Eros; Sexual is

instinct), 34-5, 38, 43-8, 51, 54,

57 loeb,

Pain, physical, 24 Pan-sexualism, 46 Parental complex, 14m 2 Parents and children, relation between (see also Father; Mother;

Oedipus complex), 14-15 Ptpt. (see Perceptual system) PCS. (see Preconscious system)

Perceptual system, 18-19,22 Periodicity (Fliess's theory of), 39 Perversion, 47-8

Phantasies

unconscious, xi

3; 42

wishful,

Maqdmdt of al-Hariri, 58

n.

Masochism, 7-8, 48-9 Maupas, E., 41-2 Melancholia, 6, 27

Memory- traces,

18-19, 30

Mental apparatus, 3-5,

8, 18,

23-6,

28-9, 56

30

Anxiety), 36 Physical injury and neurosis, 6, 27 pain, 24 Plants, 33-4, 39 Plato, 51-2, 52 n. 1 Play of children, 8-1 1, 1 7, 29 Pleasure principle

Phobias

(see also

Mephistopheles (in Faust}, 36 Migration of birds and fishes, 3 1 Mother, child's fear of losing, 8-10

dominance of, 1-4, 11, 14, 23-9, 49-50, 56-7 over-ridden by compulsion to re-

Myths, 51, 52

peat, ix, 8-1 1, 14-18, 36-40, 56 relation to principle of constancy,

n. 1

3 Preconscious system, xi, 13, 28 Primary process (see also Energy,

Narcissism, 14, 46-8, 53^ and physical injury, 27 'of germ-cells',

Neuroses

44

(see also

rosis;

Obsessional neu-

Transference-neuroses;

Traumatic neuroses;

War

neu-

roses)

sexual aetiology of, 33-*, 45 theory of, 33-4, 44-5 Neurotics

compared

to

normal persons, 15

16 psycho-analysis

of, ix, xi,

29-30 'Nirvana principle*, 50 Object-choice, 44-9, 54 Object-instincts, 54 n. Obsessional neurosis, x

13-16,

psychical, bound and unbound), 4, 28-9, 56-7 Primitive peoples, superstitious beliefs of,

39

Principle constancy,

3

n. 2,

insusceptibility

of 2

3,

systems, 24

n.

neuronic inertia, 3 'Nirvana*, 50

n.

uncathected 2

pleasure (see Pleasure principle) reality, 4-5, 14, 29 stability (Fechner),

n.

56

2-3

Projection, 23 'Prospective* function of dreams, x Protective shield against stimuli,

21-6

GENERAL INDEX Protista,

12-15

Psycho-analytic technique, 1 Psycho-analytic theory, 46 'pan-sexualism' of, Psycho-analytic treatment of neurotics, ix, xi, 13-16, 29-

30 termination

of,

of,

1,7

Superstitious belieis, 39

sion to repeat)

Repression

and compulsion to repeat, 12-14, 26,30 and pleasure principle, 5, 14 13-14, 17, 45

36-7

Resistance

and

n.

Symposium, The, 51-2

Reaction-formation, 45 Reality-principle, 4-5, 14, 29 Regression, masochism as, 49 Repeat, compulsion to (see Compul-

of,

origin of, 50-2 Sexual intercourse, 56 Shock and traumatic neurosis, 25

Suggestion as a factor in psychoanalysis, 14n. 2, 26

Quality, 2-3, 23, 25 Quantity, 2, 2 n. 1, 25

instinctual, 5, 14,

ego, 14

of, in psycho-analytic treatment, 12-14 transference exploited by, 17

overcoming

Ruckert F., 58 n.

Tancred (in Gerusalemme Liberaia), 16 Tasso, 16 Three Wishes, The, 14 n. 3 Time, sense of, related to Pcpt.-Cs.,

22 Tragedy,

11

Transference, 12, 15-17, 30 exploited by resistance, 17 Transference neuroses (see also HysObsessional Neurosis), teria; 12-13, 44, 46 Transmigration, 52 n. 1

Trauma,

6-8, 23-7

infantile, xi,

26

Traumatic dreams,

26 17,25-9

x, xi, 7, 1 7,

neurosis, 6-8,

Sadism, 47-8, 49 39 Schopenhauer, A.

instinct, 34-5,

Sleep and dreams, 26-7 Stability, principle of (Feehner), 2-3 Stimuli, 20-6, 34, 35 n. 3, 49-50, 52, 57

12-13

Psychoneuroses (see Neuroses) Punishment-dreams, x, 26 n. I Pythagoras, 52

ego as agent

life

38, 40, 44, 47, 54 n. in opposition to ego-instincts, 35, 38, 44-7, 54 .

Simmel, E., 6

30

therapeutic aspect

67

equated with

38-44, 49-52

n. 1

Uncathected

Schiller, F.,

also

Biblio-

(see also

Energy,

(see

graphy), 44

Secondary process

psychical, bound 28, 30, 56-7

and unbound)

Self-preservation, instinct of (see also Ego-instincts), 4, 33, 45-7, 49,

54 n. Sexual aetiology of the neuroses, 33-

4,45 Sexual curiosity of children, 15 Sexual excitement and mechanical agitation, 27 Sexual instinct (see also Eros; Libido;

systems,

insuscepti-

bility to excitation of,

Unconscious ego, 13-14 mental processes, 12-13, systems, 28 Unconscious, the, 28 relation to Cs., 19, 22, tixnelessness of,

24 n. 2

18,

22

28

22

Unpleasure, 1-5, 10-11, 14-15, 18, 23-4, 32, 56-7 Fechner's

view

of,

2-4

neurotic, 'pleasure that cannot felt as such', 5 Upanishads, 52 n.

be

1

Life instinct)

and component instincts, 47-8, 49 n. 1,53 and pleasure principle, 4-5

Varendonck,J. (see also Bibliography),

GENERAL INDEX

68

Waking

life,

relation of

dreams

to,

28

War of 1914-18, War neuroses, 6 Weismann, A.

39-43

6

(see also

Wsh-nilfilment in dreams, x-xl, 26-7, 30 Woodruff, L. L. 9 41-2

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The Child's Conception of Number.

Piaget Jean

Genetic Eptstemology.

,

.

Piaget, Jean.

Dreams and Imitation

Play,

Piaget, Jean,

and Barbel Inhelder.

Piaget, Jean,

and Barbel Inhelder.

in Childhood.

The Child's Conception of Space. The Origin of the Idea of Chance in Children.

and Alina Szeminska.

Piaget, Jean, Barbel Inhelder,

The Child's Conception of

Geometry.

and Milton B. Singer.

Piers, Gerhart,

Piers ,

Maria

W. (Ed

.

Play

Truth

Will Therapy. Rank, Otto. Ruesch J urgen and Gregory Bateson ,

Shame and GUI It.

and Development.

Ann James Premack. and Reality.

Premack, David and

Rank, Otto.

).

,

.

The

Mind of an Ape.

Communication: The Social Matrix

of Psychiatry.

Schwartz, Barry (Ed Schwartz, Barry and

.

).

Psychology of Learning: Readings in Behavior Theory.

Hugh

Lacey,

Behaviorism, Science,

and Human Nature: An

Introduction to Conditioning.

Sullivan,

Sullivan,

Harry Stack. Harry Stack.

Sullivan, Harry Stack. Sullivan, Harry Stack. Sullivan,

Harry Stack.

van den Berg Walter,

W.

,

J.

H

.

Grey.

Watson, John B.

Clinical Studies in Psychiatry. Conceptions of Modem Psychiatry.

The Interpersonal Theory of Psychiatry. The Psychiatric Interview. Schizophrenia as

a Human

Process.

The Changing Nature of Man. The Living Brain. Behaviorism.

Wheelis, Allen.

The Quest for

Williams, Juanita

H

Identity.

Psychology of Women: Behavior in a Biosocial Context

.

(2d Ed.).

Williams, Juanita H. (Ed. ). Zilboorg, Gregory.

A

Psychology of Women: Selected Readings.

History of Medical Psychology.

Selected Liveright Paperbacks

PSYCHIATRY AND PSYCHOLOGY Jones, Ernest.

On the Nightmare.

Kohler, Wolfgang.

Dynamics in

Kohler, Wolfgang.

Gestalt Psychology.

Kohler, Wolfgang

The Mentality of Apes. The Place of Value in a World of Fact.

.

Kohler, Wolfgang. Kohler, Wolfgang. Luria, Alexander R.

Stekel ,

Wilhelm

Stekel,

Wilhelm.

Relation to Sex.

.

Psychology.

The Selected Papers of Wolfgang Kohler. The Nature of Human Conflicts. Impotence in the Male.

Sexual Aberrations: The Phenomena of Fetishism in

SlOMl'NO

FREUD

Beyond the Pleasure Principle Translated and edited by James Strachey Introduction and notes by Gregory Zilboorg

PUBLIC LIBRARY

HH^

m^-w ocnrpr

T tw***^

Tfwr 132 F89be

Freud, Signwnd, 1856-1939. en Beyond the pleasure

principle

/

Beyond the Pleasure Principle

By

SIGMUND FREUD

AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL STUDY

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE CIVILIZATION

AND

ITS

DISCONTENTS

THE COMPLETE INTRODUCTORY LECTURES ON PSYCHOANALYSIS THE EGO AND THE FIVE LECTURES

ID

ON PSYCHOANALYSIS

THE FUTURE OF AN ILLUSION GROUP PSYCHOLOGY AND THE ANALYSIS OF THE EGO INHIBITIONS,

SYMPTOMS AND ANXIETY

INTRODUCTORY LECTURES ON PSYCHOANALYSIS JOKES AND THEIR RELATION TO THE UNCONSCIOUS

LEONARDO DA VINCI AND A MEMORY OF HIS CHILDHOOD

NEW INTRODUCTORY LECTURES ON PSYCHOANALYSIS ON DREAMS

ON THE HISTORY OF THE PSYCHOANALYTIC MOVEMENT AN OUTLINE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS

THE PSYCHOPATHALOGY OF EVERYDAY LIFE

THE QUESTION OF LAY ANALYSIS

TOTEM AND TABOO

THE STANDARD EDITION OF THE COMPLETE PSYCHOLOGICAL WORKS OF SIGMUND FREUD 24 VOLUMES

Beyond Pleasure

the

Principle

SIGMUND FREUD

by

JAMES STRACHEY

Introduction by

GREGORY ZILBOORG

W.W-NORTON&COMPANY NEW YORK -LONDON

W

W. Norton

& Company, Inc.,

500 Fifth Avenue,

New York,

W

W. Norton &

N.Y. 10110 Company Ltd. 37 Great Russell

London

Street,

WC1B3NU

1961 BY JAMES STRACHBY

COPYRIGHT

Reprinted by arrangement with Liveright Publishing Corporation

1959 by Bantam Books. of the publisher. Reprinted by permission

Introduction Copyright

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Published simultaneously in Canada by

Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 2801 John Street, Markham, Ontario L3R 1B4.

W. W. Norton

& Company,

Inc.

is

also the publisher

of the

works of Erik H. Erikson, Otto Fenichel, Karen Homey, Harry Stack Sullivan,

and The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological

Works of Sigmund Freud, Data library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Freud, Sigmund, 1856-1939

Beyond the pleasure

principle.

Translation of Jenseits des Lust-Prinzips.

Reprint of the ed. published by Liveright,

New York.

Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. Pleasure. 2. Psychoanalysis.

BF173.F65

1975

150.19'52

I.

Title.

74-22476

Printed in the United States of America

67890 ISBN 0-313-007t1-3

CONTENTS Introduction

Editor's

Note

Beyond the Pleasure Principle

vu xvii

1

List of Abbreviations

59

Bibliography and Author Index

60

General Index

64

INTRODUCTION by Gregory Zilboorg, M.D.

A

QUESTION which seems natural and almost unavoidable What can one say about a book, and a little one at

arises:

which is forty years old, and which is supposedly not one of the most impressive or "spectacular" bits of Freud's many writings? The question presupposes the implied answer that that,

even in our swift-moving world is a long time, that the book in question is therefore more or less superannuated and deserves but a respectful historical glance before we put forty years

it

back on the shelf to gather more dust. It is obvious that the above is a rhetorical way of saying

that forty years after

its

appearance and twenty years after

Beyond the Pleasure Principle still deserves considerable attention, and that the reader would do well if he reads it with studious curiosity. Of recent years we have Freud's death,

become so accustomed

to the atmosphere of controversy which surrounds psychoanalysis and Freud that we have almost lost our capacity to pick up a book on psychoanalysis

without wanting to know in advance whether the book is for or against it, or, if it is for it, whether it is for Freud or for Jung, or, Freudian.

if it is

If

Freudian, whether

we dared

have no

difficulty in

analysis

is

it is

orthodox or neo-

to be frank with ourselves,

we would

admitting that our judgment of psychoactually fragmentary and not too profound. We

could also admit that some sort of partisanship possesses us, and that therefore we are preoccupied with "taking sides" long before

we

psychoanalysis

get acquainted with the very first elements of the subject.

and the many-sidedness of

It is because of the various prejudices which have inculcated themselves into psychoanalytical and nonpsychoanalytical circles that it is pertinent to invite both the initiated and

the uninitiated reader to suspend his fragmentary judgment

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

viii

and re-read afresh the

for a short while

little

book

that

is

here offered, and acquaint or re-acquaint himself with the sound of Freud's written voice, with his way of saying things, and then with the substance of what he has to say.

An

introduction

what

is

not supposed to explain in advance

said in the book;

is

Rather,

it is

meant

still less is it

to interpret

it.

intended to clarify some shadows and point to which will possibly set the book in a

certain lights

proper

perspective.

Bearing

this in

mind,

let us first recall that

Freud wrote

Beyond the Pleasure Principle when he was sixty-four years old a mature age indeed-and at a time when psychoanalysis had already achieved considerable popularity, even though was

still

possible to assess the degree of

number of enemies isms of

Freud

its

it

it

importance by the had. The tone of the book, the manner-

still

combatting his opponents rather than

trying to instruct his proponents. his life,

in

almost controversial;

style are vigorous, poignant,

seems was

it

its

Freud preserved

this

Almost

to the last years of

combative vigor of writing, and

Beyond the Pleasure Principle

this

aspect of style stands

out markedly, particularly when he emphasizes his claim that he is a partisan of no special philosophy and that he is indifferent as to whether

what he has

to say does or does

not

fit

any

known philosophy. This claim for independence personality casts

this

and of

aspersion

on

all his

is

writings,

characteristic of Freud's

but

I

believe

it

in

no way

his originality or his genius, if I say that

declaratory independence should not be taken too

ously.

No one, and particularly no genius,

is

seri-

really free of the

ideological inheritance which he carries within himself as a child of a given generation. He may not be aware of it, of

but Freud would have been the last man in the world equate not being aware of something with its nonexistence. For it was of course Freud himself who discovered and uncourse, to

folded before us the staggering richness and many things of which we are not aware.

power within us

of so

It is of some interest in this connection to recall that Freud denied ever having been acquainted with the writings of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche before he formulated of

many

his ideas. It was beyond any doubt an honest denial Yet it is a matter of record that Hitschmann, one of the earliest ad-

INTRODUCTION

ix

herents of Freud, read a paper in Freud's house as early as 1905 (Freud being present, of course) on the very subject of Nietzsche's ideas as

There

is

no doubt

compared with some of Freud's theories. that, whether or not Freud ever read

The Genealogy

Nietzsche's

of Morals, his was the tempera-

ment and the aspiration of a proud iconoclast who, to paraphrase an old saying of Maxim Gorki's, was born to soar and not to crawl, and for whom soaring accomplishment was not a pleasure in itself but a temporary level strove to attain ever-greater heights.

from which he

If we cast but a glance at the rough sketch of a general psychology which we find in Freud's letters to Fliess, we cannot help but be struck by the depth, diapason and im-

mense horizons which Freud envisaged

as the

culmination

of his system. And these letters, we must remember, written before 1900, that is to say, before the first book

were

(The

Interpretation of Dreams] which really launched psychoanalysis into the stormy waters of a world which never was

able to approach the study of the psychology of man without prejudice and considerable animosity and controversy be it religious, scientific, or plain pedestrian. The ambition with

which Freud's mind was

fired

from the very

outset,

and

his

particular goal of discovering, or uncovering, the real nature of man's mind, predestined him as a thinker and a man to

become a storm center

He

was

for years to come.

also a daring paradox, giving the

self-contradiction, of inconsistency,

semblance of

and of all-solidity. Freud's

apparent readiness to change his mind added a great number of dissenters

and detractors

as

if

the scientist

who

has the

courage to change his mind about some of his own ideas has gained a point against himself. The great majority of people do confuse stubbornness for consistency, and rigidity of scientific ideas for

soundness of position.

At any 'rate, Beyond the Pleasure Principle is one of the first great landmarks in Freud's ways of "changing his mind." put these words in quotes to cast at least a little doubt on the traditional attitude that Freud did change his mind in I

this instance.

He

did not.

What Freud

did here was to add a

path or two, a little curve or fork, in the tortuous intellectual road which he followed with dogged faith in his own intellectual independence.

The

additions or added trends of thought

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

x

cannot be fully grasped and even less understood unless one the inner psychological atmosphere in always bears in mind

which Freud worked

in order to express his ideas.

was always terse, straightforward, clear and challengingly frank; but the same thing cannot be said about the emotional climate of his thought. First of all, His literary

style

Freud never gave up his belief-I am tempted to say faiththat the parallel he drew between Fechner's ideas in physics his own in human psychology was not really a parallel but an actual proof that his concept of the mental apparatus and its energy was actually the same as Helmholtz' and

and

Fechner's ideas about physical energy. To this faith he clung to the last, expressing the hope that some day the whole comof human reactions and relations could be reduced plexity

some as yet undiscovered physico-chemical reactions. In other words, Freud remained an organidst throughout his scientific life. But genius and living paradox that he was, to

Freud was rejected by the materialists (conservative

as well

Marxian) because of his alleged mysticism; and he was rejected by the idealists and religious thinkers because he was as

thought to be a materialist.

The

contradictions into

which Freud's detractors thus

stumbled remained unnoticed as a rule, but Freud was of course aware of them and saw in eral resistance,

Yet

it

was not only

them merely that.

To

"mystic," was an expression of opprobrium,

Freud who stated that by

saints

epithet,

and yet

was

it

were saved from severe neuroses

their sainthood, their faith;

tion St. Francis of Assisi.

a sign of gen-

Freud the

he mentioned in

He who studies

this

connec-

the lives of the saints

would not

easily issue to all of them, and without reservation, a certificate of psychological health. They were saints because neuthey were able to stand the pressure of their

respective

roses rather than because they did not suffer lives

of

St.

from them.

The

Ignatius Loyola, or San Francisco Xavier, or St.

Augustine for that matter, offer ample confirmation of

my

viewpoint.

As one studies Freud, one can develop the strong suspicion he was more attracted by many mystics than by physicochemical hypotheses, and that he struggled with all the might that

of his great

of the

mind

against openly giving in to the attraction

mystical aspects of

human

life.

In other words, the

man

INTRODUCTION

xi

than twenty years after he wrote Beyond the Pleasure the man who Principle wrote his Moses and Monotheism,

who

less

five years before Beyond the Pleasure Principle wrote the article on Michelangelo's Moses, seems throughout this

some

with the greatness of span of time to have been preoccupied human intuitions and the universality of human strivings not of life. And only to solve but to participate in the mysteries it is perhaps because of this inclination that Freud gave signs of "protesting too much." (Perhaps too this is one of the reasons first

why

his article

anonymously;

it

on Michelangelo's Moses appeared

was only much

later that

it

was admitted

that Freud, the Editor-in-chief of the Zeitschrift fur Psycho-

analyse, was the real author of the article.)

While the complex question of Freud's intellectual strugwith his own ideas is far from solved, there is little doubt

gles

that the aggressive, trenchant, emphatic tone of his writings,

which seem

to be full of conviction

and devoid of doubt, does

not fully convey Freud's struggle with his own ideas, which at times must have reached heroic dimensions. It is because of Freud's aggressive candor, it seems to me, that his earliest followers seem more to have stood in awe, listening to his pronouncements, than actually to have assimilated his

thought like true disciples, ready to ask friendly critical questions in order to deepen and broaden the understanding of their master's thought.

The

very few of his followers

who

were endowed with truly original minds and truly ambitious soon broke with Freud; Jung is perspicacity and intuition one of the few one can cite in this respect. The majority be-

came

either surly, hostile enemies

ponentsor admiring,

rather than scientific opfollowers rather than

enthusiastic

scientific collaborators. It is

therefore of particular interest to note that there was

hardly a psychoanalyst outside Freud himself who ever made an original contribution to the theory and practice of psychothis is particularly true of the time when Freud analysis-f

wrote his Beyond the Pleasure Principle. The one exception one can cite with certainty was Karl Abraham, who made an inestimable contribution to the clinical understanding of and of depression, a contribution which

character formation

was spontaneously and "painlessly" incorporated into the

body of psychoanalytic knowledge some

five years

before the

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

xii

the Pleasure Principle. But even in appearance of Beyond the case of Abraham things were not all clarity and sunshine;

many

of his colleagues were not very kindly disposed to the as Jones has written, said that he

man, and Freud himself, was suspicious of

his

"Prussian

mind"-Abraham being

a

Berliner.

All of the above amounts to saying that the constant and "true" followers of Freud were not very original minds; they

were not mediocrities, but for some reason they would not or perhaps could not "speak up" until Freud spoke first. It because of this that Beyond the Pleasure Principle partly in the history of the development acquired such significance of Freudian psychoanalysis. It acquired the reputation of a is

landmark in how Freud changed his mind and how daring he was in doing so. As a matter of cold fact, the book is an important contribution, a thrust forward in the growth of Freudian thought; but if one reads it carefully one will easily see that

Freud did not change

his

mind, and that Beyond the

Pleasure Principle did not overthrow any old psychoanalytic regime nor did it establish any new one. It was not even a small village revolution;

it

was and

is

a landmark of further

development and a consolidation of the older pathways. Beyond the Pleasure Principle is what it says; it goes a little further beyond, but

This writer

lays

it

does not abandon whatever preceded it. to an understanding of Freud's

no claim

writing better than anyone's else who approaches Freud with the earnestness he deserves and the tolerance which is imperative,

even

say "even

now some twenty

now"

years after Freud's death. I

for the

following reason; at the beginning Freud had to suffer from the many whose quick and ever

misjudgment of him multiplied by thousands the number of his antagonists in every walk of the world's intellectual life. of Today, with the full text of Freud at the

alert

disposal every curious reader of the world, everybody claims Freud as his own, because everybody just as alertly is ready to interpret Freud in his own way. Thus a plethora of "schools" has mush-

roomed

in the psychological literature, each claiming

philosophical, moral and scientific right to consider forts et origo,

in

its

own

preters

and

its

own

Freud

its its

exclusive right to understand Freud

exclusively correct way. This splintering of interand misinterpreters of Freud is not unnatural, of

INTRODUCTION

xiii

course; the process will undoubtedly continue for some time before the real Freud will stand out in the history of our intellectual

development

we may look calmly and Since

it is

him

for

into

whom

not in anyone's power to slow down or to accelit cannot be the ambition

erate the salutary passage of time, of this writer to attempt to do so.

mate

whom and

as a figure at

objectively.

But

this

much

it is

legiti-

to essay to do: to point out that the vigor of

Freud's thought, stimulating as it has always been and is, is frequently obscured by his at times too hasty terminological innovations. Not that one objects to such innovations, or that

one ought to insist on semantic hair-splitting; but Freud, whose clarity of thought and daring intellectual improvisawere always impressive and enlightening, suffered not infrequently from a certain confusion, at first unnoticeable tions

at length presenting an impediment to easy or clear understanding. Beyond the Pleasure Principle serves as an

but

excellent example. First, there is the tendency which imperceptibly grew into assertive tradition that, having gone beyond the pleasure principle,

he abandoned that principle. This, as

I

have

al-

ready said, is not true. The reader, bearing this in mind, cannot fail but see it once the text is perused without prejudice,

without the unwitting psychological twist which makes him read Beyond the Pleasure Principle and assume that the

We

might as well state pleasure principle was left behind. right here that the assiduous and faithful translators of Freud, in bringing before the English-speaking readers Freud's ver-

sion of the pleasure-pain theory, did not help matters

when

they coined a neologism, "unpleasure." This awkward term is supposed to render somewhat accurately the German term Unlust. It is not an exactly successful rendition (except etymoiogically, perhaps). The feeling of pain, of discomfort, of that disagreeable malaise which Freud has in mind is not

perceived as un-pleasure, for what

we

feel in this

malaise

we

and not negatively as a lack of something else. This point need not be labored; it is brought out here merely to illustrate how difficult it is to tell the reader what a given feel positively,

writer wants to say in a language his own, but not yours.

Now

let

allegedly

us ask ourselves what appears to be new and not as old in Beyond the Pleasure Principle.

abandoned

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

xiv

The

concept of "compulsive repetition" or "repetition compulsion." Some still quarrel with this concept, some no

The arguments for and against it are of no parimportance here. What is important is that new con-

longer do. ticular

newly formulated, require greater clarity of definition. Freud discovered the repetitiveness of certain patterns of human behavior and the inevitability or, if you wish, the

cepts,

inescapable nature of this repetitiveness.

phenomenon

And

he called

this

"repetition compulsion" or "compulsive repe-

tition."

We

have become accustomed to the term "compulsion" of compulsion neuroses in other words, a

when we speak

neurosis which makes the sufferer therefrom aware that he is

"compelled by something" to make this or that gesture or or that turn or else he feels uncomfortable, at

this

times plainly anxious. It detail to observe that the

uneasy, hardly necessary to go into more compulsive element of which Freud is

speaks when he speaks of compulsive repetition is something that the individual is not conscious of, that the

element in at

all,

this

concept

is

or not necessarily,

compulsive something which is not neurotic and that it is just as or no more

compulsive than breathing or the changing of the seasons. To use the term "compulsive" here connotes something that it is not and implies things which are not necessarily there~a rather strange semantic fuzziness on the part of that uniquely clear-minded thinker. Such unclarities are strewn throughout of Freud's writings and translations, and if they do not always confuse the casual reader or even the student, one

many

would do well in being forewarned and therefore in reading and studying Freud with considerable caution and prudence. One more example: the second major innovation which Freud introduced into psychoanalytic thinking was the concept of the death instinct. Now we have become accustomed,

Freud emphasized the role of instincts in life of man, to consider an a drive, an impulsive or perpetually compelling asto piration gratify a need. In German, Freud uses the words Trieb and Triebhaft, which mean instinct, instinctual drive,

particularly since

the conscious and unconscious instinct

a sense of being driven toward a certain even though not always comprehended goal. Under the circumstances, the term "death instinct" ought to mean an a drive to aspiration,

INTRODUCTION

xv

be dead. Perhaps Freud was right, even though neither the nor the theologian would find it possible to agree biologist with him. Let us assume that Freud was right; he certainly did not prove his case, because there is nothing instinctual

about dying, even though the end is inevitable. Here again we find a strange semantic or terminological confusion, a tendency to use terms which are familiar to us in the psychoanalytic glossaries,

somewhat confusing

The above

but which

in certain contexts

become

labels.

considerations

may

serve as a warning that

it is

not easy to understand great minds even when they appear to speak simply, or perhaps especially when their language familiar. appears simple and the terminology

EDITOR'S NOTE JENSEITS DES LUSTPRINZIPS (a)

GERMAN

1920

EDITIONS:

Leipzig,

Vienna and Zurich: Interaationaler Psycho-

analytischer Verlag. Pp. 60.

1921

2nd

1923

3rd ed.

1925

(?.,

1

93 1

Same publishers. Pp. 64. Same publishers. Pp. 94.

6, 191-257.

Theoretische Schriften,

1940

(b]

ed.

1

78-247.

G.W., 13,3-69.

ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS: Beyond

1922

the Pleasure

Principle

London and Vienna: Press. Pp. viii

-f-

International Psycho-Analytical 90. (Tr. C. J. M. Hubback; Pref.

Ernest Jones.)

1924 1942

New York: Boni and Liveright. London: Hogarth Press and Institute of Psycho-Analy(Re-issue of above.) Publishers. Pp. vi 97. (Tr. J. Strachey.) S.R, 18, 3-64. (Modified version of above.) sis.

1950 1955

+

Same

Freud made a number of additions in the second edition, but subsequent alterations were negligible. The present translation is a corrected reprint of the Standard Edition version.

As is shown by his correspondence, Freud had begun working on a first draft of Beyond the Pleasure Principle in March, 1919, and he reported the draft as finished in the following May. During the same month he was completing his paper on 'The Uncanny* (1919A), which includes a paragraph setting out much of the gist of the present work in a few sentences. In this paragraph he refers to the 'compulsion to repeat' as a pheno-

menon

exhibited in the behaviour of children

and in psychohe suggests that this compulsion is something derived from the most intimate nature of the instincts; analytic treatment;

and he

declares that

it is

powerful enough to disregard the xvii

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

xviii

There is, however, no allusion to the 'death pleasure principle. He adds that he has already completed a detailed

instincts'.

The paper on 'The Uncanny' consummary was published in the autumn of 1919.

the subject. exposition of taining this

But Freud held back Beyond the Pleasure Principle for another In the early part of 1920 he was once more at work on it,

year.

and now, for the

first

time apparently, there

a reference to

is

the 'death instincts' in a letter to Eitingon of February 20.

He

May and June and it was finally completed by the middle ofJuly, 920. On September 9, he gave was

still

revising the

work in

1

an address at

to the International

The Hague, with

the

title

Psycho-Analytical Congress 'Supplements to the Theory of

Dreams' (Ergsnzungen zur Traumkhre), in which he announced the approaching publication of the book; it was issued early in December. An 'author's abstract' of the address appeared in

of this was pub%. PyckoanaL, 6 (1920), 397-8. (A translation

Int.

lished in Int. J. Psycho- Anal^ 1, 354.) It does not

that this abstract

was in

interest to reprint

it

fact

by Freud

here (in a

'Supplements
to the

new

seem

himself, but

it

certain

may

be of

translation).

Theory of Dreams'

remarks with three points touching upon the theory of dreams. The first two of these were concerned with the thesis that dreams are wish-fulfilments and

The speaker dealt in

his brief

brought forward some necessary modifications of it.

The

third

point related to material which brought complete confirmation of his rejection of the alleged "prospective" purposes of dreams, 1

"The speaker explained

that, alongside the familiar wishful

dreams and the anxiety dreams which could easily be included in the theory, there were grounds for recognizing the existence of a third category, to which he gave the name of "punishment dreams". If we took into account the justifiable assumption of the existence of a special self-observing and critical agency in the ego (the ego ideal, the censor, conscience), these punish-

ment dreams,

too, should

be subsumed under the theory of

would represent the fulfilment of a critical agency. Such dreams, he said,

wish-fulfilment; for they

wish on the part of this

had approximately the same relation to ordinary wishful dreams 1

[See The Interpretation of Dreams, 1900a,

506-7

n.]

VI

(I),

Standard Ed., 5,

EDITOR'S NOTE aft action formation,

had

to those

of hysteria.

'Another class of dreams, however, seemed to the speaker to more serious exception to the rule that dreams are present a wish-fulfilments.

These were the so-called "traumatic" dreams.

in patients suffering from accidents, but they also occur during psycho-analyses of neurotics and bring back to

They occur

them forgotten traumas of childhood. In connection with the problem of fitting these dreams into the theory of wish-fulfilment, the speaker referred to a work shortly to be published title of Beyond the Pleasure Principle.

under the

'The third point of the speaker's communication related to

an investigation that had not yet been published, by Dr. Varendonck of Ghent. This author had succeeded in bringing under his conscious observation the tasies

on an extensive

production of unconscious phana half-sleeping state a process

scale in

which he described as

"autistic thinking". It

enquiry that looking ahead at the

this

day, preparing attempts at solutions

wholly within the range of

appeared from of the next

possibilities

and adaptations,

etc.,

this preconscious activity,

lay

which

dream-thoughts, and, as the speaker had x always maintained, had nothing to do with the dream-work.'

also created latent

In the

series

of Freud's metapsychological writings, Beyond may be regarded as introducing the final

the Pleasure Principle

He had already drawn attention to the 'compulsion to repeat* as a clinical phenomenon, but here he attributes to it the characteristics of an instinct; here too for the phase of his views.

first

time he brings forward the

and the death

instincts

new

which found

Dichotomy its fiill

between Eros

elaboration in The

Ego and the Id (1923i). In Beyond the Pleasure Principle, too, we can see signs of the new picture of the anatomical structure of the mind which was to dominate all Freud's later writings. Finally, the

problem of destructiveness, which played an ever in his theoretical works, makes its first

more prominent part

The

explicit appearance.

derivation of various elements in the

present discussion from his earfier metapsychological

such as 'The 1

Two

Cf. Freud's

own

IWlb, Standard Ed.,

Principles of

works-

Mental Functioning' (19116),

preface to this book of Varendonck's (Freud,

U

t

271).

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

xx 'Narcissism'

(19150) is

(191-k)

and

will be obvious.

'Instincts

But what

the closeness with which

present

work follow the

(19500), drafted

is

and

their

Vicissitudes'

particularly remarkable

some of the

earlier sections of the

a Scientific 'Project for Psychology'

by Freud twenty-five years

earlier, in 1895.

Extracts from the earlier (1922) translation of this

included in Rickman's General

#af (1937,

Selection from the

work were

Works ofSigmnd

162-194).

Editorial additions, whether to the text or the footnotes, are

printed in square brackets.

Beyond the Pleasure Principle

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

IN the theory of psycho-analysis we have no hesitation in assuming that the course taken by mental events is automatically regulated by the pleasure principle. We believe, that is to say,

that the course of those events

unpleasurable tension,

is

and that

invariably set in motion by an it takes a direction such that

outcome coincides with a lowering of that tension that with an avoidance of unpleasure or a production of pleasure, In taking that course into account in our consideration of the

its final is,

mental processes which are the subject of our study, we are introducing an 'economic' point of view into our work; and if, in describing those processes, we try to estimate this 'economic' factor in addition to the

we

'topographical* and 'dynamic' ones,

be giving the most complete description of them of which we can at present conceive, and one which shall, I think,

deserves to be distinguished It far,

1

by the term 'metapsychologicaT. of no concern to us in this connection to enquire how with this hypothesis of the pleasure principle, we have is

approached or adopted any particular, historically established, We have arrived at these speculative

philosophical system. assumptions in an

attempt to describe and to account for the of daily observation in our field of study. Priority and work originality are not among the aims that facts

psycho-analytic and the impressions that underlie the hypothesis of the pleasure principle are so obvious that they can scarcely be overlooked. On the other hand we would our sets itself;

readily express gratitude to any philosophical or psychological theory which was able to inform us of the meaning of the feelings of pleasure and unpleasure which act so imperatively upon us. But on this

point

we

are, alas, offered

nothing to our purpose. This

is

the

most obscure and inaccessible region of the mind, and, since we cannot avoid contact with it, the least rigid hypothesis, it seems to me, 1

will

be the

[See Section

IV

best.

We

have decided to relate

of 'The Unconscious' (191&).] 1

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

2

and unpleasure pleasure in the mind but present

to the quantity of excitation that is

not in any

way

'bound';

1

and

is

to

manner that unpleasure corresponds to the quantity of excitation and pleasure to a diminution. What we are implying by this is not a simple relation relate

an

them

in such a

iaartast in

between the strength of the feelings -of pleasure and unpleasure and the corresponding modifications in the quantity of excitain view of all we have been taught by psychotion; least of all

physiologyare we suggesting any

directly proportional ratio:

the factor that determines the feeling

is

probably the amount of

increase or diminution in the quantity of excitation in a given

Experiment might possibly play a part here; but not advisable for us analysts to go into the problem further so long as our way is not pointed by quite definite

time. period of it

is

observations.*

We cannot, however, remain indifferent to the discovery that an investigator of such penetration as G. T. Fechner held a view on the subject of pleasure and unpleasure which coincides in all essentials

with the one that has been forced upon us by is to be found con-

psycho-analytic work. Fechner's statement

lungsgesckichti

and reads

der

Organimen, 1873 (Part XI, Supplement, 94),

as follows: 'In so far as conscious impulses

always have some relation to pleasure or unpleasure, pleasure and can be too a as regarded unpleasure having psycho-physical relation to conditions of stability basis for

a hypothesis

into

and instability. This provides a

which

I

propose to enter in greater

detail elsewhere.

According to this hypothesis, every psychophysical motion rising above the threshold of consciousness is attended by pleasure in proportion as, beyond a certain limit, stability, and is attended by unas, beyond a certain limit, it deviates from complete stability; while between the two limits, which may be described as qualitative thresholds of pleasure and

it

approximates to complete

pleasure in proportion

1

[The concepts of

'quantity*

and of *bound'

excitation,

which rua

through the whole of Freud's writings, found what is perhaps their most detailed discussion in the early 'Project' (1950a [1895]). See in particular the long discussion of the term 'bound* near the cad of Section 1 of Part III of that work. See also p. 28

f. below.] again mentioned below on p. 57 and further de1 veloped in "The Economic Problem of Masochism (1924*).]

1

[This point

is

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE there

unpleasure, ence.

3

a certain margin of aesthetic

is

indiffer-

* .

The

.'

.

facts

which have caused us

to believe in the

dominance

of the pleasure principle in mental life also find expression in that the mental apparatus endeavours to keep the

hypothesis the quantity of excitation present in it as low as possible or at keep it constant. This latter hypothesis is only another

least to

way of

for if the stating the pleasure principle;

work of the

mental apparatus is directed towards keeping the quantity of excitation lowj then anything that is calculated to increase that quantity

is

apparatus,

bound that

to

is

be

felt as

adverse to the functioning of the

as unpleasurable.

The

pleasure principle

follows from the principle of constancy: actually the latter

from the

which forced us

was adopt principle the pleasure principle.* Moreover, a more detailed discussion will show that the tendency which we thus attribute to the inferred

facts

to

mental apparatus is subsumed as a special case under Fechner's of the 'tendency towards stability', to which he has principle brought the feelings of pleasure and unpleasure into relation, It must be pointed out, however, that strictly speaking it is incorrect to talk of the dominance of the pleasure principle over the course of mental processes. If such

the

immense majority of our mental

a dominance

processes

existed,

would have

to

be

accompanied by pleasure or to lead to pleasure, whereas universal experience completely contradicts any such conclusion.

in the

The most that can be

mind a strong

that that tendency

is

stances, so that the final

i

[Cf. 'Project',

saidj therefore, is that there exists

towards the pleasure principle, but opposed by certain other forces or circum-

tendency

outcome cannot always be in harmony

end of Section 8 of Part

I

'Aesthetic*

is

here used in

the old sense of 'relating to sensation or perception'.] 1 [The 'principle 'of constancy' dates back to the very beginning of Freud's psychological studies. The first published discussion of it of any

of length was by Breuer (in semi-physiological terms) towards the end Section 2 (A) of his theoretical part of the Studies on Hysteria (Breuer and Freud, 1895). He there defines it as 'the tendency to keep intracerebral excitation constant'. In the

same passage he

attributes this principle to

Freud and there in fact exist one or two earlier very brief references to it by Freud himself, though these were not published until after bis death. (See Freud, 1941a [1892] and Breuer and Freud, 1940 [1892].)

The

subject

'Project',

is

also discussed at length at the beginning of Freud's

under the name of 'neuronic

inertia'.]

'

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

4

with the tendency towards pleasure, We may compare what Fechner (1873, 90) remarks on a similar point: 'Since however a

tendency towards an aim does not imply that the aim

and

since in general the

tions.

.

.

aim

is

attainable only

is

attained,

by approxima-

.*

now to the

If we turn

question of what circumstances are able from being carried into effect,

to prevent the pleasure principle

we find

ourselves once

more on secure and well-trodden ground

and, in framing our answer, of analytic experience.

The in this

first

we have

at

our disposal a rich fund

example of the pleasure principle being inhibited familiar one which occurs with regularity. We

way is a

know

that the pleasure principle is proper to a primary method of working on the part of the mental apparatus, but that, from the point of view of the self-preservation of the organism among

the difficulties of the external world, inefficient

it is

from the very outset

and even highly dangerous. Under the influence of

the ego's instincts of self-preservation, the pleasure principle is 1 replaced by the reality principle, This latter principle does not

abandon the nevertheless

intention of ultimately obtaining pleasure, but

demands and

of satisfaction,

it

carries into effect the

postponement the abandonment of a number of possibilities of

gaining satisfaction and the temporary toleration of unpleasure as a step on the long indirect road to pleasure. The pleasure principle long persists, however, as the method of working em-

ployed by the sexual

which are so hard to 'educate',

instincts,

and, starting from those instincts, or in the ego itself, it often succeeds in overcoming the reality principle, to the detriment of

There can be no doubt, however, that the replacement of the by the reality principle can only be made

pleasure principle

responsible for a small

number, and by no means the most Another occasion of the

intense, of unpleasurable experiences.

release of unpleasure, to

be found in the

which occurs with no

conflicts

and

less regularity, is

dissensions that take place in the

ment into more highly composite organizations. Almost all the energy with which the apparatus is filled arises from its innate instinctual impulses. But these are not all allowed to reach 1

[See 'Formulations

Freud 191 16.]

on

the

Two

Principles of Mental Functioning

5 ,

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

5

same phases of development. In the course of things it and again that individual instincts or parts of happens again the

instincts turn

out to be incompatible in their aims or demands

with the remaining ones, which are able to combine into the inclusive unity of the ego. The former are then split off from

back at lower levels unity by the process of repression, held of psychical development and cut off, to begin with, from the of satisfaction. If they succeed subsequently, as can possibility this

happen with repressed sexual instincts, in struggling to a direct or to a substitutive through, by roundabout paths, satisfaction, that event, which would in other cases have been an so easily

for pleasure, is felt by the ego as unpleasure. As opportunity a consequence of the old conflict which ended in repression, a

new breach has occurred in the pleasure principle at the very time when certain instincts were endeavouring, in accordance with the principle, to obtain fresh pleasure, The details of the turns a possibility of pleasure into a process by which repression source of unpleasure are not yet clearly understood or cannot

be clearly represented; but there is no doubt that all neurotic as such. 1 unpleasure is of that kind pleasure that cannot be felt

The two

sources of unpleasure which I have just indicated

are very far from covering the majority of our unpleasurable experiences.

But

as regards the

remainder it can be asserted with

some show ofjustification that their presence does not contradict the

dominance of the pleasure

that

principle.

of pressure by unsatisfied instincts; or it tion

Most of the unpleasure

we experience is perceptual unpleasure, which

is

It may be perception may be external percep-

either distressing in itself or

which

excites

un-

that is, pleasurable expectations in the mental apparatus which is recognized by it as a 'danger', The reaction to these instinctual demands and threats of danger, a reaction which constitutes the proper activity of the mental apparatus,

can

then be directed in a correct manner by the pleasure principle or the reality principle by which the former is modified. This does not seem to necessitate any far-reaching limitation of the the investigation of the mental pleasure principle. Nevertheless reaction to external danger is precisely in a position to pro-

duce new material and raise fresh questions bearing upon our present problem. i the essential point is [Footnote added 1925:] No doubt and unpleasure, being conscious feelings, are attached to

that pleasure the ego.

II

A

CONDITION has long been known and described which occurs mechanical concussions, railway disasters and other

after severe

life; it has been given the name of The terrible war which has just ended gave a great number of illnesses of this kind, but it at least put

accidents involving a risk to

'traumatic neurosis'. rise to

to the

an end

temptation to attribute the cause of the disorder

to organic lesions of the nervous system

mechanical

force.

1

The symptomatic

brought about by

picture presented

by

traumatic neurosis approaches that of hysteria in the wealth of its similar motor symptoms, but surpasses it as a rule in its

marked

strongly

signs of subjective ailment (in

which

it re-

sembles hypochondria or melancholia) as well as in the evidence it gives of a far more comprehensive general enfeeblement and disturbance of the mental capacities. No complete explanation has yet been reached either of war neuroses or of the traumatic neuroses of peace. In the case of the war neuroses, the fact that the same

symptoms sometimes came about without the

inter-

vention of any gross mechanical force seemed at once enlightening and bewildering. In the case of the ordinary traumatic neuroses two characteristics emerge prominently: the chief weight in their causation seams to rest factor of surprise, of fright; inflicted simultaneously

of a neurosis. 'Fright*, as

synonymous

first,

that

upon the

and secondly, that a wound or injury

works as a rule

'fear'

and

against, *

'anxiety'

the development

are improperly used

expressions; they are in fact capable of clear dis-

tinction in their relation to danger. 'Anxiety' describes a particular state of expecting the danger or preparing for it, even

be an unknown

one. Tear' requires a definite may object of which to be afraid. 'Fright', however, is the name we the to a state give person gets into when he has run into danger

though

it

without being prepared for it; it emphasizes the factor of surprise. I do not believe anxiety can produce a traumatic neuro1

a.

the discussion

on the psycho-analysis of war neuroses by Freud,

Abraham, Simmcl and Jones (1919) [to which Freud provided the introduction (1915W). See also his posthumously published on the Electrical Treatment of War Neuroses' 'Report (1955* [1920]).]

Fercnczi,

[In

German,

'&W, 'Fackf and 'Angst.] 6

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE There

sis.

is

7

something about anxiety that protects

against fright

and

so against fright-neuroses.

to this point later [p.

25

We

its

subject

shall return

1

f.].

The study of dreams may be considered

the most

trustworthy

method of investigating deep mental processes. Now dreams occurring in traumatic neuroses have the characteristic of the patient back into the situation of his repeatedly bringing accident, a situation from which he wakes up in another fright.

This astonishes people far too Me. They think the fact that the traumatic experience is constantly forcing itself upon the a proof of the strength of that experione might say, fixated to his trauma. Fixations to the experience which started the illness have long in his sleep patient even ence: the patient is, as

is

been familiar to us in hysteria. Breuer and Freud declared in z 1893 that 'hysterics suffer mainly from reminiscences'. In the

war

neuroses, too, observers like Ferenczi

and Simmel have

been able to explain certain motor symptoms by fixation to the moment at which the trauma occurred. I am not aware, however, that patients suffering from traumatic neurosis are much occupied in their waking lives with memories of their accident Perhaps they are more concerned not thinking of it. Anyone who accepts it as something sel evident that their dreams should put them back at night into the situation that caused them to fall ill has misunderstood the

with

nature of dreams. It would be more in harmony with their nature if they showed the patient pictures from his healthy past or of the cure for which he hopes. If we arc not to be shaken in tenor of dreams by the dreams

our beliefjn the

wish-fulfilling

of traumatic neurotics, we still have one resource open to us: we may argue that the function of dreaming, like so much else, is upset in this condition and diverted from its purposes, or we 1

is very far indeed from always carrying out the distinche makes here. More often than not he uses the word *4ngst' to a denote state of fear without any reference to the future. It seems not

[Freud

tion

unlikely that in this passage he is beginning to adumbrate the distinction drawn in Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety (1926V) between anxiety as a

reaction to a traumatic situation called Schrtck

an

and anxiety

as

probably equivalent

to

what

is

here

a warning signal of the approach of such

event. See also his use of the phrase 'preparedness for anxiety

on

p. 25.] *

['On the Psychical Section I.]

Mechanism of Hysterical Phenomena', end of

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE y be driven

to reflect

*

on the mysterious masochistic Jiends ;

'

At this point I propose to leave the dark and dismal subject of the traumatic neurosis and pass on to examine the method of working employed by the mental apparatus in one of earliest normal activities

The

I

mean

its

in children's play.

different theories of children's play

have only recently

been summarized and discussed from the psycho-analytic point of view by Pfeifer (1919), to whose paper I would refer

my

These theories attempt to discover the motives which

readers,

lead children to play, but they fail to bring into the foreground the economic motive, the consideration of the yield of pleasure involved. Without wishing to include the whole field covered

have been

a

chance opable, through by these phenomena, portunity which presented itself, to throw some light upon the first game played by a little boy of one and a half and invented I

by

himself. It

was more than a mere

fleeting observation, for I

under the same roof as the child and

lived

weeks, and

it

was some time before

his parents for

I discovered the

some

meaning

of the puzzling activity which he constantly repeated. The child was not at all precocious in his intellectual de-

velopment. At the age of one and a half he could say only a few comprehensible words; he could also make use of a number of sounds which expressed a meaning intelligible to those around him. He was, however, on good terms with his parents and their

one

servant-girl,

boy'.

and

tributes

were paid to

He did not disturb his parents

at night,

his

being a 'good

he conscientiously

obeyed orders not to touch certain things or go into certain rooms, and above all he never cried when his mother left him for a

few hours. At the same time, he was greatly attached to

mother, who had not only fed him herself but had also looked after him without any outside help. This good little boy, however, had an occasional disturbing habit of taking any small his

objects

a

he could get hold of and throwing them away from him

corner, under the bed,

and so on, so that hunting for his and picking them up was often quite a business. As he did this he gave vent to a loud, long-drawn-out 'o-o-o-o', accompanied by an expression of interest and satisfaction. His mother

into

toys

1

[The

last 15

words of this sentence were added in 192 1 For

see The Intirpretation of Dreams (1900a), Standard Ed., 5,

.

550

ff.]

all this

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

9

and the writer of the present account were agreed in thinking that this was not a mere interjection but represented the Ger-

man word game and

I eventually realized that it was a 'faf ['gone']. made of any of his toys was to

that the only use he

with them,

play 'gone'

confirmed

One day

my view. The

of string tied round

it,

It

child

I

What he

riage.

throw

observation which reel with

never occurred to him to pull

the floor behind him, for instance,

skilfully

made an

had a wooden and play

at

its

a piece it

along being a car-

did was to hold the reel by the string and very over the edge of his curtained cot, so that it

it

at the same time uttering his expressive disappeared into it, Vo-o-o'. He then pulled the reel out of the cot again by the

and hailed

string

This, then,

its

W

reappearance with a joyful

was the complete game

['there'].

disappearance and return.

As a rule one only witnessed its first act, which was repeated untiringly as a game in itself, though there is no doubt that the greater pleasure

The

was attached to the second

interpretation of the

was related

act.

1

game then became

stinctual renunciation (that

is,

away without

protesting.

He compensated

his

is

mother to go

himself for

by himself staging the disappearance and

objects within his reach. It

the in-

the renunciation of instinctual

which he had made in allowing

satisfaction)

were,

obvious. It

to the child's great cultural achievement-

this, as it

return of the

of course a matter of indifference

from the point of view of judging the effective nature of the game whether the child invented it himself or took it over on

some outside point.

The

suggestion.

Our

interest

child cannot possibly have

is

directed to another

felt his

mother's departHow then does

ure as something agreeable or even indifferent. his repetition

of this distressing experience as a game fit in with may perhaps be said in reply that her

the pleasure principle? It

departure had to be enacted as a necessary preliminary to her joyful return, and that it was in the latter that lay the true purpose 1

A

fully.

further observation subsequently confirmed this interpretation the child's mother had been away for several hours and

One day

on her return was met with the words 'Baby o-o-o-o!' which was at first incomprehensible. It soon turned out, however, that during this long period of solitude the child had found a method of making himself disappear, He had discovered his reflection in a full-length mirror which did not quite reach to the ground, so that by crouching

make

down he could

mirror-image 'gone'. [A further reference to this story will be found in The Interpretation of Dreams, Standard Ed., 5, 461n.j his

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

10

of the game, But against

must be counted the observed

this

of departure, was staged as a game in itself and far more frequently than the episode in its entirety, fact that the first act, that

with

its

No

pleasurable ending. certain decision can be reached

this. single case like

On

from the

analysis of a

an unprejudiced view one

gets

an im-

turned his experience into a game from pression that the child another motive. At the outset he was in & passive situation he

was overpowered by the experience; but, by repeating it, as a game, he took on an active unpleasurable though it was, be put down to an instinct for mastery part. These efforts might that was acting independently of whether the memory was in itself pleasurable or

not But

still

another interpretation

may

be attempted, Throwing away the object so that it was 'gone' might satisfy an impulse of the child's, which was suppressed in his actual

life,

to revenge himself on his

from him. In that case right, then,

myself.' first it

go away!

I

mother

for going

away

would have a defiant meaning: 'All don't need you. I'ta sending you away it

A year later, the same boy whom I had observed at his if he was angry with it, and throw 'Go to the fwont!' He had heard at

game used to take a toy,

on the

floor, exclaiming:

e

that time that his absent father

was at the

front',

and was

far

from regretting his absence; on the contrary he made it quite clear that he had no desire to be disturbed in his sole possession of his mother. 1

We know of other children who liked to

similar hostile impulses 8

persons.

We

by throwing away

are therefore

left

express

objects instead of

in doubt as to whether the

impulse to work over in the mind some overpowering experience so as to make oneself master of it can find expression as a

primary event, and independently of the pleasure principle. For, in the case we have been discussing, the child may, after only have been able to repeat his unpleasant experience in play because the repetition carried -along with it a yield of pleasure of another sort but none the less a direct one. all,

Nor shall we be helped in our hesitation between these two views by further considering children's play. It is clear that in 1

When

that she

this child

was

five

and

three-quarters, his

mother died.

was

Now

really 'gone' ('o-o-o'), the little boy showed no signs of grief. It is true that in the interval a second child had been born and had

roused him to violent jealousy. 1 Cf. my note on a childhood

memory of Goethe's

(19173).

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE their play children repeat everything that has

made a

11

great

in real life, and that in doing so they impression on them abreact the strength of the impression and, as one might put it,

make themselves master of

hand

it is

that dominates

them

the situation. But

on the other

play is influenced by a wish the whole time the wish to be grown-up

obvious that

all their

be able to do what grown-up people do. It can also be observed that the unpleasurable nature of an experience does

and

to

not always unsuit it for play. If the doctor looks down a child's throat or carries out some small operation on him, we may be these frightening experiences will be the subject quite sure that

of the next game; but we must not in that connection overlook the fact that there is a yield of pleasure from another source. child passes over from the passivity of the experience to the activity of the game, he hands on the disagreeable experience to one of his playmates and in this way revenges himself

As the

on a

substitute.

it emerges from this discussion 'that there is no need to assume the existence of a special imitative instinct in

Nevertheless,

order to provide a motive for play. Finally, a reminder may be added that the artistic play and artistic imitation carried out

by adults, which, unlike children's, are aimed at an audience, do not spare the spectators (for instance, in tragedy) the most

and can yet be felt by them as highly enjoyconvincing proof that, even under the dominance are ways and means enough of principle, there

painful experiences 1 able. This

is

of the pleasure

making what is in itself unpleasurable into a subject to be recollected and worked over in the mind. The consideration of these cases

and

situations,

which have a

yield of pleasure as

outcome, should be undertaken by some system of aesthetics with an economic approach to its subject-matter.

their final

They

are of no use for our purposes, since they presuppose the and dominance of the pleasure principle; they give

existence

no evidence of the operation of tendencies beyond the pleasure that is, of tendencies more primitive than it and inprinciple, dependent of it. * this point in his posthumously [Freud had made a tentative study of Characters on the Stage' (1942a) published paper on 'Psychopathic which was probably written in 1905 or 1906.]

Ill

TWENTY-FIVE years of intense work have had as their result that the immediate aims of psycho-analytic technique are quite other today than they were at the outset. At first the analysing do no more than discover the unconscious physician could material that was concealed from the patient, put it together, and, at the right moment, communicate it to him. Psychothen first and foremost an art of interpreting. analysis was Since this did not solve the therapeutic problem, a further aim came in view: to oblige the patient to confirm the quickly construction from his own memory. In that endeavour analyst's

the chief emphasis lay upon the patient's resistances: the art now in uncovering these as quickly as possible, in

consisted

and in inducing him by human was where suggestion operating as 'transference' to abandon his resistances. played its part But it became ever clearer that the aim which had been set

the patient pointing them out to this

influence

aim

the

up

scious

that

what was unconscious should become con-

not completely attainable by that method.

is

patient cannot

remember

the whole of what

and what he cannot remember

Thus he acquires no

part of it.

may be

The

repressed in him,

precisely the essential

sense of conviction of the cor-

rectness of the construction that has

He

is

been communicated to

obliged to repeat the repressed material as a contemporary experience instead of, as the physician would prefer to see, remembering it as something belonging to the past. 1 These

him.

is

reproductions, which emerge with such unwished-for exacti-

have as their subject some portion of infantile of the Oedipus complex, that is, and its derivatives; and they are invariably acted cut in the sphere of the transference, of the patient's relation to the physician. When things have reached this stage, it may be said that the earlier neurosis tude, always

sexual

has 1

life

now been replaced by a fresh, on

'transference neurosis'. It has

Repeating and Working Through' (1914g). [An early reference will be found in this same paper to the 'compulsion to repeat', which is one of the principle topics discussed in See

my paper

'Recollecting,

the present work. (See also the Editor's Note above, The term p. xi.) 'transference neurosis' in the special sense in which it is used a few lines

lower

down

also appears in that paper.] 12

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

13

been the physician's endeavour to keep this transference neurosis within the narrowest limits: to force as much as possible into the channel of

memory and

to allow as little as possible to

emerge as repetition. The ratio between what is remembered and what is reproduced varies from case to case. The physician cannot as a rule spare his patient

He must get him

to re-experience

but must see to

life,

it,

this

phase of the treatment.

some portion of his forgotten

on the other hand,

that the patient

some degree of aloofness, which will enable him, in spite of everything, to recognize that what appears to be reality is in

retains

fact only

a reflection of a forgotten past. If this can be successof conviction is won, together

the patient's sense fully achieved,

with the therapeutic success that is dependent on it. In order to make it easier to understand this 'compulsion to repeat',

which emerges during the psycho-analytic treatment we must above all get rid of the mistaken notion

of neurotics, that

what we are dealing with in our struggle against resistances on the part of the unconscious. The unconscious

resistance

is

that

to say, the 'repressed*

is

no

offers

the efforts of the treatment. Indeed,

resistance

it itself

whatever to

has no other en-

deavour than to break through the pressure weighing down on and force its way either to consciousness or to a discharge

it

through some real action. Resistance during treatment arises from the same higher strata and systems of the mind which originally carried out repression.

But the

from experience, the motives of the

fact that, as

resistances,

we know

and indeed the

resistances themselves, are unconscious at first -during the treatis a hint to us that we should correct a shortcoming in our terminology. We shall avoid a lack of clarity if we make our contrast not between the conscious and the unconscious but

ment,

between the coherent

much

of the ego

l

ego

and the

is itself unconscious,

repressed. It is

certain that

and notably what we may

2

its nucleus; only a small part of it is covered by the term 'preconscious'. 3 Having replaced a purely descriptive

describe as

1

[Cf.

a discussion of

this in

the Editor's Introduction to The Ego and

Id (19236), Standard Ed., 19, 7-8; IJPJL, 12, xiii-xiv.j [This is corrected in a footnote at the beginning of Chapter III of The Ego and the Id, ibid., 28, and ibid., 16.] 3 first edition [In its present form this sentence dates from 192 1 In the

the

s

.

(1920)

it

ran:

'It

may be

a part of it, probably,

is

that much of the ego is itself unconscious; only covered by the term "preconscious'V]

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

14

terminology by one which

is

systematic or dynamic,

we

can say

1

that the patient's resistance arises from his ego, and we then at once perceive that the compulsion to repeat must be ascribed to the unconscious repressed. It seems probable that the comitself after the pulsion can only express

work of treatment has

2 to meet it and has loosened the repression. gone half-way There is no doubt that the resistance of the conscious and unconscious ego operates under the sway of the pleasure prin-

ciple:

it

which would be produced Our efforts, on the other hand,

seeks to avoid the unpleasure

liberation of the repressed.

by the

are directed towards procuring the toleration of that unpleasure to the reality principle. But how is the compulsion an

by

appeal

the manifestation of the

to repeat

power of the repressed

related to the pleasure principle? It is clear that the greater part of what is re-experienced under the compulsion to repeat must

cause the ego unpleasure, since

it

brings to light activities of

repressed instinctual impulses. That, however,

is

unpleasure of

a kind we have already considered and does not contradict the unpleasure for one system and simultaneously pleasure principle

:

3 satisfaction for the other.

But we come

now

to a

new and

re-

markable fact, namely that the compulsion to repeat also recalls from the past experiences which include no possibility of

and which can

pleasure,

satisfaction

never, even long ago, have brought even to instinctual impulses which have since been

"

repressed.

The

is doomed to early efflorescence of infantile sexual life its wishes are incompatible with reality and

extinction because

with the inadequate stage of development which the child has reached. That efflorescence comes to an end in the most distressing circumstances

and to the accompaniment of the most

Loss of love and failure leave behind them a painful feelings. permanent injury to self-regard in the form of a narcissisticscar,

which in

contributes

my opinion,

as well as in Marcinowski's (1918),

more than anything

to the 'sense of inferiority'

1

[A fuller and somewhat different account of the sources of resistance will be found in Chap. XI of Inhibitions^ Symptoms and Anxiety (1926rf).] [Footnote added 1923:] I have argued elsewhere [1923;] that what thus comes to the help of the compulsion to repeat is the factor of that the patient's subraissiveness to the 'suggestion' in the treatment Js,

physician, 3

which has

[a. Freud's

its

roots

deep in his unconscious parental complex. of the fairy tale of the "Three Wishes'

allegorical use

at the beginning of Lecture

XIV of his

Introductory Lectures (1916-17).]

*

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

15

which is so common in neurotics. The child's sexual researches, on which limits are imposed by his physical development, lead hence such later complaints as to no satisfactory conclusion;
can't accomplish anything; I can't succeed in anything*. The of affection, which binds the child as a rule to the parent of

tie

succumbs to disappointment, to a vain exof satisfaction or to jealousy over the birth of a new unmistakable proof of the infidelity of the object of the

the opposite sex,

pectation

baby

child's affections.

His

own

attempt to make a baby himself,

carried out with tragic seriousness,

fails

shamefully.

The

les-

amount of affection he receives, the increasing demands of education, hard words and an occasional punishment these sening

show him

at last the full extent to

which he has been scorned.

These are a few typical and constantly recurring instances of the ways in which the love characteristic of the age of child-

hood

brought to a conclusion.

is

Patients repeat all of these

unwanted

and painful

situations

emotions in the transference and revive them with the greatest seek to bring about the interruption of the ingenuity. They treatment while

it is still

incomplete; they contrive once more

to feel themselves. scorned, to oblige the physician to

severely to

them and

treat

them

speak

coldly; they discover appro-

for their jealousy; instead of the passionately priate objects desired baby of their childhood, they produce a plan or a

promise

no less

of some grand present which turns out as a rule to be None of these things can have produced pleasure

unreal.

and it might be supposed that they would cause less unpleasure to-day if they emerged as memories or dreams instead of taking the form of fresh experiences. They are of in the past,

course the activities of instincts intended to lead to satisfaction;

but no lesson has been learnt from the old experience of these 1 activities having led instead only to unpleasure. In spite of that, they are repeated, under pressure of a compulsion.

What psycho-analysis reveals in the

transference

of neurotics can also be observed in the people,

nant

lives

phenomena

of some normal

The impression they give is of being pursued by a maligby some 'daemonic' power; but psycho-

fate or possessed

analysis has always taken the

part arranged influences.

view that their fate

by themselves and determined by

The compulsion which 1

is

is

for the

most

early infantile here in evidence differs in

[This sentence was added in 1921.]

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

16

to repeat which we have found in though the people we are now considering have

no way from the compulsion neurotics, even

never shown any signs of dealing with a neurotic conflict by Thus we have come across people all of producing symptoms. whose human relationships have the same outcome: such as the

who

is abandoned in anger after a time by each of however much they may otherwise differ from one another, and who thus seems doomed to taste all the bitterness of ingratitude; or the man whose friendships all end in betrayal

benefactor

\os,pTotigkt

by

man who

his friend; or the

time after time in the course of

a position of great private or public authority and then, after a certain interval, himself upsets that authority and replaces him by a new one; or, again, his life raises

someone

else into

the lover each of whose love affairs with a

woman

passes

through the same phases and reaches the same conclusion. This 'perpetual recurrence of the same thing* causes us no astonishment when it relates to active behaviour on the part of the person concerned and when we can discern in him an essential char-

which always remains the same and which is coma repetition of the same experiences,

acter-trait

pelled to find expression in

We are much more impressed by cases where the subject appears to have a passive experience, over which he has no influence, but in which he meets with a repetition of the same fatality.

There

is

the case, for instance, of the

married three successive husbands each of afterwards and

had

woman who

whom

fell ill

soon

be nursed by her on their death-beds. 1 The most moving poetic picture of a fate such as this is given to

by

Tasso in his romantic epic Gerusalmm Liberate. Its hero, Tancred, unwittingly kills his beloved Clorinda in a duel while she

armour of an enemy knight. After her way into a strange magic forest which Crusaders' army with terror. He slashes with his

disguised in the

is

burial he

makes

strikes the

sword at a

his

tall tree;

but blood streams from the cut and the

voice of Glorinda, whose soul

is imprisoned in the tree, is heard complaining that he has wounded his beloved once again.

If

we

take into account observations such as these, based

upon behaviour in the transference and upon the life-histories of men and women, we shall find to assume that there courage

rides the 1

pleasure principle.

Cf. the apt

remark on

Now

too

this subject

we

shall

be inclined to

by CL G. Jung

(1909).

BEYOND THE PDEASURE PRINCIPLE

17

compulsion the dreams which occur in traumatic

relate to this

and the impulse which leads children to play. But it is to be noted that only in rare instances can we observe

neuroses

the pure effects of the compulsion to repeat, unsupported by other motives. In the case of children's play we have already laid stress

hi which the emergence of the be interpreted; the compulsion to repeat and

on the other ways

may

compulsion

instinctual satisfaction

which

is

immediately pleasurable seem

an intimate partnership. The phenomena of transference are obviously exploited by the resistance which to converge here into

the ego maintains in

its pertinacious insistence upon repression; the compulsion to repeat, which the treatment tries to bring into its service is, as it were, drawn over by the ego to its side

A

1 as the ego does to the pleasure principle). great deal (clinging of what might be described as the compulsion of destiny seems a rational basis; so that we are under no necesintelligible on

a new and mysterious motive force to explain it, dubious instance [of such a motive force] is perhaps

in sity to call

The

least

that of traumatic dreams.

be forced is

ground forces.

to

But on maturer

shall

not covered by the operation of the familiar motive is left unexplained to justify the hypothesis of a

something that seems more primitive,

more elementary, more instinctual than which it over-rides. But if a compulsion in the mind, to learn

we should be

what function

it

can emerge and what to which, after aU,

relation

to repeat does operate

know something about

glad to

corresponds its

the pleasure principle

to,

is

to the pleasure principle

we have hitherto ascribed dominance over

principle.']

to

its

life.

read: 'the compulsion to repeat is as it help by the ego, clinging as it does to the pleasure

[Before 1923 the

were called

it,

under what conditions

the course of the processes of excitation in mental 1

we

Enough

compulsion to repeat

it

reflection

admit that even in the other instances the whole

last clause

IV

WHAT

follows

is

which the reader

speculation,

often far-fetched

will consider or dismiss

vidual predilection. It

is

further

speculation,

according to his indi-

an attempt

to follow out

idea consistently, out of curiosity to see where

it

an

will lead.

Psycho-analytic speculation takes as its point of departure the impression, derived from examining unconscious processes, that consciousness may be, not the most universal attribute of

mental processes, but only a particular function of them. Speaking in metapsychological terms, it asserts that consciousis a function of a particular system which it describes as

ness Cs.

1

What

consciousness yields consists essentially of percep-

tions of excitations

coming from the external world and of

of pleasure and unpleasure which can only arise from within the mental apparatus; it is therefore possible to assign to

feelings

the system Pcpt,-Cs.* a position in space. It must He on the borderline between outside and inside; it must be turned to-

wards the external world and must envelop the other psychical systems. It will be seen that there these

localization held

is

nothing daringly new in the views on

we have merely adopted

assumptions;

by cerebral anatomy, which locates the

of consciousness in the cerebral cortex

ing layer of the central organ. Cerebral to consider

'seat'

the outermost, envelop-

anatomy has no need

why, speaking anatomically, consciousness should

be lodged on the surface of the brain instead of being safely housed somewhere in its inmost interior. Perhaps shall be

w

more

successful in accounting for this situation in the case of

our system

Pcpt.-Cs.

Consciousness

is

not the only distinctive character which

ascribe to the processes in that system. sions derived

that

1

610

all

On

we

the basis of impres-

from our psycho-analytic experience, we assume

excitatory processes that occur in the other systems leave

[See Freud, The Interpretation of Drems (19QQa), Standard Ed., 5, ft, and "The Unconscious' (1915*), Section II.]

1

[The system Pcpt. (the perceptual system) was first described by Freud in The Interpretation of Dreams, Standard Ed,, 5, 536 ff. In a later paper (19174) he argued that the system jystemCj.] 18

Pcpt.

coincided with the

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

19

behind in them which form the foundation of permanent traces memory. Such memory-traces, then, have nothing to do with the fact of

becoming conscious; indeed they are often most

powerful and most enduring when the process which left them behind was one which never entered consciousness. We find it

hard to believe, however, that permanent traces of excitation such as these are also left in the system Pcpt.-Cs. If they re-

mained constantly conscious, they would very soon

set limits

to the system's aptitude for receiving fresh excitations. 1 If,

the other hand, they were unconscious,

we

on

should be faced

with the problem of explaining the existence of unconscious in a system whose processes functioning was otherwise accompanied by the phenomenon of consciousness. We should, so to

have altered nothing and gained nothing by our hypothesis a special system.

say,

relegating the process of becoming conscious to

Though

this consideration is

not absolutely conclusive,

theless leads us to suspect that

it

never-

becoming conscious and leaving

behind a memory-trace are processes incompatible with each same system. Thus we should be able

other within one and the

to say that the excitatory process becomes conscious in the system Cs. but leaves no permanent trace behind there; but

that the excitation

within and that these

same

lines in

transmitted to the systems lying next its traces are left. I followed

is

it is

in them that

the schematic picture which

the speculative section of

be borne in mind that

I

included in

of Dream? It must known from other sources

my Interpretation

little

enough

is

we lay down the proposition that consciousness arises instead of a memory-trace, the assertion deserves consideration, at all events on the ground of of the origin of consciousness; when, therefore,

being framed in fairly precise terms. is so, then, the system Cs. is characterized by the peculiarity that in it (in contrast to what happens in the other its

If this

psychical systems) excitatory processes do not leave behind any permanent change in its elements but expire, as it were, in the

phenomenon of becoming conscious. An exception of this sort 1 What follows is based throughout on Breuer's views in [the second section of his theoretical contribution to] Studies on Hysteria (Breuer and Freud, 1895). [Freud himself discussed the subject in The Interpretation

of Dreams, Standard Ed., 5, 538 and it had previously been fully considered in his 'Project' of 1895 (I950a), Part I, Section 3, He returned to the topic later in his paper [Standard Ed., 5,538.]

on the 'Mystic Writing-Pad

1

(1925a).]

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

20

to the general rule requires to

be explained by some factor that

to that one system. Such a factor, which is applies exclusively absent in the other systems, might well be the exposed situation

of the system Cs. external world,

}

immediately abutting as

Let us picture a living organism in

form

as

an undifferentiated

susceptible to stimulation.

external world will from will serve as

Then

its

its

vesicle

it

does on the

most simplified possible of a substance that

is

the surface turned towards the

very situation be differentiated and

an organ for receiving stimuli Indeed embryology,

of developmental history, its capacity as a recapitulation that the central nervous system originates actually shows us from the ectoderm; the grey matter of the cortex remains a in

derivative of the primitive superficial layer of the organism

may have

inherited

some of its

essential properties. It

and

would be

easy to suppose, then, that as a result of the ceaseless impact of external stimuli on the surface of the vesicle, its substance to a certain depth

may have become permanently

modified, so that

excitatory processes run a different course in it from what they crust would thus be formed which run in the deeper layers.

A

would

have been so thoroughly 'baked through' by stimulation that it would present the most favourable possible at last

conditions for the reception of stimuli

and become incapable of

any further modification. In terms of the system &., this would mean that its elements could undergo no further permanent modification from the passage of excitation, because they had already been modified in the respect in question to the greatest possible extent:

now, however, they would have become capmay be

able of giving rise to consciousness. Various ideas

formed which cannot at present be verified as to the nature of this modification of the substance and of the excitatory process.

may be supposed that, in passing from one element to another, an excitation has to overcome a resistance, and that

It

the diminution of resistance thus effected

permanent trace of the

is

what a

lays

down

a

facilitation.

In

the system &., then, resistance of this kind to passage from

one

excitation, that

is,

element to another would no longer exist. 1 This picture can be brought into relation with Breuer's distinction between quiescent (orbound) and mobile cathectic energy in the elements i

[This passage is foreshadowed in the later half of Section 3 of 1 Part I of the 'Project .]

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE of the psychical systems;

1

21

the elements of the system Cs. would

only energy capable of free discarry no bound energy charge. It seems best, however, to express oneself as cautiously as possible on these points. None the less, this speculation will have enabled us to bring the origin of consciousness into some

but

sort of connection

with the situation of the system Cs. and with must be ascribed to the excitatory processes

the peculiarities that taking place in it.

But we have more to say of the living vesicle with its receptive This little fragment of living substance is sus-

cortical layer.

pended in the middle of an external world charged with the most powerful energies; and it would be killed by the stimulation

emanating from these

protective

way:

if it

were not provided with a

shield against stimuli. It acquires the shield in this

outermost surface ceases to have the structure proper to

its

becomes to some degree inorganic and thenceforward functions as a special envelope or membrane resistant to stimuli. In consequence, the energies of the external world living matter,

are able to pass into the next underlying layers, which have

remained

with only a fragment of their original in-

living,

and these layers can devote themselves, behind the protective shield, to the reception of the amounts of stimulus which have been allowed through it. By its death, the outer tensity;

layer has saved all the deeper ones from a similar fate unless, that is to say, stimuli reach it which are so strong that they break through the protective shield. Protection against stimuli is

an almost more important function for the living organism than reception (^stimuli.

store of energy

special

The protective shield

and must above

all

is

supplied with

its

own

endeavour to preserve the

modes of transformation of energy operating in it against

the effects threatened

by the enormous energies at work in the which tend towards a levelling out of them and hence towards destruction. The main purpose of the external world

reception

effects

of stimuli

external stimuli;

is

to discover the direction

and

for that

it is

enough

and nature of the

to take small speci-

mens of the external world,

to sample it in small quantities. In highly developed organisms the receptive cortical layer of the former vesicle has long been withdrawn into the depths of 1

Breuer and Freud, 1895. [See Section 2 of Breuer's theoretical con-

tribution,

and in particular the footnote at the beginning of 1 on p. 2 above.]

Cf. also footnote

that section.

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

22

the interior of the body, though portions of it have been left behind on the surface immediately beneath the general shield

These are the sense organs, which consist against stimuli. the reception of certain specific essentially of apparatus for but which also include special arrange-

effects of stimulation,

ments for further protection against excessive amounts of stimu1 lation and for excluding unsuitable kinds of stimuli, It is characteristic of them that they deal only with very small quantities of external stimulation and only take in samples of the external

world,

They may perhaps be compared with

the time

all

making

feelers

which are

tentative advances towards the external

world and then drawing back from it. At this point I shall venture to touch for a subject

a

result

moment upon a which would merit the most exhaustive treatment. As

of certain psycho-analytic discoveries, we are to-day in a embark on a discussion of the Kantian theorem that

position to

time and space are 'necessary forms of thought'. We have learnt 1 that unconscious mental processes are in themselves 'timeless 2 .

This means in the

place that they are not ordered temporally, that time does not change them in any way and that the first

idea of time cannot be applied to them. These are negative characteristics is

which can only be

made with conscious mental

clearly understood if a processes.

comparison

On the other hand, our

abstract idea of time seems to be wholly derived from -the method of working of the system Pcpt.-Cs. and to correspond to its own part of that method of working. This mode of functioning may perhaps constitute another way of providing a shield against stimuli. I know that these remarks

a perception on

must sound very obscure, but I must limit myself to these We have pointed out how the living vesicle is

hints. 3

provided with

a shield against stimuli from the external world; and we had shown that the cortical layer next to that shield must

previously

be differentiated as an organ for receiving stimuli from without. This sensitive cortex, however, which is later to become the system Cs., also receives excitations from within. The situation of the system between the outside and the inside and the differi 1

1

[a

Troject', Part I, Sections 5 and 9.] of 'The Unconscious' [See Section (1915).]

V

[Freud recurs to the origin of the idea of time at the end of his paper

on "The Mystic Writing-Pad'

(1925a). The same paper -contains a further discussion of the 'shield against stimuli'.]

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

23

ence between the conditions governing the reception of excitations in the two cases have a decisive effect on the functioning of

and of the whole mental apparatus. Towards the shielded against stimuli, and the amounts of excitation impinging on it have only a reduced effect. Towards the in-

the system outside

it is

side there

can be no such

1

shield;

the excitations in the deeper and in undiminished

layers extend into the system directly

amount, in so far as certain of

their characteristics give rise to

pleasure-unpleasure series. The excitations coming from within are, however, in their intensity and in in their amplitude, perhaps more other, qualitative, respects in

feelings

the

commensurate with the system's method of working than the 2 stimuli which stream in from the external world. This state of things produces

two definite results. First, the feelings of pleasure

and unpleasure (which are an index to what is happening in the interior of the apparatus)

predominate over all external

stimuli.

And

secondly, a particular way is adopted of dealing with any internal excitations which produce too great an increase of unpleasure: there is a tendency to treat them as though they

were it

acting, not

from the

inside,

but from the outside, so that

may be possible to bring the shield against stimuli into opera-

tion as a projection,

I

means of defence against them. This is the origin of which is destined to play such a large part in the

have an impression that these

last considerations

have

brought us to a better understanding of the dominance of the pleasure principle; but no light has yet been thrown on the cases that contradict that dominance. Let us therefore go a step describe as 'traumatic' any excitations from outside further.

We

which are powerful enough to break through the protective shield. It seems to me that the concept of trauma necessarily implies a connection of this kind with a breach in an otherwise efficacious barrier against stimuli. Such an event as an external

trauma

is

bound

to provoke

a disturbance on a large and te-set in

scale in the functioning of the organism's energy

motion every possible defensive measure. At the same time, the out of action. There is principle is for the moment put pleasure

no longer any

possibility

of preventing the mental apparatus

from being flooded with large amounts of stimulus, and another i

5

of Section 10 of Part

[Cf. 'Project , beginning of Section [Cf. 'Project', later part

4

of Part

I.]

I.]

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

24

the problem of mastering the amounts problem of stimulus which have broken in and of binding them, in the so that they can then be disposed of. psychical sense, arises instead

The

specific

unpleasure of physical pain

is probably the having been broken through in a then a continuous stream of excitations

result of the protective shield

limited area. There

is

from the part of the periphery concerned

to

the central

apparatus of the mind, such as could normally arise only from 1 within the apparatus. And how shall we expect the mind to react to this invasion? Gathectic energy

is

summoned from

sides to provide sufficiently high cathexes of

environs of the breach.

An

'anticathexis'

all

energy in the

on a grand

scale

is

set

all the other psychical systems are imup, for whose benefit so that the remaining psychical functions are extenpoverished, must endeavour to draw a sively paralysed or reduced.

We

lesson

from examples such

as this

and use them

our metapsychological speculations.

From

as a basis for

the present case,

which is itself highly cathected is we capable of taking up an additional stream of fresh inflowing energy and of converting it into quiescent cathexis, that is of infer that a system

then,

binding

it

psychically.

The

higher the system's

cathexis, the greater seems to

therefore, the lower

its

be

own

quiescent

its

binding force; conversely, cathexis, the less capacity will it have for

2 taking up inflowing energy and the more violent must be the consequences of such a breach in the protective shield against

stimuli.

To

this

view

increase of cathexis

it

cannot be justly objected that the

round the breach can be explained

far

more

simply as the direct result of the inflowing masses of excitation. If that were so, the mental apparatus

would merely receive an

cathexes of energy, and the paralysing character of pain and the impoverishment of all the other systems would increase in

its

remain unexplained. Nor do the very violent phenomena of discharge to which pain gives rise affect our explanation, for they occur in a reflex manner that is, they follow without the intervention of the mental apparatus. The indefiniteness of all

our discussions on what we describe as metapsychology is of course due to the fact that we know nothing of the nature of the excitatory process that takes place in the elements of the :

f r!

Cf. 'Instincts

and

their Vicissitudes' (1915s)

[and

Addendum C

Symptoms and Anxiety (192&Q]. [Cf. the 'principle of the insusceptibility to excitation of systems' in a footnote near the end of

of

Inhibitions, 1

Freud, I917i]

uncathected

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE and that we do not

psychical systems,

any hypothesis on the all

subject.

We

feel

25

justified in

framing

are consequently operating

unknown factor, which we are every new formula. It may be reason-

the time with a large

obliged to carry over into ably supposed that this excitatory process can be carried out with energies that vary quantitatively] it may also seem

probable

that

it

has

more than one

for instance).

As a new

quality (in

factor

the nature of amplitude, taken into consideration

we have

Breuer's hypothesis that charges of energy occur in two forms that we have to distinguish between two kinds [see pp. 20-1] so ;

of cathexis of the psychical systems or their elements flowing cathexis

that presses

quiescent cathexis.

a freely

on towards discharge and a

We may

perhaps suspect that the binding of the energy that streams into the mental apparatus consists in its change from a freely flowing into a quiescent state. We may, I think, tentatively venture to regard the common traumatic neurosis as a consequence of an extensive breach being

made

in the protective shield against stimuli. This

would

seem

to reinstate the old, naive theory of shock, in apparent contrast to the later and psychologically more ambitious

theory which attributes aetiological importance not to the effects of mechanical violence but to fright and the threat to life.

These opposing views are not, however, irreconcilable; nor

is

the psycho-analytic view of the traumatic neurosis identical with the shock theory in its crudest form. The latter regards the essence of the shock as being the direct damage to the molecular structure or even to the histological structure of the elements of

the nervous system; whereas

what we seek to understand are the

produced on the organ of the mind by the breach in the shield against stimuli and by the problems that follow in its effects

And we still attribute importance to the element of fright. caused by lack of any preparedness for anxiety, : including lack of hypercathexis of the systems that would be the first train. It is

to receive the stimulus.

Owing

to their

low cathexis those

systems are not in a good position for binding the inflowing amounts of excitation and the consequences of the breach in the protective shield follow all the more easily. It will be seen, then, that preparedness for anxiety

and the hypercathexis of the

receptive systems constitute the last line of defence of the shield against stimuli. In the case of quite a 1

[Cf. footnote

1

on

number of traumas, the

p. 7 above.]

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

26

between systems that are unprepared and systems that are well prepared through being hypercathected may be a difference

outcome; though where the trauma exceeds a certain limit this factor will no

decisive factor in determining the

a strength of

doubt cease to carry weight. The fulfilment of wishes is, as we know, brought about in a hallucinatory manner by dreams, and under the dominance of the pleasure principle this has become But it is not in the sendee of that principle that

their function.

the dreams of patients suffering from traumatic neuroses lead regularity to the situation in which the

them back with such trauma occurred.

We may

assume, rather, that dreams are

here helping to carry out another task, which must be accombefore the dominance of the pleasure principle can even plished begin. These

dreams are endeavouring to master the stimulus by developing the anxiety whose omission was

retrospectively,

the cause of the traumatic neurosis,

They

thus afford us a view

of a function of the mental apparatus which, though contradict the pleasure principle, it

and seems

to

is

it

does not

nevertheless independent of

be more primitive than the purpose of gaining

and avoiding unpleasure. This would seem to be the place, then,

pleasure

at

which

to

admit for

time an exception to the proposition that dreams are fulfilments of wishes. Anxiety dreams, as I have shown the

first

repeatedly and in detail, offer no such exception.

Nor do

'punishment dreams', for they merely replace the forbidden wish-fulfilment

by the appropriate punishment for it; that is to of guilt which is the reaction

say, they fulfil the wish of the sense to the

1

repudiated impulse.

But

it is

impossible to classify as

dreams we have been discussing which occur in traumatic neuroses, or the dreams during psychowish-fulfilments the

analyses which bring to

hood. They repeat,

memory the psychical traumas of child-

arise, rather,

though

it is

in obedience to the compulsion to

true that in analysis that compulsion

is

* supported by the wish (which is encouraged by 'suggestion') to conjure up what has been forgotten and repressed. Thus it

would seem that the function of dreams, which i

consists in

[Sec The

Interpretation of Dreams (1900a), Standard Ed., 5, 557, and Section 9 of Freud's 'Remarks on the Theory and Practice of Dream-

Interpretation* (1923
was substituted

in 1923 for the

words 'which

not unconscious' which appeared in the earlier editions.]

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE setting aside

the wishes of the disturbing impulses, function. It

27

any motives that might interrupt sleep, by fulfilling

would not be

possible for

function until the whole of mental

life

is

not their original

them

to perform that

had accepted the domin-

is a 'beyond the pleasure only consistent to grant that there was also a time before the purpose of dreams was the fulfilment of wishes.

ance of the pleasure principle. If there principle',

it is

This would imply no denial of their later function. But if once this general rule has been broken, a further question arises.

May not dreams which, with a view to the psychical binding of traumatic impressions, obey the compulsion to repeat may not such dreams occur outside analysis as well? And the reply can only be a decided affirmative. I

have argued elsewhere 1 that 'war neuroses' (in so far term implies something more than a reference to the

as that

illness's onset) may very well be traumatic neuroses which have been facilitated by a conflict in the ego. The fact to which I have referred on page 6, that a gross

circumstances of the

physical injury caused simultaneously by the trauma diminishes the chances that a neurosis will develop, becomes intelligible if

one bears in mind two

facts

which have been

stressed

by

psycho-analytic research: firstly, that mechanical agitation must be recognized as one of the sources of sexual excitation, 3 and secondly, that painful effect, so

long as they

and

last,

feverish illnesses exercise a powerful

on the

distribution of libido. Thus,

on

the one hand, the mechanical violence of the trauma would liberate a quantity of sexual excitation which, owing to the lack

of preparation for anxiety, would have a traumatic effect; but, on the other hand, the simultaneous physical injury, by calling 3 for a narcissistic hypercathexis of the injured organ,

bind the excess of excitation. libido theory has not yet

It

made

is

also well

would

known, though the

sufficient use

of the

fact, that

such severe disorders in the distribution of libido as melancholia are temporarily brought to an end by intercurrent organic illness, and indeed that even a fully developed condition of

dementia praecox

is

capable of a temporary remission in these

same circumstances. 1 2

Sec

my introduction

(I919t/) to Psycho- Analysis and the

War

Neuroses,

remarks elsewhere (Three Essays [Standard Ed., 7, 201-2; /,?.!., 57, 67-5]) on the effect of swinging and railway-travel. 1 See my paper on narcissism (191
THE fact that the cortical layer which receives stimuli is without any protective as

its

shield against excitations

from within must have

result that these latter transmissions

of stimulus have a

preponderance in economic importance and often occasion economic disturbances comparable with traumatic neuroses. The most abundant sources of this internal excitation are what are described as the organism's 'instincts'

the representatives

of all the forces originating in the interior of the body and transmitted to the mental apparatusat once the most important and the most obscure element of psychological research. perhaps not be thought too rash to suppose that the

It will

impulses arising from the instincts do not belong to the type of bound nervous processes but of freely mobile processes which

The best part of what we know of these derived from our study of the dream- work. there

press towards discharge.

processes

is

We

discovered that the processes in the unconscious systems were fundamentally different from those in the preconscious (or conscious) systems. In the unconscious, cathexes can easily be

completely transferred, displaced and condensed. Such treatment, however, could produce only invalid results if it were applied to preconscious material;

and

this

accounts for the

familiar peculiarities exhibited

by manifest dreams after the of the preceding day have been worked

preconscious residues over in accordance with the laws operating in the unconscious. I described the type of process found in the unconscious as the 1

'primary psychical process, in contradistinction to the 'secondary* process which life.

Since

is

the one obtaining in our normal waking impulses have the unconscious systems

all instinctual

of impact, it is hardly an innovation to say that they obey the primary process. Again, it is easy to identify as their point

the

primary psychical process with Breuer's freely mobile and the secondary process with changes in his bound or tonic cathexis. 1 If so, it would be the task of the higher strata of cathexis

the mental apparatus to bind the instinctual excitation reaching 1

a. my Interpretation

Cf. also

of Dreams, Chapter VII [Standard Ed., 5, 588 ff. Breuer and Freud, 1895 (Section 2 of Breuer's theoretical con-

tribution)].

28

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

A

the primary process.

29

binding would a traumatic neurosis; and

failure to effect this

provoke a disturbance analogous to only after the binding has been accomplished would possible

for the

dominance of the pleasure

it

be

principle (and of its

modification, the reality principle) to proceed unhindered. Till then the other task of the mental apparatus, the task of master-

ing or binding excitations, would have precedence not, indeed, in opposition to the pleasure principle, but independently of it

some extent in disregard of it. manifestations of a compulsion to repeat (which we have described as occurring in the early activities of infantile mental and

to

The

life

as well as

among

the events of psycho-analytic treatment)

* exhibit to a high degree an instinctual character and, when they act in opposition to the pleasure principle, give the appear-

ance of some 'daemonic' force at work. In the case of children's

we seemed to see that children repeat unpleasurable the additional reason that they can master a experiences for play

active than powerful impression far more thoroughly by being they could by merely experiencing it passively. Each fresh to strengthen the mastery they are in search of. repetition seems

Nor can

children have their pleasurable experiences repeated and they are inexorable in their insistence that

often enough,

the repetition shall be an identical one, This character trait for a second time it disappears later on. If a joke is heard

produces almost no

effect;

a theatrical production never creates

an impression the second time as the first; indeed, it is has very much enjoyed hardly possible to persuade an adult who

so great

reading a book to re-read it immediately. Novelty is always the condition of enjoyment. But children will never tire of asking

an adult

to repeat a

with them,

till

he

is

game

that he has

shown them or played

too exhausted to go on.

And

if

a child has

on hearing it over and over he will remorselessly stipulate again rather than a new one; and that the repetition shall be an identical one and will correct any

been told a nice

story,

he will

insist

alterations ofwhich the narrator maybe guilty

actually have been

though they may

made in the hope of gaining fresh approval*

> and at the beginning of the next paragraph. The ['Triebkaft' here word 'TritV bears much more of a feeling of urgency than the English

'instinct'.] * towards the end of the [Cf. some remarks on this Chapter VII of Freud's book on jokes (1905*).]

sixth section of

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

30

None of

the pleasure principle; repetition, the re-experiencing of something identical, is clearly in itself a source of pleasure. In the case of a person in analysis, this contradicts

on the contrary, the compulsion to repeat the events of his childhood in the transference evidently disregards the pleasure principle in ev^ry way. The patient behaves in a purely infantile fashion and thus shows us that the repressed memory-traces of

primaeval experiences are not present in him in a bound and are indeed in a sense incapable of obeying the secondary process. It is to this fact of not being bound, moreover, that his

state

they

owe

their capacity for forming, in conjunction with the

residues of the previous day, a wishful phantasy that emerges

in a dream. This

same compulsion

we

meets us

to repeat frequently

an obstacle to our treatment when

as

at the

end of an

analysis

try to induce the patient to detach himself completely

from

may be presumed, too, that when people una dread of rousing familiar with analysis feel an obscure fear his physician. It

something that, so they feel, is better left sleeping what they are afraid of at bottom is the emergence of this compulsion with its hint of possession by some 'daemonic' power.

But how is the predicate of being 'instinctual' related to the compulsion to repeat? At this point we cannot escape a suspicion that we may have come upon the track of a universal attribute l

instincts and perhaps of organic life in general which has not hitherto been clearly recognized or at least not explicitly 2 stressed. It seems, then t that an instinct is an urge inherent in

of

organic

to restore

life

an

earlier state

of things which the living entity has

been obliged to abandon under the pressure of external disturbing forces; that is, it is a kind of organic elasticity, or, to it

put

another way, the expression of the inertia inherent in

organic

life.

3

This view of instincts

become used and

to see in

strikes us as

strange because

we have

them a

factor impelling towards change development, whereas we are now asked to recognize in

them the

an expression of the conservative precise contrary nature of living substance. On the other hand we soon call to

mind examples from animal 1

life

which seem to confirm the

[Sec the last footnote but one.]

*

[The last six words were added in 1921.] have no doubt that similar notions as to the nature of have already been put fonvard repeatedly. *

I

'instincts'

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

31

view that instincts are historically determined. Certain fishes, for instance, undertake laborious migrations at spawning-time in order to deposit their spawn in particular waters far removed

from their customary haunts. In the opinion of many biologists what they are doing is merely to seek out the localities in which their species formerly resided

but which in the course of time

they have exchanged for others.

The same explanation is believed to apply to the migratory flights of birds of passagebut we are quickly relieved of the necessity for seeking for further examples by the reflection that the most impressive proofs of there being

an organic compulsion

phenomena of heredity and the how the germ of a living animal

to repeat lie in the of embryology. We see obliged in the course of its

facts is

development to recapitulate (even

if only in a transient and abbreviated fashion) the structures of all the forms from which it is sprung, instead of proceeding quickly by the shortest

to

its

final shape.

This behaviour

is

attributable to mechanical causes,

path only to a very slight degree

and the

historical explana-

tion cannot accordingly

be neglected. So too the power of regenerating a lost organ by growing afresh a precisely similar one extends far up into the animal kingdom.

We

shall be met by the plausible objection that it may very well be that, in addition to the conservative instincts which impel

towards repetition, there may be others which push forward towards progress and the production of new forms. This argument must certainly not be overlooked, and it will be taken into account at a later stage. 1 But for the moment it is tempting to pursue to its logical conclusion the hypothesis that all instincts tend towards the restoration of an earlier state of things. The

outcome may give an impression of mysticism or of sham profundity; but we can feel quite innocent of having had any such purpose in view. We seek only for the sober results of research or of reflection based on it; and we have no wish to find in those results

any quality other than

3

certainty.

Let us suppose, then, that

all

the organic instincts are

conservative, are acquired historically

and tend towards the

half of this sentence was added in 1921,] [The a [Footnote added 1925:] The reader should not overlook the fact that what follows is the development of an extreme line of thought. last

Later on,

when account

is

taken of the sexual

that the necessary limitations

instincts, it will

and corrections are applied

to

be found

it.

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

32

restoration of an earlier state of things. It follows that the pheno-

mena

of organic development must be attributed to external

influences. The elementary living very beginning have had no wish to remained the same, it would do no more change; if conditions than constantly repeat the same course of life. In the last resort,

disturbing entity

and diverting

would from

what has

left its

its

mark on

the history of the earth

the development of organisms must be live in and of its relation to the sun.

we

Every modification which

is

thus imposed

upon the course of

the organism's life is accepted by the conservative organic instincts and stored up for further repetition. Those instincts are

bound to give a deceptive appearance of being forces and progress, whilst in fact they are tending towards change merely seeking to reach an ancient goal by paths alike old and therefore

this final goal of all it is possible to specify be in contradiction to the conservaorganic striving. It would tive nature of the instincts if the goal of life were a state of

new. Moreover

things

which had never yet been attained. On the contrary, it old state of things, an initial state from which the

must be an

living entity has at it is

one time or other departed and to which by the circuitous paths along which its

striving to return

development leads. If we are to take

it

as

a truth that knows no

exception that everything living dies for internal reasonsbecomes inorganic once again then we shall be compelled to say that

'the

aim of all

life

is death.'

and, looking backwards, that

'inanimate things existed before living ones'.

The

attributes of life

were at some time evoked in inanimate

matter by the action of a force of whose nature we can form no conception. It may perhaps have been a process similar in type to that

which later caused the development of consciousness in a The tension which then

particular stratum of living matter.

arose in

what had hitherto been an inanimate substance endeav-

oured to cancel

itself out.

In

this

way the first instinct came into

being: the instinct to return to the inanimate state. It

was

still

an easy matter at that time for a living substance to die; the course of its life was probably only a brief one, whose direction was determined by the chemical structure of the young life. For a long time, perhaps, living substance was thus being constantly created afresh and easily dying, till decisive external influences altered in such a

way

as to oblige the

substance to diverge ever more widely from

its

still

surviving

original course

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE of

and

life

reaching

its

make ever more complicated

to

33

before

detours

aim of death. These circuitous paths to death,

fully kept to

by the conservative

us to-day with the picture of the

faith-

would thus present

instincts,

phenomena of

life.

If

we

firmly maintain the exclusively conservative nature of instincts,

we cannot

arrive at

any other notions

as to the origin

and aim

of life.

The

implications in regard to the great groups of instincts

we

which, as

believe, lie

behind the phenomena of

organisms must appear no

less

self-preservative instincts,

such as

beings, stands in

bewildering,

we

marked opposition

The

life

in

hypothesis of

attribute to all living

to the idea that instinctual

as a whole serves to bring about death. Seen in this light, the theoretical importance of the instincts of self-preservation, of self-assertion and of mastery greatly diminishes. They are life

component

instincts

whose function

it

is

to assure that the

organism shall follow its own path to death, and to ward off any possible ways of returning to inorganic existence other than those which are

immanent

in the organism

itself.

We

have no

longer to reckon with the organism's puzzling determination (so hard to fit into any context) to maintain its own existence in the face of every obstacle.

What we

are

left

with

is

the fact that the

organism wishes to die only in its own fashion. Thus these guardians of life, too, were originally the myrmidons of death.

Hence

the paradoxical situation that the living organism most energetically against events (dangers, in fact) which might help it to attain its life's aim rapidly by a kind of arises

struggles

short-circuit.

acterizes efforts.

But

The

Such behaviour

purely instinctual

is,

as

however, precisely what charcontrasted with intelligent

1

let us

pause for a

moment and

reflect It

cannot be

so.

sexual instincts, to which the theory of the neuroses gives

a quite special place, appear under a very different aspect The external pressure which provokes a constantly increasing extent

of development has not imposed

itself

upon

every

organism. Many have succeeded in remaining up to the present time at their lowly level. Many, though not allj such creatures,

which must resemble the

earliest stages

of the higher animals

at this [In the editions before 1925 the following footnote appeared the self-preservative instincts point. 'A correction of this extreme view of

Mows.']

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

34

and

In the same way, the whole

plants, are, indeed, living to-day.

path of development to natural death

is

not trodden by

all

the

elementary entities which compose the complicated body of one of the higher organisms. Some of them, the germ-cells, probably retain the original structure of living matter and, after

a certain

complement of inherited and freshly dispositions, separate themselves from the

time, with their full

acquired instinctual organism as a whole. These two characteristics may be precisely what enables them to have an independent existence. Under

favourable conditions, they begin to develop that is, to repeat the performance to which they owe their existence; and in the

end once again one portion of their substance pursues its development to a finish, while another portion harks back once again as a fresh residual germ to the beginning of the process of development. These germ-cells, therefore, work against the death of the living substance and succeed in winning for it

what we can only regard as potential immortality, though that may mean no more than a lengthening of the road to death.

We

must regard

as in the highest

that this function of the germ-cell possible, if it coalesces with

differing

The

from

degree significant the fact is

another

reinforced, or only

cell similar to itself

it.

instincts

which watch over the

destinies of these

tary organisms that survive the whole individual,

them with a

made

and yet

safe shelter while

stimuli of the external world,

elemen-

which provide

they are defenceless against the

which bring about their meeting on these constitute the group of

with other germ-cells, and so the sexual instincts. They are conservative in the

same

sense

as the

other instincts in that they bring back earlier states of living substance; but they are conservative to a higher degree in that they are peculiarly resistant to external influences; and

they are conservative too in another sense in that they preserve 1 for a comparatively long period. They are the true

life itself

life instincts.

They operate against the purpose of the other leads, by reason of their function, to death; and this fact indicates that there is an opposition between them and the other instincts, an opposition whose importance was long instincts,

which

ago recognized by the theory of the neuroses. i

It

is

as

though the

them alone that we can attribute an internal impulse towards 'progress' and towards higher development! [Footnote added 1923:]

(See below [pp. 42-3].)

Yet

it is

to

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

35

of the organism moved with a vacillating rhythm. One group of instincts rushes forward so as to reach the final aim

life

of life as swiftly as possible; but when a particular stage in the advance has been reached, the other group jerks back to a certain point to

make a

And even though

it is

fresh start

and so prolong the journey. and the distinction

certain that sexuality

sexes did not exist when life began, the possibility remains that the instincts which were later to be described as

between the

may have been in operation from the very first, and it may not be true that it was only at a later time that they started

sexual

upon their work of opposing the Let us

now hark back

whether there

is

any

for

a

activities

moment

of the 'ego-instincts'. 1 and consider

ourselves

basis at all for these speculations. Is

really the case that, apart from the sexual instincts,* there are instincts that

do not seek to

that there are

none that aim at a

restore

an

earlier state

state of things

it

no

of things?

which has never

yet been attained? I know of no certain example from the organic world that would contradict the characterization I have thus proposed. There is unquestionably no universal instinct towards higher development observable in the animal or plant world, even though it is undeniable that development does in fact occur in that direction.

But on the one hand

it is

often

merely a matter of opinion when we declare that one stage of development is higher than another, and on the other hand biology teaches us that higher development in one respect is very frequently balanced or outweighed by involution in another. Moreover there are plenty of animal forms from whose early stages we can infer that their development has, on the contrary, assumed a retrograde character. Both higher develop-

ment and

involution might well be the consequences of adapta-

tion to the pressure of external forces; and in both cases the part played by instincts might be limited to the retention {in

the form of an internal source of pleasure) of an obligatory modification, 8 1

[Footnote added 1925:] It should be understood from the context that the term 'ego-instincts' is used here as a provisional description and derives from the earliest psycho-analytical terminology. [See below,

pp. 44-5 and 55.] 1

*

[These five words were italicized from 1921 onwards.] Ferenczi (1913, 137) has reached the same conclusion along differ-

ent lines: 'If this thought is pursued to its logical conclusion, one must make oneself familiar with the idea of a tendency to perseveration or

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

36 It

may be

that there beings,

difficult, too, for

an

is

instinct

many of us,

to

abandon the

towards perfection at work in

belief

human

which has brought them to their present high level of achievement and ethical sublimation and which

intellectual

may be men.

I

expected to watch over their development into superfaith, however, in the existence of any such

have no

and

internal instinct is

to be preserved.

I

cannot see

The

how

this

benevolent illusion

present development of

human

beings

seems to me, no different explanation from that of animals. What appears in a minority of human individuals as

requires, as

it

an untiring impulsion towards further perfection can easily be understood as a result of the instinctual repression upon which is

based

all

that

is

most precious in

human

civilization.

The

repressed instinct never ceases to strive for complete satisfaction, which would consist in the repetition of a primary

experience

of satisfaction.

No

substitutive or reactive formations

and no

sublimations will suffice to remove the repressed instinct's is the difference in amount between persisting tension; and it the pleasure of satisfaction which is demanded and that which is actually achieved that provides the driving factor which will

permit of no halting at any position attained, but, in the poet's 1 words, 'ungebandigt immer vorwarts dringt'. The backward path that leads to complete satisfaction is as a rule obstructed by the resistances which maintain the repressions. So there is no alternative but to advance in the direction in which growth is

freethough with no prospect of bringing the process to a conclusion or of being able to reach the goal. The processes involved in the formation of a neurotic phobia, which is still

nothing than an attempt at flight from the satisfaction of an instinct, a with model of the manner of origin of this suppresent us else

posititious 'instinct

towards perfection'

not possibly be attributed to every conditions for

but

its

development

an

human

instinct

being.

which can-

The

dynamic

are, indeed, universally present;

only in rare cases that the economic situation appears production of the phenomenon.

it is

to favour the I will

add only a word

to suggest that the efforts of Eros to

regression dominating organic life as well, while the tendency to further as a result development, to adaptation, etc., would become active

only

of external stimuli.

1

!,'|

l !

J

[Tresses ever forward unsubdued.'] Mephistopheles in Faust, Part

[Scene 4].

I

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE combine organic substances into ever larger

unities

37

probably

provide a substitute for this 'instinct towards perfection' whose we cannot admit. The phenomena that are attributed

existence to

it

seem capable of explanation by

these efforts of Eros taken

in conjunction with the results of repression. 1 1 [This paragraph, which was added in 1923, anticipates the account of Eros that is to follow in the next chapter, p. 44 ff.]

VI

THE upshot of our enquiry so far has been the drawing of a sharp distinction between the 'ego-instincts' and the sexual instincts, and the view that the former exercise pressure towards death and the latter towards a prolongation of life. But this conclusion is bound to be unsatisfactory in many respects even to ourselves.

Moreover, it is actually only of the former group of we can predicate a conservative, or rather retro-

instincts that

grade, character corresponding to a compulsion to repeat. For on our hypothesis the ego-instincts arise from the coming to life of inanimate matter and seek to restore the inanimate state;

whereas as regards the sexual

though

instincts,

it is

true that

they reproduce primitive states of the organism, what they are clearly aiming at by every possible means is the coalescence of two germ-cells which are differentiated in a particular way. If this union is not effected, the germ-cell dies along with all the

other elements of the multicellular organism. It is only on this condition that the sexual function can prolong the cell's life and

lend

it the appearance of immortality. But what is the important event in the development of living substance which is being repeated in sexual reproduction, or in its fore-runner, the con-

jugation of two protista?

1

We cannot say;

and we should con-

sequently feel relieved if the whole structure of our argument turned out to be mistaken. The opposition between the ego or

death

* and the sexual or life instincts would then cease and the compulsion to repeat would no longer possess

instincts

to hold

the importance we have ascribed to it. Let us turn back, then, to one of the

assumptions that

we

have already made, with the expectation that we shall be able to give it a categorical denial. We have drawn

far-reaching conclusions from the hypothesis that all living substance is bound to die from internal causes. made this

We

tion. 1

We

assumption

are accustomed to think that such

pn what follows Freud appears

to use the

is

the fact, and

tozoa' indifferently to signify unicellular organisms. follows the original,]

*

(The

first

we

terms 'protista' and 'pro-

published appearance of the term.]

The

translation

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

39

are strengthened in our thought by the writings of our poets. Perhaps we have adopted the belief because there is some comfort in

those

it.

who

If

we

are to die ourselves, and

are dearest to us,

it is

to lose in death

first

easier to submit to a remorse-

less law of nature, to the sublime 'Avdyxrj [Necessity], than to a chance which might perhaps have been escaped. It may be,

however, that this belief in the internal necessity of dying is only another of those illusions which we have created 'urn die Schwere des Dasdns QL ertmgen'. 1 It

The notion of

belief.

is

'natural death'

certainly not a primaeval is

quite foreign to primi-

they attribute every death that occurs among them to the influence of an enemy or of an evil spirit. We must tive races;

therefore turn to biology in order to test the validity of the belief.

we may be astonished to find how little agreeamong biologists on the subject of natural death and in fact that the whole concept of death melts away under their hands. The fact that there is a fixed average duration of If we do so,

ment

there

is

at least among the higher animals naturally argues in favour of there being such a thing as death from natural causes. But this impression is countered when we consider that certain large life

animals and certain gigantic arboreal growths reach a very advanced age and one which cannot at present be computed.

According to the large conception of Wilhelm the

phenomena of

life

exhibited

Fliess [1906], all

and

by organism

also,

no

doubt, their death

are linked with the completion of fixed periods, which express the dependence of two kinds of living substance (one male and the other female) upon the solar year.

When we

see,

however,

how

influence of external forces

easily

and how

extensively the

able to modify the date of the appearance of vital phenomena (especially in the plant world) to precipitate

upon

is

them or hold them back

doubts must be cast

the rigidity of Fliess's formulas or at least

the laws laid

The

upon whether

down by him

are the sole determining factors. greatest interest attaches from our point of view to the

treatment given to the subject of the duration of life and the death of organisms in the writings of Weismann (1882, 1884, 1892, etc.) It was he

who

introduced the division of living The mortal part is

substance into mortal and immortal parts. i

[To

1,8.]

bear the burden of existence.'

(Schiller,

Die Braut von Messina,

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

40 the

body

in the

narrower sense

the 'soma'

which alone

is

death. The germ-cells, on the other hand, are subject to natural in so far as they are able, under certain potentially immortal, favourable conditions, to develop into a new individual, or, in

other words, to surround themselves with a

mann,

new soma.

(Weis-

1884.)

What strikes us in this is the unexpected analogy with our own view, which was arrived at along such a different path. Weismann, regarding one portion which

it

living substance morphologically, sees in is

the soma, the body

destined to die

apart from the substance concerned with sex and inheritance and an immortal portion the germ-plasm, which is concerned

with the survival of the species, with reproduction. We, on the other hand, dealing not with the living substance but with the forces operating in it, have been led to distinguish two kinds of instincts: those

which seek

to lead

others, the sexual instincts,

what

is

living to death,

and

which are perpetually attempting

and achieving a renewal of life. This sounds like a dynamic Weismann's morphological theory.

corollary to

But the appearance of a sipated as soon as

significant correspondence

is dis-

we discover Weismann's views on the problem

of death. For he only relates the distinction between the mortal

soma and the immortal germ-plasm to

multicellular

organisms; in

and the reproductive cell one and the same (Weismann, 1882, 38). Thus he con-

unicellular organisms the individual

are

still

siders that unicellular

organisms are potentially immortal, and its appearance with the multicellular

that death only makes

metazoa.

It is true that this death of the higher organisms is a natural one, a death from internal causes; but it is not founded

on any primal characteristic of living substance (Weismann, 1884, 84) and cannot be regarded as an absolute necessity with basis in the very nature of life (Weismann, 1882, 33). Death rather a matter of expediency, a manifestation of adaptation to the external conditions of life; for, when once the cells of the

its

is

body have been divided

into

limited duration of individual less

luxury.

When

this differentiation

had been made in the

became

possible and expedient, soma of the higher organisms has died at fixed

multicellular organisms, death

Since then, the

soma and germ-plasm, an unwould become a quite point-

life

periods for internal reasons, while the protista have remained immortal. It is not the case, on the other hand, that

reproduc-

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE tion

was only introduced

contrary,

it

is

at the

same time

41

as death.

On

a primal characteristic of living matter,

the like

growth (from which it originated) and life has been continuous from its first beginning upon earth. (Weismann, 1884, 84 f.) 3

It will be seen at once that to concede in this way that higher organisms have a natural death is of very little help to us, For if death is a late acquisition of organisms, then there can be no question of there having been death instincts from the very die beginning of life on this earth. Multicellular organisms

may

for internal reasons,

owing to

defective differentiation or to

imperfections in their metabolism, but the matter

is of no from the point of view of our problem. An account of of as is death such this the origin moreover far less at variance

interest

with our habitual modes of thought than the strange assumption of 'death instincts'.

The

discussion

led, so far as I

Some

which followed upon Weismann's suggestions

can

see, to

no

conclusive results in any direction. 1

who reHartmann

writers returned to the views of Goette (1883),

garded death as a direct

result of reproduction,

(1906, 29) does not regard the appearance of a 'dead

dead portion of the

living substance

bod/

a

as the criterion of death,

death as

'the termination of individual but defines development'. In this sense protozoa too are mortal; in their case death always coincides with reproduction, but is to some extent

obscured by it, since the whole substance of the parent animal may be transmitted directly into the young offspring.

Soon afterwards research was directed

to the experimental

on

unicellular organisms of the alleged immortality of living substance. An American biologist, Woodruff, experi-

testing

menting with a ciliate infusorian, the 'slipper-animalcule', which reproduces by fission into two individuals, persisted until the 3029th generation (at which point he broke off the experiment), isolating one of the part-products on each occasion and placing it in fresh water. This remote descendent of the first slipper-animalcule was just as lively as its ancestor and showed no signs of ageing or degeneration. Thus, in so far as figures of this kind prove anything, the immortality of the protista seemed to be experimentally demonstrable. 2

Other experimenters arrived i i

at different results.

Maupas,

Hartmann (1906), Lipschutz (1914) and Doflein (1919). For this and what follows see Lipschutz (1914, 26 and 52 ff.).

Of.

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

42

Calkins and others, in contrast to Woodruff, found that after a certain

number of

divisions these infusoria

and eventually

die,

become weaker,

of some part of their organization unless certain recuperative measures are

diminish in size, suffer the

loss

applied to them. If this is so, protozoa would appear to die after a phase of senescence exactly like the higher animalsthus

completely contradicting Weismann's assertion that death late acquisition of living organisms.

From

is

a

the aggregate of these experiments two facts emerge offer us a firm footing.

which seem to First:

If two of the animalculae, at the

moment

before they

show

are able to coalesce with each other, signs of senescence,

that

is

to 'conjugate'

(soon after which they once more

separate), they are saved

juvenated'. Conjugation

from growing old and become 'reno doubt the fore-runner of the

is

sexual reproduction of higher creatures;

it is

as yet unconnected

with propagation and is Hmited to the mixing of the substances of the two individuals. (Weismann's 'amphimixis'.) The recuperative effects of conjugation can, however, be replaced by

by alterations in the composition of the fluid which provides their nourishment, by raising their are reminded of the temperature or by shaking them.

certain stimulating agents,

We

celebrated experiment made by J. Loeb, in which, by means of certain chemicalstimuli, he induced segmentation in sea-urchins'

a process which can normally occur only after fertilization. Secondly: It is probable nevertheless that infusoria die a natural death as a result of their own vital processes. For the

eggs

contradiction between

Woodruffs findings and the others is due

having provided each generation with fresh nutrient fluid. If he omitted to do so, he observed the same signs of senescence as the other experimenters. He concluded that the animalculae to his

were injured by the products of metabolism which they extruded into the surrounding fluid. He was then able to prove conclusively that it was only the products of its own metabolism

which had

fatal results for the particular

kind of animalcule.

For the same animalculae which inevitably perished if they were

crowded together in their own nutrient fluid flourished in a solution which was over-saturated with the waste products of a distantly related species.

An infusorian,

therefore, if it

is left

to

a natural death owing to its incomplete voidance of the products of its own metabolism. (It may be that the same

itself dies

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE is

incapacity

43

the ultimate cause of the death of all higher

animals as well.)

At

this

point the question

may

well arise in our

minds

whether any object whatever is served by trying to solve the death from a study of the protozoa. The problem of natural of these creatures may conceal from our primitive organization

though in fact present in them

conditions which, eyes important too,

only become

visible in, higher

animals where they are able to

And if we abandon the morpho-

find morphological expression.

of view and adopt the dynamic one, it becomes a matter of complete indifference to us whether natural death logical point

can be shown to occur in protozoa or not. The substance which later recognized as being immortal has not yet become

is

separated in them from the mortal one. The instinctual forces which seek to conduct life into death may also be operating in protozoa from the first, and yet their effects may be so completely concealed

by the

life-preserving forces that

may be

it

very hard to find any direct evidence of their presence. seen, moreover, that the observations made by

We have

biologists allow

us to assume that internal processes of this kind leading to death do occur also in protista. But even if protista turned out to be

immortal in Weismann's sense,

would apply only

acquisition

his assertion that

to

its

manifest

death

is

a late

phenomena and

would not make impossible the assumption of processes

tending

towards it

Thus our expectation that biology would flatly contradict the recognition of death instincts has not been fulfilled. We are at liberty to continue concerning ourselves with their possibility,

we have other reasons for doing so. The striking similarity between Weismann's distinction of soma and germ-plasm and if

our separation of the death persists

and

instincts

from the

life

instincts

retains its significance.

We may pause for a moment over this pre-eminently dualistic view of instinctual life. According to E. Bering's theory, two kinds of processes are constantly at work in living substance, operating in contrary directions, one constructive or assimilatory

and the other

destructive or dissimilatory.

May we

venture to recognize in these two directions taken by the vital processes the activity of our two instinctual impulses, the life instincts and the death instincts? There is something else, at any rate, that

we cannot remain

blind to.

We

have unwittingly

-

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

44

harbour of Schopenhauer's philo-

steered our course into the

him death is the 'true result and to that extent the sophy. For 1 while the sexual instinct is the embodiment of purpose of life', live. [Cf. the Appendix to Freud, 1925*.] Let us make a bold attempt at another step forward. It is considered that the union of a number of cells into generally

the will to

a

the multicellular character of

vital association

has become a means of prolonging their preserve

the

of another, and the

life

life.

One

organismscell

community of

survive even if individual cells have to die.

helps to cells

can

We

have already heard that conjugation, too, the temporary coalescence of two unicellular organisms, has a life-preserving and rejuvenating

on both of them. Accordingly, we might attempt to apply the libido theory which has been arrived at in psycho-analysis to the mutual relationship of cells. might suppose that the life

effect

We

instincts or sexual instincts

other

cell

take the

that they partly neutralize the death the processes set up by them) in those cells their life; while the other cells do the same for

cells as their object,

instincts (that

is,

and thus preserve them, and still others

sacrifice

a completely

themselves in the performance of

germ-cells themselves would behave to use the phrase that we 'narcissistic' fashion

this libidinal function.

in

which are active in each

The

are accustomed to use in the theory of the neuroses to describe his libido in his ego and pays none of it out in object-cathexes. The germ-cells require their

a whole individual who retains

libido, the activity

of their

reserve against their later

life instincts,

momentous

for themselves, as a

constructive activity.

(The cells of the malignant neoplasms which destroy the organism should also perhaps be described as narcissistic in this

same

sense: pathology

innate

and

is

prepared to regard their germs as 2 In this way

to ascribe embryonic attributes to them.)

the libido of our sexual instincts the poets

would coincide with the Eros

and philosophers which holds

Here then

is

an opportunity

of

all living things together.

for looking

back over the slow

development of our libido theory. In the analysis of the transference neuroses forced

first

instance the

upon our

notice the

opposition between the 'sexual instincts', which are directed

towards an object, and certain other instincts, with which we were very insufficiently acquainted and which we described i

a

Schopenhauer (1851; SariBdu Werke, ed, Hiibscher, 1938, 5, 236). [This sentence was added in 1921.]

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE 1

45

A

as the 'ego-instincts'. foremost place among provisionally these was necessarily given to the instincts serving the self-

of the individual. It was impossible to say what preservation other distinctions were to be drawn among them. No know-

more valuable as a foundation for ledge would have been true psychological science than an approximate grasp of the

common

characteristics

and

possible distinctive features of the

But in no region of psychology were we groping more in the dark. Everyone assumed the existence of as many instincts

instincts.

or 'basic instincts' as he chose, and juggled with them like the ancient Greek natural philosophers with their four elements earth, air, fire

and water. Psycho-analysis, which could not

the instincts, kept at first escape making some assumption about to the popular division of instincts typified in the phrase 'hunger arid love'. At least there was nothing arbitrary in this; and by its

help the analysis of the psychoneuroses was carried forward

of 'sexuality', and at the same quite a distance. The concept time of the sexual instinct, had, it is true, to be extended so as

many things which could not be classed under the reproductive function; and this caused no little hubbub in an austere, respectable or merely hypocritical world. to cover

The

next step was taken

when

psycho-analysis felt

closer towards die psychological ego,

know only as

which

it

had

first

its way come to

a repressive, censoring agency, capable of erecting

protective structures

seeing minds had,

and

it is

reactive formations. Critical

true, long since objected to the

and

far-

concept

of libido being restricted to the energy of the sexual instincts directed towards an object. But they failed to explain how they

had arrived

at their better knowledge or to derive

from

it

anything of which analysis could make use. Advancing more cautiously, psycho-analysis observed the regularity with which libido

is

withdrawn from the object and directed on

to the ego

the libidinal (the process of introversion); and, by studying of children in its earliest phases, came to the con-

development

clusion that the ego 1

is

the true and original reservoir of libido,*

[So, for instance, in the

account of this opposition given in Freud's

paper on psychogenic disturbances of vision (I910t).] narcissism [This idea was fully stated by Freud in his paper on near the beginning (1914s), Section I. See, however, his later footnote, of Chapter III of The Ego and the Id (1923*), in which he corrects this statement and describes the id as 'the great reservoir of libido'.]

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

46

and that to

it is

objects.

that libido only from that reservoir

The ego now found

its

is

extended on

among sexual place among them.

position

and was at once given the foremost Libido which was in this way lodged in the ego was described 1 as 'narcissistic'. This narcissistic libido was of course also a

objects

manifestation of the force of the sexual instinct in the analytical

and

sense of those words,

it

had

necessarily to be identified with

the 'self-preservative instincts' whose existence had been recognized from the first. Thus the original opposition between the

and the sexual instincts proved to be inadequate. of the ego-instincts was seen to be libidinal; sexual probably alongside others operated in the ego.

ego-instincts

A portion instincts

Nevertheless

we

which

down

it

lays

are justified in saying that the old formula that psychoneuroses are based

and sexual

between

ego-instincts

we need

reject to-day. It

is

on a

conflict

instincts contains

nothing that merely that the distinction between

the two kinds of instinct, which

was originally regarded

as in

way qualitative^ must now be characterized differentlynamely as being topographical. And in particular it is still

some

sort of

true that the transference neuroses, the essential subject of

are the result of a conflict between the psycho-analytic study, ego and the libidinal cathexis of objects.

But

it is all

the

more necessary

for us to lay stress

libidinal character of the self-prese'rvative instincts

are venturing

upon the

upon

the

now that we

further step of recognizing the sexual

instinct a? Eros, the preserver of all things,

and of deriving the

ego from the stores of libido by means of the soma are attached to one another. But

narcissistic libido of the

of which the

we now

cells

by another question. If the self-preservative instincts too are of a libidinal nature, are there perhaps no other instincts whatever but the libidinal ones?

At

all

find ourselves suddenly faced

events there are none other visible. But in that case

shall after all

be driven to agree with the

critics

who

we

suspected

from the first that psycho-analysis explains everything by sexuality, or with innovators like Jung who, making a hasty judgement, have used the word 'libido' to mean instinctual force in general.

Must not It

this

be so?

was not our

intention at all

Our argument had

events to produce such a result,

point of departure a sharp distinction between ego-instincts, which we equated with death instincts, 1

Sec

as

its

my paper on

narcissism (1914c) [Section I].

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE and sexual

were prepared at preservative

instincts of the

we subsequently withdrew

47

which we equated with life instincts. (We one stage [p. 33] to include the so-called self-

instincts,

it,)

ego

among the death

[p, 46] corrected ourselves

Our

views have from the very

on

instincts;

this point

first

been

but

and

dualistict

and to-day they are even more definitely dualistic than before now that we describe the opposition as being, not between egoinstincts

and sexual

but between

instincts

life

instincts

and

death instincts. Jung's libido theory is on the contrary mnistic; the fact that he has called his one instinctual force 'libido' is

bound to cause confusion, but need not

affect us otherwise. 1

We

than those of self-preservation opersuspect that instincts other ate in the ego, and it ought to be possible for us to point to them. Unfortunately, however, the analysis of the ego has made so little

headway that

very difficult for us to do

it is

so. It is possible, in-

deed, that the libidinal instincts in the ego may be linked in a 2 these other ego-instincts which are still peculiar manner with

Even before we had any deaf understanding of had a suspicion that the 'ego-in-

strange to us.

narcissism, psycho-analysts stincts'

had libidinal components attached to them. But these are to which our opponents will possibilities, pay very

very uncertain

attention. The difficulty remains that psycho-analysis has not enabled us hitherto to point to any [ego-] instincts other than the libidinal ones. That, however, is no reason for our falling in little

with the conclusion that no others in fact

exist.

In the obscurity that reigns at present in the theory of the instincts, it would be unwise to reject any idea that promises to

throw

light

between the

on

it.

We

started out

and death

life

from the great opposition

instincts.

Now

object-love itself

presents us with a second

between love (or

example of a similar polarity that affection) and hate (or aggressiveness). If only

we could succeed

in relating these

two

polarities to

each other

one from the other! From the very first we recognized the presence of a sadistic component in the sexual 3 instinct. As we know, it can make itself independent and can,

and

in deriving

in the

form of a perversion, dominate an individual's entire

1

[The two preceding sentences were added in 1921.] ' [In the first edition only: by instinctual "confluence", to borrow a term used by Adler [1908]-'.] 1

*

This was already so in the

first

of Sexuality in 1905 [Standard Ed.,

edition of Three Essays on the Theory

7,

157

ff.;

I.P.L, 57, 23 ft].

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

48

sexual activizy. It also emerges as a predominant component instinct in one of the 'pregenital organizations', as I have

named them. But how can

the sadistic instinct,

whose aim

it is

from Eros, the preserver of life? Is it not plausible to suppose that this sadism is in fact a death instinct which, under the influence of the narcissistic libido, has

to injure the object, be derived

been forced away from the ego and has consequently only

emerged in

relation to the object? It

now

enters the service of

the sexual function. During the oral stage of organization of the over an object coinlibido, the act of obtaining erotic mastery cides with that object's destruction; later, the sadistic instinct

at the stage of genital primacy, it takes separates off, and finally, of overpoweron, for the purposes of reproduction, the function

the extent necessary for carrying out the ing the sexual object to sexual act. It might indeed be said that the sadism which has

been forced out of the ego has pointed the way for the libidinal components of the sexual instinct, and that these follow after it

Wherever the original sadism has undergone no the familiar ambivalence of mitigation or intermixture, we find 1 love and hate in erotic life.

to the object.

If such

instinct

as this is permissible, then we have met we should produce an example of a death

an assumption

demand

the

that

true, a displaced one. But this way of very far from being easy to grasp and creates

it is

though,

looking at things

is

a positively mystical impression. It looks suspiciously as though we were trying to find a way out of a highly embarrassing situation at

new

in

any price. We may recall, however, that there is nothing an assumption of this kind. We put one forward on an

was any question of an embarrassing situation. Clinical observations led us at that time to the view that masochism, the component instinct which is compleearlier occasion, before there

mentary to sadism, must be regarded as sadism that has been turned round upon the subject's own ego. 2 But there is no an instinct turning from an turning from the ego to an object which is the new point now under discussion. Masochism, the turning round of the instinct upon the subject's own ego, would difference in principle between

object to the ego

1

and

[This foreshadows Freud's discussion of instinctual

Chap. IV of The Ego and 2

and

its

See

my

Three Essays

'Instincts

and

the

'fusion*

in

Id (19233).]

(190M) [Standard Ed,,

their Vicissitudes' (1915c).

7,

158;

LP.L,

57, 24j;

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

49

be a return to an earlier phase of the instinct's a regression. The account that was formerly given of

in that case history,

masochism requires emendation as being too sweeping in one there might be such a thing as primary masochism

respect:

a possibility which I had contested at that time. 1 Let us, however, return to the self-preservative sexual in-

The experiments upon

stincts.

that conjugation

that

is,

protista have already shown us the coalescence of two individuals

which separate soon afterwards without any subsequent cellhas a strengthening and rejuvenating effect division occurring 3

upon both of them. In later generations they show no signs of degenerating and seem able to put up a longer resistance to the injurious effects of their own metabolism. This single observation may, I think, be taken as typical of the effect produced by sexual union as well. But how is it that the coalescence

of two only slightly different of life? tozoa

cells

The experiment which

can bring about

this

renewal

replaces the conjugation of pro-

by the application of chemical or even of mechanical enables us to give what is no doubt (cf. LipschutZj 1914}

stimuli

a conclusive reply to this question. The result is brought about by the influx of fresh amounts of stimulus. This tallies well with the hypothesis that the internal reasons to say, to death,

an

life

process of the individual leads for

abolition of chemical tensions, that

whereas union with the

may be

described as fresh

is

to

living substance of a

different individual increases those tensions, introducing 'vital differences'

what

which must then

off. As regards this dissimilarity there must of course be one or more optima. The dominating tendency of mental life, and perhaps of nervous life in general, is the effort to

be lived

reduce, to keep constant or to remove internal tension due to 1

A considerable portion of these speculations have

been anticipated

by Sabina Spielrein (1912) in an instructive and interesting paper which, however, is unfortunately not entirely clear to me. She there describes the sadistic

components of the sexual

instinct as 'destructive'.

A, Starke (1914), again, has attempted to identify the concept of libido itself with the biological concept (assumed on theoretical grounds) of an

impetus towards death. See also Rank (1907). All these discussions, like that in the text, give evidence of the demand for a clarification of the

[A later theory of the instincts such as has not yet been achieved, by Freud himself occupies Chapter

discussion of the destructive instinct

VI

of

GriRzatm and

its

Discontents (1930a).]

See the account quoted above, pp. 41-2, from Lipschiitz (1914),

'

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

50

stimuli (the 'Nirvana principle', to

Low

borrow a term from Barbara

a tendency which finds expression in the l pleasure principle; and our recognition of that fact is one of our strongest reasons for believing in the existence of death [1920, 73])

instincts.

But we

still feel

our line of thought appreciably hampered by

we cannot

the fact that

ascribe to the sexual instinct the char-

of a compulsion to repeat which first put us on the track of the death instincts. The sphere of embryonic developacteristic

mental processes is no doubt extremely rich in such phenomena of repetition; the two germ-cells that are involved in sexual reproduction and their life history are themselves only repetitions of the beginnings of organic

processes to

two

which sexual

cell-bodies.

life is

That alone

is

life.

But the essence of the

directed

is

the coalescence of

what guarantees the immortality

of the living substance in the higher organisms. In other words, we need more information on the origin of sexual reproduction and of the sexual instincts in general. This

a problem which is calculated to daunt an outsider and which the specialists themselves have not yet been able to solve. is

We

shall therefore give only the briefest summary of whatever seems relevant to our line of thought from among the many

discordant assertions and opinions. One of these views deprives the problem of reproduction of its

mysterious fascination by representing

tion of growth.

(Cf.

multiplication

by

it

as a part manifesta-

fission,

sprouting or

gemmation.) The origin of reproduction by sexually differentiated germ-cells might be pictured along sober Darwinian lines

by supposing that the advantage of amphimixis, arrived at on some occasion by the chance conjugation of two protista, was retained

view

and

further exploited in later development.*

On

this

would not be anything very ancient; and the extraordinarily violent instincts whose aim it is to bring about 'sex'

1 [Cf. p. 1 ff. The whole topic is further considered in "The Economic Problem of Masochism' (1924c).] *

Though Weismann (1892) denies this advantage as well: 'In no case does fertilization correspond to a rejuvenescence or renewal of life, nor occurrence necessary in order that life may endure: it is an

is its

merely

which

renders possible the intermingling of two different arrangement hereditary tendencies.' [English translation, 1893, 231.] He nevertheless believes that an rntenningling of this kind leads to an increase in the variability of the organism concerned.

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

51

would be repeating something that had once occurred by chance and had since become established as sexual union

being advantageous.

The question arises here, as in the case of death [p. 43] whether we do right in ascribing to protista those characteristics alone which they actually exhibit, and whether it is correct to assume that forces and processes which become visible only in the ,

in those organisms for the higher organisms originated

time.

help

The view of sexuality we have just mentioned for our purposes. The objection may be raised

is

first

of little

against

it

of life instincts already operating postulates the existence in the simplest organisms; for otherwise conjugation, which works counter to the course of life and makes the task of ceasing that

it

to live

more

difficult,

would not be retained and elaborated but

would be avoided. If, therefore, we are not to abandon the we must suppose them to be hypothesis of death instincts, associated from the very first with life instincts. But it must be admitted that in that case with two

unknown

Apart from

this,

we shall be working upon an equation

quantities.

science has so

little

to tell us

about the

that we can liken the problem to a darkorigin of sexuality ness into which not so much as a ray of a hypothesis has penetrated.

In quite a different region,

it

is

true,

we

do

meet

with such a hypothesis; but it is of so fantastic a kind a myth rather than a scientific explanation that I should not it here, were it not that it fulfils precisely venture to

produce

the one condition whose' fulfilment

the origin of an instinct to a need

we

desire.

to restore

an

For

it

traces

earlier state

of

things.

What I have in mind is, of course, the theory which Plato the Symposium, and which put into the mouth of Aristophanes in deals not only with the origin of the sexual instinct but also with its variations in relation to its object "The original human nature was not like the present, but different In the first place, the sexes were originally three in and number, not two as they are now; there was man, woman,

the most important of

.' Everything about these primaeval double: they had four hands and four feet, two faces, two privy parts, and so on. Eventually Zeus decided to cut these men in two, 'like a sorb-apple which is halved for pickAfter the division had been made, 'the two parts of man,

the union of the two.

men was

ling'.

.

.

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

52

each desiring his other half, came together, and threw their arms about one another eager to grow into one'. 1 Shall we follow the hint given us by the poet-philosopher, and venture upon the hypothesis that living substance at the time of its coming to We was torn apart into small particles, which have ever since endeavoured to reunite through the sexual instincts? that these instincts, in

which the chemical

affinity of

inanimate matter persisted, gradually succeeded, as they developed through the kingdom of the protista, in overcoming the put in the way of that endeavour by an environment charged with dangerous stimuli stimuli which compelled them to form a protective cortical layer? that these splintered frag-

difficulties

ments of living substance in

this

way

attained a multicellular

condition and finally transferred the instinct for reuniting, in the most highly concentrated form, to the germ-cells? But here, I think, the

moment has come for breaking off.

i

Qowett's translation. Footnote added 1921 :] I have to thank Professor Heinrich Gomperz, of Vienna, for the following discussion on the origin of the Platonic myth, which I give partly in his own words. It is to be remarked that what is essentially the same theory is already to be found in the Upanishads. For we find the following passage in the Brihaddrmyoka-uparushadt 1, 4, 3 [Max-Muller's translation, 2, 85 f.], where the origin of the world from the Atman (the Self or Ego) is described: 'But

he

felt

no

made

a man who is lonely feels no delight. He He was so large as man and wife together. He then

delight. Therefore

wished for a second.

two, and then arose husband and wife. Therefore Yagflavalkya-.said^'We two are thus (each of us) like half a shell" Therefore the void which was there, is filled by the wife.' this his Self to fall in

The Brihaddratyaka-upanish&dis the most ancient of all the Upanishads, and no competent authority dates

it later than about the year 800 B.C. In contradiction to the prevailing opinion, I should hesitate to give an unqualified denial to the possibility of Plato's myth being derived, even

if it

were only indirectly, from the Indian source, since a similar possicannot be excluded in the case of the doctrine of transmigration.

bility

But even first

if

a derivation of this kind (through the Pythagoreans in the were established, the significance of the coincidence be-

instance)

tween the two

trains of thought would scarcely be diminished. For Plato would not have adopted a story of this kind which had somehow reached him through some oriental tradition to say nothing of givingitso impor-

unless it had struck him as containing an element of truth. In a paper devoted to a systematic examination of this line of thought before the time of Plato, Ziegler (1913) traces it back to Babylonian

tant a place

origins.

[Freud had already alluded to Plato's myth in his Three Essays, Standard Ed., 7, 136; I.P.L, 57, 2.J

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

53

Not, however, without the addition of a few words of critical

may be asked whether and how far I am myself convinced of the truth of the hypotheses that have been set out answer would be that I am not convinced in these pages. reflection. It

My

that I do not seek to persuade other people to believe myself and in them. Or, more precisely, that I do not know how far I believe in them.

There

is

no

reason, as

it

seems to me,

why

the

emotional factor of conviction should enter into this question at all. It is surely possible to throw oneself into a line of thought

Mow

it wherever it leads out of simple scientific curiosity, reader prefers, as an advocatus diaboli, who is not on that account himself sold to the devil. I do not dispute the fact

and to

or, if the

that the third step in the theory of the instincts,

which

I

have

taken here, cannot lay claim to the same degree of certainty as the two earlier ones the extension of the concept of sexuality

and the hypothesis of narcissism. These two innovations were a of observation into theory and were no more

direct translation

open

to sources of error

ihan

is

inevitable in all such cases. It

is

assertion of the regressive character of instincts

true that

my

also rests

upon observed material

namely on the

facts

of the

may be, however, that I have overtheir significance. And in any case it is impossible to

compulsion to repeat. It estimated

pursue an idea of this kind except by repeatedly combining factual material with what is purely speculative and thus diverging widely from empirical observation. The more frequently this is done in the course of constructing a theory, the more

untrustworthy, as we know, must be the final result. But the degree of uncertainty is not assignable. One may have made a lucky hit or one may have gone shamefully astray. I do not think a large partis played by what is called 'intuition' in work

of

this

me

to

kind.

From what

I

have seen of

be the product of a kind of

intuition, it

seems to

intellectual impartiality.

Unfortunately, however, people are seldom impartial where ultimate things, the great problems of science and life, are concerned.

Each of us

is

governed in such cases by deep-rooted whose hands our speculation unwit-

internal prejudices, into tingly plays. Since ful,

we have such good grounds for being distrustresults of our own deliberations

our attitude towards the

cannot well be other than one of cool benevolence. I hasten to add, however, that self-criticism such as this is far from binding one to any special tolerance towards dissentient opinions. It is

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

54

to reject remorselessly theories which are perfectly legitimate contradicted by the very first steps in the analysis of observed facts,

while yet being aware at the same time that the validity own theory is only a provisional one.

of one's

We need not feel greatly disturbed in judging our speculation upon the

life

and death

by the

instincts

fact that so

many

bewildering and obscure processes occur in it such as one instinct being driven out by another or an instinct turning from the ego to an object, and so on. This is merely due to our being obliged to operate with the scientific terms, that is to say with the figurative language, peculiar to psychology (or, more precisely, to depth psychology). We could not otherwise describe the processes in question at

all,

become aware of them. The

and indeed we could not have deficiencies in

our description

we were

already hi a position to replace the psychological terms by physiological or chemical ones. It is true that they too are only part of a figurative

would probably vanish

if

it is one with which we have long been familiar perhaps a simpler one as well. the other hand it should be made quite clear that the

language; but

and which

On

is

uncertainty of our speculation has been greatly increased by the necessity for borrowing from the science of biology. Biology is

truly a land of unlimited possibilities.

give us the most surprising information

We may

expect

it

to

and we cannot guess

what answers it will return in a few dozen years to the questions we have put to it. They may be of a kind which will blow away the whole of our

be asked

artificial structure

of hypotheses. If so,

it

may

have embarked upon such a line of thought as the present one, and in particular why I have decided to make it public. Well I cannot deny that some of the analogies,

why I

correlations

and connections which

it

contains seemed to

me to

deserve consideration. 1 1 1 will add a few words to clarify our terminology, which has undergone some development in the course of the present work. We came to know what the 'sexual instincts' were from their relation to the sexes

and

to the reproductive function.

We retained

this

name

after

we had

been obliged by the findings of psycho-analysis to connect them less closely with reproduction. With the hypothesis of narcissistic libido and the extension of the concept of libido to the individual cells, the sexual was transformed for us into Eros, which seeks to force together the portions of living substance. What are commonly

instinct

and hold together

called the sexual instincts are looked

upon by us

as the part of Eros

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

55

directed towards objects. Our speculations have suggested that Eros operates from the beginning of life and appears as a 'life instinct' in opposition to the 'death instinct' which was brought into being by the coming to life of inorganic substance. These speculations seek to

which

is

by supposing that these two instincts were strugfrom the very first. [Added 1 92 1 :] It is not so easy, gling with each other to follow the transformations through which the concept of the solve the riddle of life

perhaps,

'ego-instincts'

has passed.

the instinctual trends (of

To

begin with

we

which we had no

applied that closer

name

to all

knowledge) which

could be distinguished from the sexual instincts directed towards an the ego-instincts to the sexual instincts of which object; and we opposed the libido is the manifestation. Subsequently we came to closer grips with the analysis of the ego and recognized that a portion of the 'egoinstincts is also of a libidinal character and has taken the subject's own 1

ego as its object. These narcissistic self-preservative instincts had thenceforward to be counted among the libidinal sexual instincts. The opposition between the ego-instincts and the sexual instincts was transformed into

one between the ego-instincts and the object-instincts, both of a But in its place a fresh opposition appeared between the

libidinal nature. libidinal (ego-

to

and object-)

instincts and others,

be present in the ego and which

in the destructive instincts.

Our

opposition into one between the

which must be presumed

perhaps actually be observed speculations have transformed this

may

life instincts

(Eros)

and the death

instincts.

For a general account of the development of Freud's views on the [ instincts, see the Editor's Note to 'Instincts and their Vicissitudes' (\9lty, Standard Ed., U,ll\.]

VII

IF

it is

really the case that seeking to restore is

things

an

earlier state of

such a universal characteristic of instincts,

we need

not

be surprised that so many processes take place in mental life independently of the pleasure principle. This characteristic

would be shared by all the component instincts and in their case would aim at returning once more to a particular stage in the course of development. These are matters over which the no control; but it does not follow pleasure principle has as yet that any of them are necessarily opposed to it, and we have still to solve the problem of the relation of the instinctual processes of repetition to the dominance of the pleasure principle.

We

have found that one of the

earliest

and most important

functions of the mental apparatus is to bind the instinctual impulses which impinge on it, to replace the primary process prevailing in

them by the secondary process and convert

their freely mobile cathectic energy into (tonic) cathexis.

While

this

a mainly quiescent is taking place no

transformation

can be paid to the development of unpleasure; but does not imply the suspension of the pleasure principle. the contrary, the transformation occurs on behalf of the

attention this

On

pleasure principle; the binding is a preparatory act which introduces and assures the dominance of the pleasure principle.

Let us make a sharper distinction than we have hitherto made between function and tendency. The pleasure principle, then,

is

business

a tendency operating in the service of a function whose it is to free the mental apparatus entirely from excita-

tion or to keep the amount of excitation in it constant or to cannot yet decide with certainty keep it as low as possible. in favour of any of these ways of putting it; but it is clear that

We

the function thus described would be concerned with the most universal endeavour of

all

living substance

to the quiescence of the inorganic world.

enced

how

sexual act,

namely to return have all experi-

We

the greatest pleasure attainable by us, that of the associated with a momentary extinction of a highly

is

The binding of an instinctual impulse would be a preliminary function designed to prepare the excitaintensified excitation.

tion for

its final

elimination in the pleasure of olischarge. 56

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

57

This raises the question of whether feelings of pleasure and unpleasure can be produced equally from bound and from

unbound excitatory

processes.

And

there seems to be

no doubt

whatever that the unbound or primary processes give rise to far more intense feelings in both directions than the bound or secondary ones. Moreover the primary processes are the earlier

beginning of mental life there are no others, and we may infer that if the pleasure principle had not already been in time; at the

operative in them it could never have been established for the thus reach what is at bottom no later ones.

We

conclusion, struggle for

very simple

namely that at the beginning of mental life the pleasure was far more intense than later but not so

it had to submit to frequent interruptions. In later dominance of the pleasure principle is very much more secure, but it itself has no more escaped the process of taming than the other instincts in general. In any case, whatever it is that causes the appearance of feelings of pleasure and unpleasure in processes of excitation must be present in the

unrestricted:

times the

secondary process just as

it is in the primary one. Here might be the starting-point for fresh investigations. Our

of pleasure and unpleasure but also of a peculiar tension which its turn can be either pleasurable or unpleasurable. Should the difference between these feelings enable us to distinguish in

between bound and 'unbound processes of energy? or is the of tension to be related to the absolute magnitude, or

feeling

perhaps to the

level,

of the cathexis, while the pleasure and

unpleasure series indicates a change in the magnitude of the 1 cathexis within & given unit of time? Another striking fact is that the life instincts have so much more contact with our internal

emerging as breakers of the peace and constantly producing tensions whose release is felt as pleasure while the death instincts seem to do their work unobtrusively. The

perception

pleasure principle seems actually to serve the death instincts. It is true that it keeps watch upon stimuli from without, which are regarded as by both kinds of instincts; but it is

dangers

more

on guard against increases of stimulation from within, which would make the task of living more difficult. This in turn raises a host of other questions to which we can at especially

1

[Cf. above, p. 2.

Freud

These questions had already been touched on by Part I, Section 8 and Part III, Section L]

in his 'Project', e.g. in

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

58

present

find

no answer.

We

must be patient and await

fresh

methods and occasions of research. We must be ready, too, abandon a path that we have followed for a time, if it seems

to to

be leading to no good end. Only believers, who demand that science shall be a substitute for the catechism they have given for developing or even transup, will blame an investigator forming his views. We may take comfort, too, for the slow advances of our scientific knowledge in the words of the poet:

Was man Die

nicht erfliegen kann,

muss

Schrift sagt, es ist keine Siinde

man erhinken.

zu hinken. 1

1 The ['What we cannot reach flying we must reach limping. Book tells us it is no sin to limp,' The last lines of 'Die beiden Gulden', a version by Riickert of one of the Maq&m&t of al-Hariri. Freud also .

quoted these Letter 32).]

lines in

a

letter to Fliess

.

.

of Oct. 20, 1895 (Freud I950a,

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS = Freud, Gesammelie Schnflen (12 Vienna, 1924-34. = Freud, Gisammtlte Werke (18 vols), London, from 1940. = Freud, Collected Papers (5 London, 1924-50. -,\ = Freud, Standard Edition (24 vols.), London, from 1953. = International Psycho-Analytical Library, Hogarth Press and vols.),

G.W. C.P.

S.E.

I.P.L

vols.),

Institute of Psycho-Analysis, Theorttische Schriftm

= Freud,

London, from 1921. Vienna,

Theoretische Schnfttn (1911-23),

1931.

59

BIBLIOGRAPHY AND AUTHOR INDEX books and periodicals are sn italics; titles of papers are in commas. Abbreviations are in accordance with the World List

[Titles of

inverted

of Scientific Periodicals (London, 1952), Further abbreviations used in this volume \vill be found in the List on page 59. Numerals in thick type numerals refer to pages. The figures in round brackets at the end of each entry indicate the page or pages of this refer to volumes; ordinary

volume on which the work in question is mentioned. In the case of the Freud entries, the letters attached to the dates of publication are in accordance with the corresponding entries in the complete bibliography of Freud's writings to be included in the last volume of the Standard

For non-technical authors, and for technical authors where no work is mentioned, see the General Index.]

specific

ADLER, A.

(1

908) 'Der Aggressionsbetrieb

Fortschr.

BREUER,

Med. No. t

and FREUD,

J.,

im Lebcn und in der Neurose'

19, (47)

S.

(1893) See FREUD,

S. (1893a)

(1895) See FREUD, S. (18954)

(1940) See FREUD, S. (19404) DOFUEIN, F. (1919) Das Problem des Todes tmd Pflanzen und Tieren, Jena. (41)

FECHNER, G. T. (1873) Eintgg

der Unsterblichkeit bet den

Ideen zur Sckdpfungs- tmd Entwtcklungs-

geschichte der Organismm, Leipzig. (2, 4) FERENCZI, S. (1913) 'EntwipklungsscufendesWirklichkeitssinnes',/^7. 1, 124. (35) [Trans.: 'Stages in the

PychaaaaL,

Development of the Sense of Reality', London, 1952, Chap. VIII.j

First Contributions to Psycho-Analysis,

W.

FUESS,

FREUD,

(1906) DerAblaufdisLebens, Vienna. (39)

S. (1893a)

With BREUER, J.,'t)ber den psychischen Mechanismus Phanomene: Vorlaufige Mitteilung'. GS., 1. 7-

hysterischer

G.W.,1,81. (7) [Trans.: 'On the Psychical Mechanism of Hysterical Phenomena: Preliminary Communication', C.P.. 1, 24; Standard Ed., 2,3.]

(18954)

G.W.,

With BREUER, 1, 75.

J., Stefan uber Hystme, Vienna, G.S., Omitting Breuer's contributions. (3, 19, 21, 28)

[Trans.; Studies on Hysteria, Standard Ed\, 2;

LP.L,

1;

50. Including

Breuer's contributions.]

(1900s) Die Traumdeutung, Vienna,

, 2-3; G.W., 2-3. (x, 8-9. 18-19,26,28) The Interpretation of Dream, London and New York,

[Trans.:

1955; Standard Ed., 4-5.]

60

BIBLIOGRAPHY FREUD,

61

S. (conl.)

Der Witz and setae Beziehmg

(1905c)

G.W.,

9, 5;

6.

zm

Unbeuwsten, Vienna. G.S.,

(29)

Mr

Relation to the Unconscious, London, 1960; [Trans.: Jokes and Standard Ed., 8.] Drei Abhandlwgen zttr Sexualtheorie, Vienna. G.S., 5, 3; G.W.,

(1905tf)

5, 29. (27,

47-8, 52)

on the Theory of Sexuality, [Trans.: Three Essays

Standard Ed., 7, 125;

LP.L,

London, 1949;

57.]

(1910J) 'Die psychogcne Sehstorung in psychoanalytischer Auffassung', G.S., 5, 301; G.W., 8, 94. (45) [Trans.:

'The Psycho-Analytic View of Psychogenic Disturbance

of Vision', C.P., 2, 105; Standard Ed., 11.211] tiber die zwei Prinzipien des psychischen (191 li) 'Formulierungen Geschehens', G.S., 5, 409; G.W., 8, 230. (xi, 4)

'Formulations on the

[Trans.:

Two

Principles of

Mental Func-

tioning', C.P., 4, 13; Standard Ed., 12, 215.] (1914c) 'Zur Einfuhrung des Narzissmus', G.S., 6, 155; G.W., 10, 138, (xii, 27, 45-6)

'On Narcissism: an

[Trans.:

Introduction', CJ>., 4, 30; Standard

zur Technik der Psychoanalyse: II ) 'Weitere Ratschlage Erinnern, Wiederholen und Durcharbeiten', G.S., 6, 109; G.W., 10, 126. (12)

Repeating and Working Through Recommendations on the Technique of Psycho-

'Recollecting,

[Trans.:

(Further

Analysis, II)', C.P., 2, 366; Standard Ed., 12, 147.]

(1915c) 'Triebc

und

Triebschicksale', G.S., 5, 443; G.W., 10, 210.

24, 48, 55)

(xii,

[Trans.: Instincts

and

their Vicissitudes', C.P., 4, 60; Standard

Ed., 14, 111.]

(1915) 'Das Unbewusste',

G&>

5, 480;

G.W., 10, 264.

(1,

18,

22) [Trans.:

"The Unconscious',

(1916-17) Vorlesungen G.S., 7;

G.W., H.

yx

C.P., 4, 98; Standard Ed., 14, 161.]

Einfuhnmg

in die Psychoanalyse,

Vienna.

(14)

on Psycho-Analysis, revised ed., Lon-, [Trans.: Introductory Lectures

don, 1929 (4 General Introduction

to

Psychoanalysis,

New

York,

mS}', Standard f., 15-16.] aus Dichttmg md Wahrhetf, (19176) 'Eine Kbdheitserinnerung G.S., 10, 357; G.W., 12, 15. (10) Recollection from Dicktung md Wahrkeit', 'A Childhood [Trans.: C.P., 4, 357; Standard Ed., 17, 147.] (19174) 'Metapsychologische Erganzung zur Traumlehre', GS., 5, 520; G. W., 10, 412. (18,24) 'A Supplement to the Theory of

Metapsychological 4, 137; Standard Ed., 15, 219.] zu %ir Psychoanalyse der Kriegsneurosen, Vienna. Einleitung (1919J) 11, 252; G.W., 12, 321. (6, 27) [Trans.:

Dreams', CP.,

G,

BIBLIOGRAPHY

62

FREUD,

S. (cant,)

to Psycho-Analysis and the War Neuroses, [Trans.: Introduction 1921. C.P., 5, 83; Standard Ed., 17, 207.]

London and New York,

G.W. t 12, 229. (ix-x) (1919A) 'Das Unheimliche', (?., 10, 369; 'The Uncanny*, C.P., 4, 368; Standard Ed., 17, 219.] [Trans.: 'Erganzungen zur Traumlehre' (Abstract of Congress

(1920/)

Address),

Int.

%. Psyckoan., 6, 397.

to the [Trans.: 'Supplements 18, 4;

IPX.,

Theory of Dreams', Standard

Ed.,

4, x.]

(1920^) Jenseitsdes Lustprimips, Vienna, G.S., 6, 191; G.W., 13, 3. [Tram.: Beyond tks Pleasure Principle, Standard Ed., 18, 7;

1.P.L, 4.] to J. Varendonck's The Psycho(1921*) Introduction in English 271. (xi) logy of Day-Dreams, London; Standard Ed., 18,

[German Text (part only): G.S., 11, 264; G.W., 13, 439.] 237. (1923*) Das Ich und das Es, Vienna. G.S., 6, 353; G.W., 13, (xi, 13,

45, 48)

[Trans.: The

Ego and

the Id,

Standard

&.,

19, 3; I.P.L, 12.]

der (1923c [1922]) 'Bemerkungcn zur Theorie und Praxis 1 3, 305; G.W., 13, 301. (14, 26) deutung ,

Traum-

G,

[Trans.:

'Remarks on the Theory and Practice of Dream-

Interpretation', C.P., 5, 136; Standard Ed., 19, 109.] des Masochismus', G.5., 5, 374; (1924c) 'Das okonomische Problem G.W., 13, 371. (2, 50)

of Masochism', C.P., 2, 255; [Trans.: 'The Economic Problem Standard Ed., 19, 157.] (1925d [1924]) 'Notiz iiber den "Wunderblodc"

',

G.W.,14,3. (19,22) [Trans.: 'A Note upon the "Mystic Writing-Pad"

G.S., 6, 415;

',

C.P., 5, 175;

Standard Ed., 19,227.] (1925* [1924]) 'Die Widerstande gegen die Psychoanalyse',
[Trans.:

G.W., 14, 99. (44) "The- J&esistance to Psycho-Analysis',

C.P., B, 163;

Standard Ed., 19,213.]

Symptom und Angst, Vienna. G3., 11, 23; G.W.,

(1926rf) Hemmng, 14, 113. (7, 14,24)

[Trans.: Inhibition^ Symptoms and Anxiety, Standard Ed., 20, 77;

IPX.,

28.]

(1930a) Das Unbehagm 14, 421. (49) [Trans.: Civilization

in der Kultur,

and

its

Vienna. G.S., 12, 29; G.W.,

Discontents,

London and New York,

1930; Standard Ed,, 21,59.] (I940if )

G.W.,

With BREUER,

{

J.,

Zur Theorie des hysterischen AnfaLY,

17, 9. (3)

[Trans.: 'On the Standard Ed., I]

(I94la) Brief

Theory of Hysterical

an Josef Breuer, G.W.,

Attacks', C.P., 5, 27;

17, 5. (3)

A Letter to Josef Breuer, CJ

5

[Trans.:

(I942a) 'Psychopathic Characters

.,

on the

5,

25; Standard Ed.,

1.]

Stage', Standard Ed., 7,

BIBLIOGRAPHY FRBUD,

63

S.

(ami) 1 305. Translation of 'Psychopathische Personal auf der Buhne , which has not been published in German. (11)

(

1950s)

Atis

den

Anfdngen der Psychoanalyse, London.

'Entwurf einer Psychologic' (1895).]

(xii,

[Includes

2-3, 19-20, 22-4,

57-8)

The Origins of Psycho-Analysis, London and New York, 1954. (Partly, including 'A Project for a Scientific Psychology',

[Trans,;

in Standard Ed., 1.)] (1955ff)

'Gutachten iiber die

elektriscfae

Behandlung der Kriegs-

German text unpublished. (6) 'Memorandum on the Electrical Treatment of War

neurotiker'; [Trans.:

Neuroses', Standard Ed., 17, 211.]

FREUD,

S.,

FERENCZI, S., and others. (1919) Vienna. (6)

w Psychoanalyse der Kriegs-

neurosen,

and the War Neuroses, London and [Trans.: Psycho-Analysis York, 1921.] GOETTE, A. (1883) (far den Urspnaig des Todes, Hamburg. (41)

HARTMANN, M.

(1906)

Tod und

Fortpfonzung,

Munich.

JUNG, C. G. (1909) 'Die Bedeutung des Vaters Einzelnen', Jb.

pychoauL

fiir

New

(41)

das Schicksal des

psychopath. Forsch., 1, 155. (16)

of the Father in the Destiny of the [Trans.: "The Significance Individual', Collected Papers on Analytical Psychology, London, 1916, 156.]

Warm

wir sterbcn, Stuttgart (41, 49) Low, B. (1920) Psycho-Analysis, London. (50) MARONOWSKI, J. (1918) 'Die erotischen Quellen der MinderwertigSexwlwiss., 4, 313. (14) keitsgefuhle',

LIPSCHUTZ, A. (1914)

PFEIFER, S. (1919) 'Ausserungen infantil-erotischer Triebe Imago, 5, 243. (8)

RANK, 0. (1907) DerKunstler, Vienna. (49) RICKMAN, J. (ed.) (1937) A General Seltctmfrm Freud, London, (xii) SCHOPENHAUER, A. (1851) 'tJber

the

im

Spiele',

Works ofSigmwid

die anscheinende Absichtlichkeit

im

Schicksale des Einzelnen', Parerga und Paralipomena, 1 (Samtfahe Wtrke, ed. Hubscher, Leipzig, 1938, 5, 213). (44)

SPIELREIN, S. (1912) 'Die Destruktion als Ursache des Werdens', }k, psychoanal psychopath. Forsch., 4, 465. (49)

STARCKE, A. (1914) Introduction to Dutch translation of Freud's ' "Gvilized" Sexual Morality and Modern Nervous Illness', Leyden. (49) Psychology of Day-Dreams, London, (n) des Lebens, Jena. (39) (1882) Uber die Jena. (39-41) (1884) VberLeben und

VARENDONCK,J. (1921) The

WEBMANN, A.

MDam

(1892) Das Keimplasma, Jena. (3940, 50) [Trans.: The Germ-Plasm, London, 1893.] New Jb. ZEEGLER, K. (1913) 'Menschen- und Weltenwerden',

klass.

GENERAL INDEX This index includes the names of non-technical authors. It also includes the names of technical authors where no reference is made in the text to specific works. For references to specific technical works, the Biblioffraohv * y should be consulted. Abraham, K., 6

n. I

Child, desire to have,

Abreaction, II Active and passive in children's play.

KM 1,29

by father,

15

Childhood, traumas of, xi, 26 Children (m also Infantile sexuality)

Aggressiveness, 47

compulsion to repeat

Ambivalence and the opposition between the life and death instincts, 47-8 Amphimixis, 42, 50

play of, 8-1 1,17,29 sexual researches of, 15

in, ix. xi,

8-11,17,29-30

Analogy, Plato's myth of bisexu-

Clorinda (in Gerusalemme Liberate), 16

Component

Animals 29-34, 36 death of, 39-43 duration of life in, 39-44

during psycho-analysis, 17, 29-30

(see

Fear;

Fright;

Phobias)

in

26-7 normal people, 15-16

15, 17, 29-31, 50-3, 56 Condensation, 28 Confluence of instincts 47 , 2

51-2

Art, 11

Conscious system, 18-22, 28

(in the Upamshads), 52

n. 1

'Autistic thinking', xi

Gulden, Die,

admissibility to, 12-13, 19 origin of, 19-21

58

Constancy,

Biological

factors,

of

(see

also .

2,

n. 1

54

Bisexuality,

Cs. (see

Conscious system)

51-2

'Bound'

psychical energy (see Energy, psychical, bound and

unbound) Brain, anatomy of the, 18 Braut mm Messina, Die,* 39 J.

principle

Excitatory processes), 3, 3

concept of death, 39-43, 49

Bretur,

12-

instinctual character of, ix, xi, 14-

preparedness for, 7 n. 1, 25-7 Anxiety dreams, x, 7, 26

Baden

life,

roses, 7, 17,

also

defined, 6-7

Aristophanes,

ix, xi,

in children, ix, xi, 8-1 1 , 1 7, 29-30 in dreams during traumatic neu-

Anticathexis, 24

Ataum

attribute of organic

30-2,34,38,50-3,56

conservative nature of instinct in,

Anxiety

an

as

ality,51-2

56

instincts, 47-9,

Compulsion to repeat

(see

also

'Daemonic force

1

,

15,

Danger, perception Darmi, Charles, 50

29-30

of,

5-6, 33, 52

Day's residues, 28, 30

Death

aim of life is,

Bibliography),

20-1,25,28

biological

49

n.

32-4, 38-9, 49

concept

of,

39-43,

1

internal necessity of, 32, 38-41, 43

Cathexis

(see Excitatory processes) Censorship, x, 45

'natural', 34,

39-43

Weumamts views 64

on, 39-43

GENERAL INDEX Death instinct ix,

(seealso Ego-instincts),

equated with ego-instinct, 38, 46,

54

External world, 18, 20-2

32-5, 38, 40-1, 43-51, 54

rt.

Jn opposition to

life instinct, xi,

34-5, 38, 43, 47, 54 Dementia praecox, 27 Destiny, compulsion Destnictiveness, xi, 49

n.

3

n.

daughter's desire for a child by, 15 jealousy of, 10 Faust (Goethe), 36

Fear

15-17

of,

Fairy tales, 14 Father

n.

also

(see

Anxietyj

Phobia), 6, 7

1

Fright;

n.

in dreams, 28 Displacement Dream-content, manifest, 28

Fechner, G. T. (see also Bibliography),

Dreams and sleep, 26-7

Ferenczi, S.

anxiety-, x, 7,

2,4 6

26

n. 1,

(see also

Bibliography),

7

Fliess,Wtihelm (see also Bibliography),

as wish-fulfilments, x-xi, 7, 26-7,

39,58. Forgetting, 26

30 45 displacement in, 28 during psycho-analysis, censorship

Fright

of, x,

15,

hallucinatory character of, 1 function of, x 'prospective

punishment-, x, traumatic, xi,

26 26

Genital primacy, 48 Genualcmme Uberata (Tassd), 16

26

Goethe,

7, 17,

26

xi,

10.2,36 1

Gomperz,H.,52n. Guilt, sense of, 26

Dream-thoughts, latent, xi

Dream-work,

dso Anxiety; Fear), 6-7,

(see

28 Hague, The, x Hallucinatory character of dreams,

26

and pleasure principle, 14, 17 as reservoir of libido, 44-6, 48 masochistic trends

nucleus

of,

7-8,

of,

Hereditary

48-9

repressive forces of, 13-14, 17

unconscious part

13-14 27

of,

Hering,

factors,

31

43

K,

Hunger, 45 Hypochondria, 6 6-7 Hysteria, x,

13

unification of, 4-5, 13,

Ego

ideal,

x

Id, the,

Ego-instincts (see also

Death instinct; instinct

Self-preservation,

of),

38,44-7 equated with death instinct, 38,

46,54s, 35, 38, 44-9,

M.,

54

n.

2

B.

Infantile sexuality, 1 2, 14-15, Inferiority, sense of, 14-15 Instincts

also

Component instinct;

45-7, 49

bound and un-

Energy, psychical, bound, 1-2, 20-5, 27-30, 56-7 Eros (see also Libido; Life instinct;

Sexual instinct),

xi,

36-7, 44,

Sexual

B.

28-38,

1,53-7

'conservatism' of, 30-5, 38 Instinctual character of the compul-

sion to repeat, ix,xi, 14-15, 17,

29-31, 50-3, 56 International

46, 48, 54

of;

14-15,

instinct

4-5,

instinct),

Embryology, 20, 31, 50

Psycho-Analytical

_

Excitations external, 20-6, 34, 35

45

n. 3,

49-50,

Introversion,

3,

17, 30,

Jealousy of father, 10

52,57 internal, 22-3, 28, 57

Excitatory processes,

56-7

1,

in-

Ego-

instincts; Life instinct; Self-pre-

servation,

ix

.

45

Death

(see

stincts}

in opposition to sexual instinct, Eitingon, Dr.

45

Inertia, neuronic, principle of, 3

of younger child, 10

B.

1,15

GENERAL INDEX

66 Jokes, 29

Oedipus complex, Oral phase, 48

J,

E., 6 n. 1 n. Jowett, 5., 52

Jwg,

C. G.

46-7

12,

14-15

1

(set also

Bibliography),

and neurosis, 6, 27 and the compulsion to repeat.

injury, life,

30-2,34,38,53,56 Kant,

/.,

22

GENERAL INDEX 12-15 Psycho-analytic technique, 1 Psycho-analytic theory, 'pan-sexualism'

Psycho-analytic of neurotics,

of,

46

xi,

ix,

of,

Psychoneuroses

[ste

52

n.

x,

Stimuli, 20-$, 34, 35 n. 3, 49-50, 52,

26

57

1

Suggestion as a factor in psychoanalysis, 14n. 2, 26

25 Quality, 2-3, 23, Quantity, 2, 2

7

n. 1,

Sleep and dreams, 26-7 Stability, principle of (Fechner), 2-3

12-13

Neuroses)

Punishment-dreams, Pythagoras,

54 n.

Sexual intercourse, 56 Shock and traumatic neurosis, 25 Simmel, E,, 6

of,

instinct, 34-5,

38, 40, 44, 47, 54 n. in opposition to ego-instincts, 35, 38, 44-7,

13-16, 29-

30

therapeutic aspect

life

origin of, 50-2

treatment

30 termination

67

equated with

49-52

Protista, 38-44,

Superstitious belieis, 39

25

n. I,

Symposium, Thi, 51-2

Reaction-formation, 45 Tancrcd (in Genisaltmme Liberaia), 16 Tasso, 16

Reality-principle, 4-5, 14,29

Regression,

masochism

to Repeat, compulsion

as,

49

(see

Compul-

22

and compulsion to repeat, 12-14, 26,30 and pleasure principle, 5, 14 ego as agent

13-14, 17, 45

of,

instinctual, 5, 14,

36-7

11

Transference, 12, 15-17, 30 exploited by resistance, 17

Transference neuroses

in psycho-analytic

treatment, 12-14

n. 1

Trauma, 6-8, 23-7 infantile, xi,

transference exploited by, 17

Hys-

Neurosis),

46

Transmigration, 52 of,

(see also

Obsessional

12-13, 44,

ego, 14

overcoming

Tragedy,

teria;

Resistance

and

Three Wishes, The, 14 n. 3 of, related to Pept.-Cs.,

Time, sense

sion to repeat)

Repression

26

Traumatic dreams, x,xi,

7,

17,26 25-9

neurosis, 6-8, 17,

Sadism, 47-8, 49 Sdulkr, P., 39 Schopenhauer,

n. 1

A.

Uncathected (see

also

Biblio-

graphy), 44

Secondary process psychical,

(see

also

Energy,

bound and unbound)

28, 30, 56-7 Self-preservation, instinct of (see also

systems,

mental processes, 12-13, 18,22 systems, 28 relation to Of., 19, 22,

54 n.

timelessness of, 22

4,45

28

Unpleasure, 1-5, 10-11, 14-15, 18, 23-4, 32, 56-7

Sexual curiosity of children, 15 Sexual excitement and mechanical agitation, 27 Sexual instinct

24 n. 2

Unconscious, the, 28

Ego-instincts), 4, 33, 45-7, 49,

Sexual aetiology of the neuroses, 33-

insuscepti-

bility to excitation of,

Unconscious ego, 13-14

(ste also

Eros; Libido;

Fechner's

view

of,

2-4

neurotic, 'pleasure that cannot 1 felt as such , 5 Upanishads, 52 n.

be

1

Life instinct)

and component instincts, 47-8, 49 1,53 and pleasure principle, 4-5 .

VarendonckJ.

(ste also

Bibliography),

GENERAL INDEX

68

Waking

life,

relation of

dreams

to,

28

War of 1914-18, War neuroses, 6 Weimaoi, A. 39-43

6

(see also

Wish-fulfilment in dreams, x-xi, 7 26-7, 30 Woodruff,

Bibliography),

Zeus, 51

L L, 41-2

PSYCHIATRY AND PSYCHOLOGY Adams James L.

Conceptual Blockbusting (2d

,

Adler, Alfred.

Cooperation Between the Sexes.

Adler, Alfred

Superiority and Social Interest

.

Adorno, T.W. etal.

The Authoritarian

Alexander, Franz.

.

)

Personality

(Abr Ed.)

Psychosomatic Medicine.

and Richard R.J. Lewme.

Bernheim, Kayla

F.

Bowers, Kenneth

S.

Bruner, Jerome S. flruner,

Ed

Jerome S

Hypnosis: For the Seriously Curious

Symptom, Causes,

.

Beyond the Information Given. The Relevance of Education

Burgess, Linda Cannon.

Cannon Walter B.

The Art of Adoption.

The Way of an Investigator

,

Cannon Walter B.

The Wisdom of the Body.

,

Damon, William.

Schizophrenia

Social

and Personality

Development: Essays on the

and Personality

Development: Infancy Through

Growth of the Child.

Damon, William.

Social

Daniels, Pamela and Kathy

Sooner or later- The Timing

Wemgarten.

Parenthood in Adult Lives.

Donaldson, Margaret.

Enkson, Erik H. Enkson, Erik H.

H Erik H

Enkson Erik ,

Erikson,

Minds.

Children's

Adulthood Childhood and Society.

New Identity.

.

Dimensions of a

.

Gandhi's Truth.

Enkson, Erik H.

Identity: Youth

Erikson, Erik

H.

Identity

Erikson, Erik

H.

Insight

Enkson, Erik H.

Young

and Crisis.

and the Life Cycle

and Responsibility.

Man Luther.

Fancher,

Raymond

E.

Pioneers of Psychology.

Fancher,

Raymond

E,

Psychoanalytic Psychology: The Development of

Freud's Thought.

Finch, Scuart

Freud, Anna.

M.

Fundamentals of Child Psychiatry.

Psychoanalysis for Teachers

and Parents.

Freud, Sigmund.

An Autobiographical Study.

Freud,

Beyond the Pleasure Principle.

Sigmund

Freud Sigmund ,

.

Freud, Sigmund, Freud, ,

and its Discontents

The Ego and the

.

Id.

Five Lectures on Psycho- Analysts.

Sigmund

Freud Sigmund

Civilization

.

Freud, Sigmund.

The Future of an

Illusion.

Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego

/

S

Freud, Sigrnund.

Inhibitions,

Freud, Sigmund.

Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysts,

Freud,

Sigmund

Freud,

Sigmund

Freud,

Sigmund

Jokes

and Their

Relation to the Unconscious,

Leonardo da Vinci

.

New Introductory

and a Memory of His

Childhood,

Lectures on Psychoanalysis.

Freud, Sigmund.

On Dreams.

Freud,

Sigmund

On

the History of the Psycho-Analytic Movement.

Freud,

Sigmund

An

Outline of'Psycho-Analysts

Freud,

Sigmund

The Question of Lay Analysis

Freud,

Sigmund

Totem

Frieze, Irene

and

Taboo,

,

Women and Sex Roles.

Uncommon Therapy The

Haley, Jay

M

N

Ruble

A Social Psychological Perspective.

Psychiatric Techniques of Milton B.

D.

Hendin, David

Death as a Fact of Life.

Hendin, Herbert

Suicide in America.

Horney, Karen (Ed

Are You Considering Psychoanalysts?

)

Horney, Karen

Feminine Psychology.

Horney, Karen.

Neurosis

Horney, Karen

The Neurotic Personality of Our Time.

and Human Growth.

Horney, Karen.

New Ways in Psychoanalysis.

Horney, Karen,

Our Inner Conflicts

Horney, Karen.

Self-Analysis.

Inhelder, Barbel , and Jean Piaget

James, William.

Talks

to

The Early Growth of Logic in the Child.

Teachers

Hamlet and Oedipus.

Jones, Ernest.

The Growth of the Child-

Kagan, Jerome

Kagan, Jerome, and Robet Coles (Eds. ),

Karchadounan Herant George

A

A

Reflections on

Human

Development.

Twelve to Sixteen. Early Adolescence.

Human Sexuality.

,

Kelly,

Ed)

H. Jacquelynne E Parsons, Paula B Johnson, Diane

and Gail L Zellmann

Ertckson,

(Rev

The Psychopathology of Everyday Life

Freud, Sigmund.

Sense

and Nonsense

Theory of Personality.

Klein, Melanie, and Joan Riviere.

Komarovsky, Mirra.

Love,

Hate and Reparation.

Dilemmas of Masculinity

Kosslyn, Stephen Michael.

A Study of College

Ghosts in the Mind's Machine

Youth.

How We Create

Pictures in our Brains.

Lacan, Jacques

Ecnts.

Lacan, Jacques

The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-Analysis

Lederer,

William J.

Levy, David

M.

Lifton, Robert Jay

Light, Donald

Lunde, Donald

May, Rollo.

Good Relationship.

Thought Reform and the Psychology ofTotalism

Becoming Psychiatrists: The Professional Transformation of Self. T.

Mandler, George

Meehl, Paul E

Creating a

Maternal Qverprotection

Murder and Madness.

Mind and Body:

Psychology

Psychology of Emotion

and the Human Dilemma.

and Stress.

The Child's Conception of Number. Genetic Eptstemology.

Piaget , Jean Piaget Jean

.

Dreams and Imitation

Play,

,

Piaget, Jean and Barbel Inhelder. ,

P

1

agec, Jean,

and Barbel Inhelder

m Childhood.

The Child's Conception if Space.

The Origin of the Idea of Chance tn Children.

Piaget, Jean, Barbel Inhelder, and

Alma Szemmska

The Child's Conception of

Geometry.

and Milton B. Singer

Piers, Gerhart, Piers,

Maria

W

(Ed

Play

)

Shame sndGitilt.

and Development

Premack David and Ann James Premack.

The

,

Mind of an Ape.

and Reality.

Rank, Otto

Truth

Rank, Otto.

Will Therapy.

Ruesch , J urgen and Gregory Bateson.

Communication The Social Matrix

,

of Psychiatry.

Schwartz, Barry (Ed

).

Schwartz, Barry and

Hugh

Psychology of Learning Readings in Behavior Theory.

lacey

Behaviorism, Sconce,

andHuman Nature: An

introduction to Conditioning.

Sullivan,

Harry Stack

Clinical Studies in Psychiatry.

Sullivan,

Harry Stack.

Conceptions of Modern Psychiatry.

Sullivan,

Harry Stack.

The Interpersonal Theory of Psychiatry.

Sullivan,

Harry Stack

The Psychiatric

Sullivan,

Harry Stack.

Schizophrenia as a

W ,

Process.

The Living Brain.

Grey.

Watson John B

Human

The Changing Nature of Man

van den Berg, J H. Walter,

Interview.

Behaviorism

.

The Quest for

Wheelis, Allen.

Williams, Juanita H.

Identity.

Psychology of Women: Behavior tn a Biosocial Context

(2dEd.)-

Williams, Juanita

H

(Ed.)

A

Zilboorg, Gregory.

History of Medical Psychology,

Selected Liveright Paperbacks

PSYCHIATRY AND PSYCHOLOGY Jones, Ernest.

On the Nightmare.

Kohler, Wolfgang.

Dynamics in

Kohler, Wolfgang.

Gestalt Psychology.

Kohler, Wolfgang.

The Mentality of Apes

KShler, Wolfgang

The Place of Value tn a World of Fact.

The Selected Papers of Wolfgang Kohler.

Kohler, Wolfgang.

R

Luria, Alexander

Stekei,

Wilhelm.

Stekel

Wilhelm

,

Relation

to

Sex.

.

Psychology.

.

The Nature of Human Impotence in ihe Male.

Conflicts.

h Ja

Jc Ki

Ks

Ke Ki,

Ko

Ko I

Lac Lac,

Led

Lun<

Man.

May,

113212

Beyond the Pleasure Principle Translated and edited by James Strachey Introduction and notes by Gregory Zilboorg

By

SIGMUND FREUD

AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL STUDY BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE CIVILIZATION

AND ITS DISCONTENTS

THE COMPLETE INTRODUCTORY LECTURES ON PSYCHOANALYSIS THE EGO AND THE FIVE LECTURES

ID

ON PSYCHOANALYSIS

THE FUTURE OF AN ILLUSION

GROUP PSYCHOLOGY AND THE ANALYSIS OF THE EGO INHIBITIONS,

SYMPTOMS AND ANXIETY

INTRODUCTORY LECTURES ON PSYCHOANALYSIS JOKES AND THEIR RELATION TO THE UNCONSCIOUS

LEONARDO DA VINCI AND A MEMORY OF HIS CHILDHOOD

NEW INTRODUCTORY LECTURES ON PSYCHOANALYSIS ON DREAMS ON THE HISTORY OF THE PSYCHOANALYTIC MOVEMENT AN OUTLINE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS THE PSYCHOPATHALOGY OF EVERYDAY LIFE

THE QUESTION OF LAY ANALYSIS

TOTEM AND TABOO

THE STANDARD EDITION OF THE COMPLETE PSYCHOLOGICAL WORKS OF SIGMUND FREUD 24 VOLUMES

Beyond

the

Pleasure Principle

SIGMUND FREUD Translated and

Newly Edited

by

JAMES STRAGHEY Introduction by

GREGORY ZILBOORG

W-W-NORTON&COMPANY NEW YORK -LONDON

W. W. Norton

& Company, Inc.,

500 Fifth Avenue, N.Y. 10110 Company Ltd. 37 Great Russell Street,

New York, W. W. Norton

&

London COPYRIGHT

WC1B 3NU

1961 BY JAMES STRACHBY

Reprinted by arrangement with Liveright Publishing Corporation Introduction Copyright
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Published simultaneously in Canada by Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 2801 John Street, Markham, Ontario L3R 1B4.

&

W. W. Norton Company, Inc. is also the publisher of the works of Erik H. Erikson, Otto Fenichel, Karen Homey, Harry Stack Sullivan, and The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Freud, Sigmund, 1856-1939 Beyond the pleasure principle. Translation of Jenseits des Lust-Prinzips. Reprint of the ed. published by Liveright, New York. Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. Pleasure. 2.

BF173.F65

Psychoanalysis.

1975

150.19'52

I.

Title.

74-22476

Printed in the United States of America

67890

ISBN 0-3*13-0071^-3

CONTENTS Introduction Editor's

vii

Note

xvii ""

Beyond

the Pleasure Principle

1

List of Abbreviations

59

Bibliography and Author Index

60

General Index

64

INTRODUCTION by Gregory Zilboorg, M.D.

A

QUESTION which seems natural and almost unavoidable What can one say about a book, and a little one at that, which is forty years old, and which is supposedly not one of the most impressive or "spectacular" bits of Freud's many writings? The question presupposes the implied answer that forty years even in our swift-moving world is a long time, that the book in question is therefore more or less superannuated and deserves but a respectful historical glance before we put it back on the shelf to gather more dust. It is obvious that the above is a rhetorical way of saying arises:

that forty years after its appearance and twenty years after Freud's death, Beyond the Pleasure Principle still deserves considerable attention, and that the reader would do well if he reads it with studious curiosity. Of recent years we have become so accustomed to the atmosphere of controversy

which surrounds psychoanalysis and Freud that we have almost lost our capacity to pick up a book on psychoanalysis without wanting to know in advance whether the book is for or against it, or, if it is for it, whether it is for Freud or for Jung, or, if it is Freudian, whether it is orthodox or neoFreudian. If we dared to be frank with ourselves, we would have no difficulty in admitting that our judgment of psychoanalysis is actually fragmentary and not too profound. We could also admit that some sort of partisanship possesses us, and that therefore we are preoccupied with "taking sides"

we

get acquainted with the very first elements of the subject. because of the various prejudices which have incul-

long before

psychoanalysis It is

and the many-sidedness of

cated themselves into psychoanalytical and nonpsychoanalytical circles that it is pertinent to invite both the initiated and the uninitiated reader to suspend his fragmentary judgment vii

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

viii

for a short while and re-read afresh the little book that is here offered, and acquaint or re-acquaint himself with the sound of Freud's written voice, with his way of saying things, and then with the substance of what he has to say. An introduction is not supposed to explain in advance

what

said in the book;

is

still less is it

meant

to interpret

it.

intended to clarify some shadows and point to certain lights which will possibly set the book in a proper Rather,

it is

perspective.

Bearing this in mind, let us first recall that Freud wrote Beyond the Pleasure Principle when he was sixty-four years old a mature age indeed and at a time when psychoanalysis had already achieved considerable popularity, even though it was still possible to assess the degree of its importance by the number of enemies it had. The tone of the book, the mannerisms of

Freud

its

it

style are vigorous, poignant,

seems was

still

almost controversial; combatting his opponents rather than

trying to instruct his proponents. his life,

Freud preserved

this

Almost to the

last

years of

combative vigor of writing, and

in Beyond the Pleasure Principle this aspect of style stands out markedly, particularly when he emphasizes his claim that he is a partisan of no special philosophy and that he is indifferent as to whether what he has to say does or does not fit any

known philosophy.

This claim for independence casts

is

characteristic of Freud's

and of all his writings, but I believe aspersion on his originality or his genius,

personality

it

in

no way

if I

say that this declaratory independence should not be taken too seriously. No one, and particularly no genius, is free of the

really ideological inheritance which he carries within himself as a child of a given generation. He not be

aware of it, of may Freud would have been the last man in the world to equate not being aware of something with its nonexistence. For it was of course Freud himself who discovered and uncourse, but

folded before us the staggering richness and power within us many things of which we are not aware. It is of some interest in this connection to recall that Freud denied ever having been acquainted with the writings of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche before he formulated many of his ideas. It was beyond any doubt an honest denial. Yet it is a matter of record that Hitschmann, one of the earliest ad-

of so

INTRODUCTION

ix

herents of Freud, read a paper in Freud's house as early as 1905 (Freud being present, of course) on the very subject of Nietzsche's ideas as compared with some of Freud's theories.

There

no doubt

whether or not Freud ever read of Morals, his was the temperament and the aspiration of a proud iconoclast who, to paraphrase an old saying of Maxim Gorki's, was born to soar and not to crawl, and for whom soaring accomplishment was not a pleasure in itself but a temporary level from which he is

Nietzsche's

that,

The Genealogy

strove to attain ever-greater heights. If we cast but a glance at the rough sketch of a general psychology which we find in Freud's letters to Fliess, we

cannot help but be struck by the depth, diapason and immense horizons which Freud envisaged as the culmination of his system. And these letters, we must remember, were written before 1900, that is to say, before the first book (The Interpretation of Dreams) which really launched psychoanalysis into the stormy waters of a world which never was able to approach the study of the psychology of man without prejudice and considerable animosity and controversy be it religious, scientific,

or plain pedestrian.

which Freud's mind was

The ambition

with

from the very

outset, and his particular goal of discovering, or uncovering, the real nature of man's mind, predestined him as a thinker and a man to fired

become a storm center

for years to come. was also a daring paradox, giving the semblance of self-contradiction, of inconsistency, and of all-solidity. Freud's apparent readiness to change his mind added a great number of dissenters and detractorsas if the scientist who has the courage to change his mind about some of his own ideas has

He

gained a point against himself. The great majority of people do confuse stubbornness for consistency, and rigidity of scientific ideas for soundness of position. At any rate, Beyond the Pleasure Principle is one of the first great landmarks in Freud's ways of "changing his mind." I put these words in quotes to cast at least a little doubt on the traditional attitude that Freud did change his mind in this instance. He did not. What Freud did here was to add a path or two, a little curve or fork, in the tortuous intellectual road which he followed with dogged faith in his own intellectual independence. The additions or added trends of thought

.

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

x

cannot be fully grasped and even less understood unless one always bears in mind the inner psychological atmosphere in which Freud worked in order to express his ideas. His literary style was always terse, straightforward, clear and challengingly frank; but the same thing cannot be said about the emotional climate of his thought. First of all, Freud never gave up his belief I am tempted to say faith that the parallel he drew between Fechner's ideas in physics and his own in human psychology was not really a parallel but an actual proof that his concept of the mental apparatus and its energy was actually the same as Helmholtz' and Fechner's ideas about physical energy. To this faith he clung to the last, expressing the hope that some day the whole complexity of human reactions and relations could be reduced to some as yet undiscovered physico-chemical reactions. In other words, Freud remained an organicist throughout his scientific life. But genius and living paradox that he was, Freud was rejected by the materialists (conservative as well as Marxian) because of his alleged mysticism; and he was rejected by the idealists and religious thinkers because he was thought to be a materialist.

The

contradictions into which

Freud's detractors thus

stumbled remained unnoticed as a rule, but Freud was of course aware of them and saw in them merely a sign of general resistance. Yet it was not only that. To Freud the epithet, "mystic," was an expression of opprobrium, and yet it was Freud who stated that saints were saved from severe neuroses by their sainthood, their faith; he mentioned in this connection St. Francis of Assisi.

He who studies

the lives of the saints

would not a

easily issue to all of them, and without reservation, certificate of psychological health. They were saints because

they were able to stand the pressure of their respective neuroses rather than because they did not suffer from them. The lives of St. Ignatius

Loyola, or San Francisco Xavier, or St. Augustine for that matter, offer ample confirmation of my

viewpoint.

As one studies Freud, one can develop the strong suspicion he was more attracted by many mystics than by physicochemical hypotheses, and that he struggled with all the might that

of his great mind against openly giving in to the attraction of the mystical aspects of human life. In other words, the man

INTRODUCTION

xi

who less than twenty years after he wrote Beyond the Pleasure who Principle wrote his Moses and Monotheism, the man some five years before Beyond the Pleasure Principle wrote the article on Michelangelo's Moses, seems throughout this of span of time to have been preoccupied with the greatness human intuitions and the universality of human strivings not only to solve but to participate in the mysteries of life. And it is perhaps because of this inclination that Freud gave signs of "protesting too much." (Perhaps too this is one of the reasons why his article on Michelangelo's Moses appeared

first

anonymously;

it

was only much

later that

it

was admitted

that Freud, the Editor-in-chief of the Zeitschrift fur Psychoanalyse, was the real author of the article.)

While the complex question of Freud's intellectual strugwith his own ideas is far from solved, there is little doubt

gles

that the aggressive, trenchant, emphatic tone of his writings, full of conviction and devoid of doubt, does

which seem to be

not fully convey Freud's struggle with his own ideas, which at times must have reached heroic dimensions. It is because of Freud's aggressive candor, it seems to me, that his earliest followers seem more to have stood in awe, listening to his pronouncements, than actually to have assimilated his

thought like true disciples, ready to ask friendly

critical

questions in order to deepen and broaden the understanding of their master's thought. The very few of his followers who

were endowed with truly original minds and truly ambitious perspicacity and intuition soon broke with Freud; Jung is one of the few one can cite in this respect. The majority became either surly, hostile enemies rather than scientific opponentsor admiring, enthusiastic followers rather than scientific collaborators. It is therefore of particular interest to note that there was hardly a psychoanalyst outside Freud himself who ever made an original contribution to the theory and practice of psychoanalysis; this is particularly true of the time when Freud wrote his Beyond the Pleasure Principle. The one exception one can cite with certainty was Karl Abraham, who made an inestimable contribution to the clinical understanding of character formation and of depression, a contribution which

was spontaneously and "painlessly" incorporated into the body of psychoanalytic knowledge some five years before the

xii

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

appearance of Beyond the Pleasure Principle. But even in the case of Abraham things were not all clarity and sunshine; many of his colleagues were not very kindly disposed to the

man, and Freud himself, as Jones has written, said that he was suspicious of his "Prussian mind" Abraham being a Berliner.

All of the above amounts to saying that the constant and "true" followers of Freud were not very original minds; they were not mediocrities, but for some reason they would not

or perhaps could not "speak up'* until Freud spoke first. It is partly because of this that Beyond the Pleasure Principle acquired such significance in the history of the development of Freudian psychoanalysis. It acquired the reputation of a landmark in how Freud changed his mind and how daring he was in doing so. As a matter of cold fact, the book is an important contribution, a thrust forward in the growth of Freudian thought; but if one reads it carefully one will easily see that Freud did not change his mind, and that Beyond the Pleasure Principle did not overthrow any old psychoanalytic regime nor did it establish any new one. It was not even a small village revolution; it was and is a landmark of further development and a consolidation of the older pathways. Beyond the Pleasure Principle is what it says; it goes a little further beyond, but it does not abandon whatever preceded it. This writer lays no claim to an understanding of Freud's writing better than anyone's else who approaches Freud with the earnestness he deserves and the tolerance which is imperative, even now some twenty years after Freud's death. I say "even now" for the following reason; at the beginning

Freud had to

suffer from the many whose quick and ever misjudgment of him multiplied by thousands the number of his antagonists in every walk of the world's intellectual life. Today, with the full text of Freud at the disposal of every curious reader of the world, everybody claims Freud as his own, because everybody just as alertly is ready to interpret Freud in his own ivay. Thus a plethora of "schools" has mush-

alert

roomed

in the psychological literature, each claiming

its

philosophical, moral and scientific right to consider Freud its fons et origo, and its own exclusive right to understand Freud in its own exclusively correct way. This splintering of interpreters and misinterpreters of Freud is not unnatural, of

INTRODUCTION

xiii

course; the process will undoubtedly continue for some time before the real Freud will stand out in the history of our intellectual

development

we may look calmly and Since

it is

as a figure at

into

whom

not in anyone's power to slow down or to accelit cannot be the ambition

erate the salutary passage of time, of this writer to attempt to do so.

mate

whom and

objectively.

But

this

much

it is legiti-

him

to essay to do: to point out that the vigor of Freud's thought, stimulating as it has always been and is, is

for

frequently obscured by his at times too hasty terminological innovations. Not that one objects to such innovations, or that

one ought to insist on semantic hair-splitting; but Freud, whose clarity of thought and daring intellectual improvisations were always impressive and enlightening, suffered not infrequently from a certain confusion, at first unnoticeable but at length presenting an impediment to easy or clear understanding. Beyond the Pleasure Principle serves as an excellent example. First, there is the tendency which imperceptibly grew into assertive tradition that, having gone beyond the pleasure principle, he abandoned that principle. This, as I have already said, is not true. The reader, bearing this in mind, cannot fail but see it once the text is perused without prejudice, without the unwitting psychological twist which makes him read Beyond the Pleasure Principle and assume that the pleasure principle was left behind. We might as well state right here that the assiduous and faithful translators of Freud, in bringing before the English-speaking readers Freud's version of the pleasure-pain theory, did not help matters when they coined a neologism, "unpleasure." This awkward term is supposed to render somewhat accurately the German term Unlust. It is not an exactly successful rendition (except

etymologically, perhaps). The feeling of pain, of discomfort, of that disagreeable malaise which Freud has in mind is not

perceived as t/n-pleasure, for what we feel in this malaise we feel positively, and not negatively as a lack of something else. This point need not be labored; it is brought out here merely to illustrate how difficult it is to tell the reader what a given writer wants to say in a language his own, but not yours.

Now

let

allegedly

us ask ourselves what appears to be new and not as old in Beyond the Pleasure Principle.

abandoned

xiv

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

The concept of "compulsive repetition" or "repetition compulsion." Some still quarrel with this concept, some no longer do. The arguments for and against it are of no particular importance here. What is important is that new concepts, newly formulated, require greater clarity of definition. Freud discovered the repetitiveness of certain patterns of human behavior and the inevitability or, if you wish, the inescapable nature of this repetitiveness. And he called this

phenomenon

"repetition compulsion" or "compulsive repe-

tition."

We have become accustomed to the term "compulsion" when we speak of compulsion neuroses in other words, a neurosis which makes the sufferer therefrom aware that he is "compelled by something" to make this or that gesture or this or that turn or else he feels uncomfortable, uneasy, at

hardly necessary to go into more compulsive element of which Freud speaks when he speaks of compulsive repetition is something that the individual is not conscious of, that the compulsive element in this concept is something which is not neurotic at all, or not necessarily, and that it is just as or no more compulsive than breathing or the changing of the seasons. To use the term "compulsive" here connotes something that it is not and implies things which are not necessarily there a rather strange semantic fuzziness on the part of that uniquely clear-minded thinker. Such unclarities are strewn throughout many of Freud's writings and translations, and if they do not always confuse the casual reader or even the student, one would do well in being forewarned and therefore in reading and studying Freud with considerable caution and prudence. One more example: the second major innovation which Freud introduced into psychoanalytic thinking was the concept of the death instinct. Now we have become accustomed, particularly since Freud emphasized the role of instincts in the conscious and unconscious life of man, to consider an instinct a drive, an impulsive or perpetually compelling aspiration to gratify a need. In German, Freud uses the words Trieb and Trie b haft, which mean instinct, instinctual drive, a sense of being driven toward a certain even though not times plainly anxious.

It is

detail to observe that the

always comprehended goal. Under the circumstances, the term "death instinct" ought to mean an aspiration, a drive to

INTRODUCTION

xv

be dead. Perhaps Freud was right, even though neither the biologist nor the theologian would find it possible to agree with him. Let us assume that Freud was right; he certainly did not prove his case, because there is nothing instinctual about dying, even though the end is inevitable. Here again we find a strange semantic or terminological confusion, a tendency to use terms which are familiar to us in the psychoanalytic glossaries, but which in certain contexts become

somewhat confusing

The above

labels.

considerations

may

serve as a

warning that

it is

not easy to understand great minds even when they appear to speak simply, or perhaps especially when their language appears simple and the terminology familiar.

EDITOR'S NOTE JENSEITS DES LUSTPRINZIPS (a)

1920

GERMAN

EDITIONS:

Leipzig,

Vienna and Zurich; Interaationaler Psycho

analytischer Verlag. Pp. 60.

Same publishers. Pp. 64. Same publishers. Pp. 94.

1921

2nd

1923

3rd ed.

1925

G.S., 6, 191-257.

ed.

1931

Theoretische Schriften, 178-247.

1940

G.W., 13,3-69.

(b]

ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS: Beyond

1922

the Pleasure Principle

London and Vienna: Press. Pp. viii

+

International Psycho-Analytical

90. (Tr. G. J.

M. Hubback;

Pref.

Ernest Jones.)

1924 1942

New York: Boni and Liveright London: Hogarth Press and Institute of Psycho-Analy(Re-issue of above.) Publishers. Pp. vi 97. (Tr. J. Strachey.) S.K, 18, 3-64. (Modified version of above.) sis.

1950

1955

Same

+

Freud made a number of additions in the second

edition,

but

subsequent alterations were negligible. The present translation is a corrected reprint of the Standard Edition version.

As is shown by his correspondence, Freud had begun working on a first draft of Beyond the Pleasure Principle in March, 1919, and he reported the draft as finished in the following May. During the same month he was completing his paper on 'The Uncanny* (1919A), which includes a paragraph setting out much of the gist of the present work in a few sentences. In this paragraph he refers to the 'compulsion to repeat' as a phenomenon exhibited in the behaviour of children and in psychoanalytic treatment; he suggests that this compulsion is something derived from the most intimate nature of the instincts; and he declares that it is powerful enough to disregard the xvii

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

xviii

no allusion to the 'death pleasure principle. There is, however, He adds that he has already completed a detailed

instincts*.

The paper on 'The Uncanny' consummary was published in the autumn of 1919.

exposition of the subject. taining this

But Freud held back Beyond the Pleasure Principle for another In the early part of 1920 he was once more at work on it, and now, for the first time apparently, there is a reference to the 'death instincts' in a letter to Eitingon of February 20. He was still revising the work in May and June and it was finally completed by the middle ofJuly, 1920. On September 9, he gave an address to the International Psycho-Analytical Congress

year.

The Hague, with the title 'Supplements to the Theory of Dreams' (Ergdnzungen zur Traumlekre), in which he announced the approaching publication of the book; it was issued early in December. An 'author's abstract' of the address appeared in Int. %. PsychoawL, 6 (1920), 397-8. (A translation of this was published in Int. J. Psycho-Anal^ 1, 354.) It does not seem certain that this abstract was in fact by Freud himself, but it may be of interest to reprint it here (in a new translation). at

'Supplements to the Theory of Dreams

9

The speaker dealt in his brief remarks with three points touching upon the theory of dreams. The first two of these were concerned with the thesis that dreams are wish-fulfilments and brought forward some necessary modifications of it. The third point related to material which brought complete confirmation of his rejection of the alleged "prospective" purposes of dreams. 1 "The speaker explained that, alongside the familiar wishful dreams and the anxiety dreams which could easily be included in the theory, there were grounds for recognizing the existence of a third category, to which he gave the name of "punishment dreams". If we took into account the justifiable assumption of the existence of a special self-observing and critical agency in the ego (the ego ideal, the censor, conscience), these punishment dreams, too, should be subsumed under the theory of wish-fulfilment; for they would represent the fulfilment of a wish on the part of this critical agency. Such dreams, he said, had approximately the same relation to ordinary wishful dreams 1

[See The Interpretation of Dreams, 1900
506-7

.]

VI

(I),

Standard Ed., 5,

EDITOR'S NOTE

xix

symptoms of obsessional neurosis, which arise from rehad to those of hysteria. 'Another class of dreams, however, seemed to the speaker to present a more serious exception to the rule that dreams are

as the

action formation,

wish-fulfilments.

These were the so-called "traumatic" dreams.

in patients suffering from accidents, but they also occur during psycho-analyses of neurotics and bring back to them forgotten traumas of childhood. In connection with the

They occur

fitting these dreams into the theory of wish-fulfilment, the speaker referred to a work shortly to be published under the title of Beyond the Pleasure Principle. 'The third point of the speaker's communication related to an investigation that had not yet been published, by Dr. Varendonck of Ghent. This author had succeeded in bringing under his conscious observation the production of unconscious phantasies on an extensive scale in a half-sleeping state a process which he described as "autistic thinking". It appeared from this enquiry that looking ahead at the possibilities of the next

problem of

day, preparing attempts at solutions and adaptations, etc., lay wholly within the range of this preconscious activity, which also created latent dream-thoughts, and, as the speaker had x always maintained, had nothing to do with the dream-work.'

In the

of Freud's metapsychological writings, Beyond may be regarded as introducing the final phase of his views. He had already drawn attention to the 'compulsion to repeat* as a clinical phenomenon, but here he attributes to it the characteristics of an instinct; here too for the first time he brings forward the new Dichotomy between Eros and the death instincts which found its full elaboration in The Ego and the Id (1923). In Beyond the Pleasure Principle, too, we can see signs of the new picture of the anatomical structure of the mind which was to dominate all Freud's later writings. Finally, the problem of destructiveness, which played an ever series

the Pleasure Principle

more prominent part explicit appearance.

in his theoretical works, makes its first derivation of various elements in the

The

present discussion from his earlier metapsychological works Two Principles of Mental Functioning' (191 1),

such as 'The

1 Cf. Freud's own preface to this book of Varendonck's (Freud, 1921 b, Standard Ed., 18, 271).

xx

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

(1914*:) and 'Instincts and their Vicissitudes' will be obvious. But what is particularly remarkable (1915^) is the closeness with which some of the earlier sections of the present work follow the 'Project for a Scientific Psychology* (19500), drafted by Freud twenty-five years earlier, in 1895.

'Narcissism*

Extracts from the earlier (1922) translation of this work were included in Rickman's General Selection from the Works of Sigmund Freud (1937, 162-194). Editorial additions, whether to the text or the footnotes, are

printed in square brackets.

Beyond the Pleasure Principle

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE IN the theory of psycho-analysis we have no hesitation in assuming that the course taken by mental events is automatically regulated by the pleasure principle. We believe, that is to say, that the course of those events

is

unpleasurable tension, and that

invariably set in motion by an it takes a direction such that

outcome coincides with a lowering of that tension that with an avoidance of unpleasure or a production of pleasure. In taking that course into account in our consideration of the mental processes which are the subject of our study, we are introducing an 'economic' point of view into our work; and if, its final is,

in describing those processes, we try to estimate this 'economic' factor in addition to the 'topographical' and 'dynamic* ones,

we

shall, I think,

be giving the most complete description of

them of which we can at present conceive, and one which deserves to be distinguished by the term 'metapsychologicaT. 1 It far,

is

of no concern to us in this connection to enquire how this hypothesis of the pleasure principle, we have

with

approached or adopted any particular,

historically established,

We

have arrived at these speculative philosophical system. assumptions in an attempt to describe and to account for the of daily observation in our field of study. Priority and originality are not among the aims that psycho-analytic work facts

and the impressions that underlie the hypothesis of the pleasure principle are so obvious that they can scarcely be overlooked. On the other hand we would readily express our sets itself;

gratitude to any philosophical or psychological theory which was able to inform us of the meaning of the feelings of pleasure

and unpleasure which act point

we

are, alas, offered

so imperatively upon us. But on this nothing to our purpose. This is the

most obscure and inaccessible region of the mind, and, since avoid contact with it, the least rigid hypothesis, it seems to me, will be the best. We have decided to relate

we cannot 1

[See Section

IV

of 'The Unconscious' (1915*).] 1

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

2

and unpleasure to the quantity of excitation that is * is not in any way 'bound*; and to present in the mind but relate them in such a manner that unpleasure corresponds to an increase in the quantity of excitation and pleasure to a diminution. What we are implying by this is not a simple relation

pleasure

feelings ^f pleasure and unpleasure and the corresponding modifications in the quantity of excitain view of all we have been taught by psychotion; least of all

between the strength of the

physiology are we suggesting any directly proportional ratio: the factor that determines the feeling is probably the amount of increase or diminution in the quantity of excitation in a given

Experiment might possibly play a part here; but not advisable for us analysts to go into the problem further so long as our way is not pointed by quite definite

period of time. it

is

observations.*

We cannot, however, remain indifferent to the discovery that an investigator of such penetration as G. T. Fechner held a view on the subject of pleasure and unpleasure which coincides in all essentials with the one that has been forced upon us by psycho-analytic work. Fechner's statement is to be found contained in a small work, Einige Idem zur Schopfiings- und Entwick1873 (Part XI, Supplement, 94), and reads as follows: 'In so far as conscious impulses always have some relation to pleasure or unpleasure, pleasure and

lungsgeschichte der Organismen,

unpleasure too can be regarded as having a psycho-physical relation to conditions of stability and instability. This provides a

a hypothesis into which I propose to enter in greater According to this hypothesis, every psychophysical motion rising above the threshold of consciousness is attended by pleasure in proportion as, beyond a certain limit, it approximates to complete stability, and as attended by unpleasure in proportion as, beyond a certain limit, it deviates from complete stability; while between the two limits, which may be described as qualitative thresholds of pleasure and

basis for

detail elsewhere.

1 [The concepts of 'quantity* and of 'bound* excitation, which run through the whole of Freud's writings, found what is perhaps their most detailed discussion in the early 'Project* (1950<x [1895]). See in particular the long discussion of the term 'bound* near the end of Section 1 of Part III of that work. See also p. 28 f. below.] 1 [This point is again mentioned below on p. 57 and further developed in 'The Economic Problem of Masochism* (1924s).]

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE unpleasure, 1 ence. . . .'

The

facts

there

is

3

a certain margin of aesthetic indiffer-

which have caused us to believe in the dominance

of the pleasure principle in mental life also find expression in the hypothesis that the mental apparatus endeavours to keep the quantity of excitation present in it as low as possible or at keep it constant. This latter hypothesis is only another

least to

of stating the pleasure principle; for if the work of the mental apparatus is directed towards keeping the quantity of excitation low, then anything that is calculated to increase that quantity is bound to be felt as adverse to the functioning of the

way

apparatus, that is as unpleasurable. The pleasure principle from the principle of constancy: actually the latter principle was inferred from the facts which forced us to adopt

follows

the pleasure principle.* Moreover, a more detailed discussion will show that the tendency which we thus attribute to the

mental apparatus is subsumed as a special case under Fechner's principle of the 'tendency towards stability', to which he has brought the feelings of pleasure and unpleasure into relation. It must be pointed out, however, that strictly speaking it is incorrect to talk of the dominance of the pleasure principle over the course of mental processes. If such a dominance existed, the immense majority of our mental processes would have to be accompanied by pleasure or to lead to pleasure, whereas universal experience completely contradicts any such con-

The most that can be said, therefore, is that there exists mind a strong tendency towards the pleasure principle, but that that tendency is opposed by certain other forces or circumstances, so that the final outcome cannot always be in harmony clusion.

in the

1 'Aesthetic* is here used in [Cf. 'Project', end of Section 8 of Part I. the old sense of 'relating to sensation or perception'.] * [The 'principle of constancy' dates back to the very beginning of Freud's psychological studies. The first published discussion of it of any length was by Breuer (in semi-physiological terms) towards the end of Section 2 (A) of his theoretical part of the Studies on Hysteria (Breuer and Freud, 1895). He there defines it as 'the tendency to keep intracerebral excitation constant*. In the same passage he attributes this principle to Freud and there in fact exist one or two earlier very brief references to it by Freud himself, though these were not published until after his

death. (See Freud, 1941* [1892] and Breuer and Freud, 1940 [1892].) subject is also discussed at length at the beginning of Freud's 'Project', under the name of 'neuronic inertia*.]

The

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLB

4

We

with the tendency towards pleasure. may compare what Fechner (1873, 90) remarks on a similar point: 'Since however a tendency towards an aim does not imply that the aim is attained,

and

since in general the

tions.

*

.

aim

is

attainable only

by approxima-

.'

If we turn

now to the question of what circumstances are able

to prevent the pleasure principle from being carried into effect, we find ourselves once more on secure and well-trodden ground

and, in framing our answer, we have at our disposal a rich fund of analytic experience. The first example of the pleasure principle being inhibited in this way is a familiar one which occurs with regularity. We know that the pleasure principle is proper to a primary method of working on the part of the mental apparatus, but that, from the point of view of the self-preservation of the organism among the difficulties of the external world, it is from the very outset inefficient and even highly dangerous. Under the influence of the ego's instincts of self-preservation, the pleasure principle is 1 replaced by the reality principle, This latter principle does not abandon the intention of ultimately obtaining pleasure, but it nevertheless demands and carries into effect the postponement of satisfaction, the abandonment of a number of possibilities of gaining satisfaction and the temporary toleration of unpleasure as a step on the long indirect road to pleasure. The pleasure principle long persists, however, as the method of working employed by the sexual instincts, which are so hard to 'educate*, and, starting from those instincts, or in the ego itself, it often succeeds in overcoming the reality principle, to the detriment of the organism as a whole. There can be no doubt, however, that the replacement of the reality principle can only be made number, and by no means the most intense, of unpleasurable experiences. Another occasion of the release of unpleasure, which occurs with no less regularity, is to be found in the conflicts and dissensions that take place in the mental apparatus while the ego is passing through its develop-

pleasure principle

by the

responsible for a small

ment into more highly composite organizations. Almost all the energy with which the apparatus is filled arises from its innate instinctual impulses. But these are not all allowed to reach 1

[See 'Formulations

Freud 191 U.]

on the

Two

Principles of

Mental Functioning',

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

5

same phases of development. In the course of things it that individual instincts or parts of happens again and again instincts turn out to be incompatible in their aims or demands the

with the remaining ones, which are able to combine into the The former are then split off from this unity by the process of repression, held back at lower levels

inclusive unity of the ego.

of psychical development and cut off, to begin with, from the of satisfaction. If they succeed subsequently, as can possibility so easily happen with repressed sexual instincts, in struggling through, by roundabout paths, to a direct or to a substitutive

which would in other cases have been an is felt by the ego as unpleasure. As a consequence of the old conflict which ended in repression, a

satisfaction, that event,

opportunity for pleasure,

new breach has occurred in the pleasure principle at the very time when certain instincts were endeavouring, in accordance with the principle, to obtain fresh pleasure. The details of the process by which repression turns a possibility of pleasure into a source of unpleasure are not yet clearly understood or cannot be clearly represented; but there is no doubt that all neurotic 1 unpleasure is of that kind pleasure that cannot be felt as such. The two sources of unpleasure which I have just indicated are very far from covering the majority of our unpleasurable But as regards the remainder it can be asserted with

experiences.

some show ofjustification that their presence does not contradict the dominance of the pleasure principle. Most of the unpleasure that we experience is perceptual unpleasure. It may be perception of pressure by unsatisfied instincts; or it may be external perception which is either distressing in itself or which excites un-

pleasurable expectations in the mental apparatus that is, 1 is recognized by it as a 'danger . The reaction to these

which

instinctual

demands and

threats of danger, a reaction

which

constitutes the proper activity of the mental apparatus, can then be directed in a correct manner by the pleasure principle

or the reality principle by which the former is modified. This does not seem to necessitate any far-reaching limitation of the mental pleasure principle. Nevertheless the investigation of the reaction to external danger is precisely in a position to produce new material and raise fresh questions bearing upon our

present problem. i

[Footnote added 1925:]

No

doubt the

and unpleasure, being conscious

essential point is that pleasure attached to the ego.

feelings, are

II

A CONDITION has long been known

and described which occurs

mechanical concussions, railway disasters and other accidents involving a risk to life; it has been given the name of after severe

The terrible war which has just ended gave a great number of illnesses of this kind, but it at least put an end to the temptation to attribute the cause of the disorder to organic lesions of the nervous system brought about by 'traumatic neurosis'.

rise to

mechanical force. 1 The symptomatic picture presented by traumatic neurosis approaches that of hysteria in the wealth of its similar motor symptoms, but surpasses it as a rule in its strongly marked signs of subjective ailment (in which it resembles hypochondria or melancholia) as well as in the evidence it gives of a far more comprehensive general enfeeblement and disturbance of the mental capacities. No complete explanation has yet been reached either of war neuroses or of the traumatic neuroses of peace. In the case of the war neuroses, the fact that the

same symptoms sometimes came about without the

inter-

vention of any gross mechanical force seemed at once enlightening and bewildering. In the case of the ordinary traumatic neuroses two characteristics emerge prominently: first, that the chief weight in their causation seams to rest upon the factor of surprise, of fright; and secondly, that a wound or injury inflicted simultaneously works as a rule against the development 9 of a neurosis. 'Fright , 'fear* and 'anxiety' 2 are improperly used as synonymous expressions; they are in fact of clear dis-

capable

tinction in their relation to danger. 'Anxiety' describes a particular state of expecting the danger or preparing for it, even

may be an unknown one. Tear' requires a definite object of which to be afraid. 'Fright', however, is the name we give to the state a person gets into when he has run into danger

though

it

without being prepared for it; it emphasizes the factor of surprise. I do not believe anxiety can produce a traumatic neuro1 Cf. the discussion on the psycho-analysis of war neuroses by Freud, Fcrenczi, Abraham, Simmel and Jones (1919) [to which Freud provided the introduction (1919
6

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

7

There is something about anxiety that protects its subject shall return against fright and so against fright-neuroses. 1 to this point later [p. 25 f.].

sis.

We

The study of dreams may be considered the most trustworthy method of investigating deep mental processes. Now dreams occurring in traumatic neuroses have the characteristic of repeatedly bringing the patient back into the situation of his accident, a situation from which he wakes up in another fright. This astonishes people far too litde. They think the fact that the traumatic experience is constantly forcing itself upon the patient even in his sleep is a proof of the strength of that experience: the patient is, as one might say, fixated to his traumaFixations to the experience which started the illness have long been familiar to us in hysteria. Breuer and Freud declared in 1893 * that 'hysterics suffer mainly from reminiscences'. In the war neuroses, too, observers like Ferenczi and Simmel have been able to explain certain motor symptoms by fixation to the moment at which the trauma occurred. I am not aware, however, that patients suffering from traumatic neurosis are much occupied in their waking lives \vith

memories of then* accident Perhaps they are more concerned with not thinking of it. Anyone who accepts it as something selfevident that their dreams should put them back at night into

them to fall ill has misunderstood the nature of dreams. It would be more in harmony with their nature if they showed the patient pictures from his healthy past or of the cure for which he hopes. If we are not to be shaken in our belief in the wish-fulfillinfi tenor of dreams by the dreams of traumatic neurotics, we still have one resource open to us: we may argue that the function of dreaming, like so much else, is upset in this condition and diverted from its purposes, or we the situation that caused

1

is very far indeed from always carrying out the distinche makes here. More often than not he uses the word Angst* to denote a state of fear without any reference to the future. It seems not unlikely that in this passage he is beginning to adumbrate the distinction drawn in Inhibitions^ Symptoms and Anxiety (1926^) between anxiety as a reaction to a traumatic situation probably equivalent to what is here called Sckrech and anxiety as a warning signal of the approach of* such an event. See also his use of the phrase 'preparedness for anxiety* on

[Freud

4

tion

p. 25.] *

['On the Psychical Mechanism of Hysterical Phenomena*, end of

Section

I.]

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

8

be driven to oTthe egoT1

may

reflect

on the mysterious masochistic Jrcnds :

At this point I propose to leave the dark and dismal subject of the traumatic neurosis and pass on to examine the method of working employed by the mental apparatus in one of its earliest normal activities

The

I

mean

in children's play.

have only recently been summarized and discussed from the psycho-analytic point of view by Pfeifer (1919), to whose paper I would refer my readers. These theories attempt to discover the motives which different theories of children's play

lead children to play, but they fail to bring into the foreground the economic motive, the consideration of the yield of pleasure involved. Without wishing to include the whole field covered

by these phenomena, I have been able, through a chance opportunity which presented itself to throw some light upon the first game played by a little boy of one and a half and invented was more than a mere fleeting observation, for I under the same roof as the child and his parents for some weeks, and it was some time before I discovered the meaning of the puzzling activity which he constantly repeated. The child was not at all precocious in his intellectual development. At the age of one and a half he could say only a few comprehensible words; he could also make use of a number of sounds which expressed a meaning intelligible to those around him. He was, however, on good terms with his parents and their one servant-girl, and tributes were paid to his being a 'good boy*. He did not disturb his parents at night, he conscientiously

by

himself. It

lived

obeyed orders not to touch certain things or go into certain rooms, and above all he never cried when his mother left him for a few hours. At the same time, he was greatly attached to

who had not only fed him herself but had also him without any outside help. This good little boy, however, had an occasional disturbing habit of taking any small objects he could get hold of and throwing them away from him into a corner, under the bed, and so on, so that hunting for his toys and picking them up was often quite a business. As he did

his

mother, looked after

he gave vent to a loud, long-drawn-out e o-o-o-o*, accompanied by an expression of interest and satisfaction. His mother this

1

[The last 15 words of this sentence were added in 1921. see The Interpretation of Dreams (IQQQa),. Standard Ed., 5, 550

For ff.]

all this

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

9

and the writer of the present account were agreed in thinking was not a mere interjection but represented the German word 'for? ['gone']. I eventually realized that it was a game and that the only use he made of any of his toys was to with them. One day I made an observation which play 'gone' confirmed my view. The child had a wooden reel with a piece of string tied round it. It never occurred to him to pull it along the floor behind him, for instance, and play at its being a carriage. What he did was to hold the reel by the string and very skilfully throw it over the edge of his curtained cot, so that it disappeared into it, at the same time uttering his expressive o-o-o-o*. He then pulled the reel out of the cot again by the string and hailed its reappearance with a joyful da* ['there*]. that this

(

(

This, then, was the complete game disappearance and return. As a rule one only witnessed its first act, which was repeated

untiringly as a

in itself, though there is no doubt that the was attached to the second act. 1 The interpretation of the game then became obvious. It was related to the child's great cultural achievement the in-

game

greater pleasure

stinctual renunciation (that

is,

the renunciation of instinctual

which he had made in allowing his mother to go away without protesting. He compensated himself for this, as it were, by himself staging the disappearance and return of the

satisfaction)

objects within his reach. It is of course a matter of indifference from the point of view of judging the effective nature of the game whether the child invented it himself or took it over on

suggestion. Our interest is directed to another point. The child cannot possibly have felt his mother's departure as something agreeable or even indifferent. then does his repetition of this distressing experience as a game fit in with the pleasure principle? It may perhaps be said in reply that her

some outside

How

departure had to be enacted as a necessary preliminary to her joyful return, and that it was in the latter that lay the true purpose

*A

further observation subsequently confirmed this interpretation the child's mother had been away for several hours and on her return was met with the words 'Baby o-o-o-ol* which was at first incomprehensible. It soon turned out, however, that during this long period of solitude the child had found a method of making himself disappear. He had discovered his reflection in a full-length mirror which did not quite reach to the ground, so that by crouching down he could make his mirror-image 'gone'. [A further reference to this story will be found in The Interpretation of Dreams, Standard Ed., 5, 46 In.] fully.

One day

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

10

of the game. But against

this

must be counted the observed

fact that the first act, that of departure, was staged as a game in itself and far more frequently than the episode in its entirety,

with

its

pleasurable ending. certain decision can be reached

from the analysis of a an unprejudiced view one gets an imsingle case like this. a game from pression that the child turned his experience into

No

On

another motive. At the outset he was in a passive situation he was overpowered by the experience; but, by repeating it, unpleasurable though it was, as a game, he took on an active to an instinct for mastery part. These efforts might be put down that was acting independently of whether the memory was in itself pleasurable or not. But still another interpretation may be attempted. Throwing away the object so that it was 'gone' might satisfy an impulse of the child's, which was suppressed in his actual life, to revenge himself on his mother for going away from him. In that case it would have a defiant meaning: *A11 right, then, go away! I don't need you. I'm sending you away myself.' A year later, the same boy whom I had observed at his first game used to take a toy, if he was angry with it, and throw it on the floor, exclaiming: 'Go to the fwont!' He had heard at that time that his absent father was *at the front', and was far from regretting his absence; on the contrary he made it quite clear that he had no desire to be disturbed in his sole possession of his mother. 1

We know of other children who liked to express

similar hostile impulses by throwing away objects instead of 8 are therefore left in doubt as to whether the persons.

We

impulse to work over in the mind some overpowering experience so as to make oneself master of it can find expression as a primary event, and independently of the pleasure principle. For, in the case we have been discussing, the child may, after all, only have been able to repeat his unpleasant experience in play because the repetition carried along with it a yield of pleasure of another sort but none the less a direct one.

Nor shall we be helped in our hesitation between these two views by further considering children's play. It is clear that in 1

When

Now

was five and three-quarters, his mother died. really 'gone' ('o-o-o'), the little boy showed no signs of grief. It is true that in the interval a second child had been born and had roused him to violent jealousy* that sire

1

Cf.

this child

was

my note on a childhood memory of Goethe's

(1917 b).

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

11

their play children repeat everything that has made a great impression on them in real life, and that in doing so they abreact the strength of the impression and, as one might put

make themselves master of the situation. But on the other hand it is obvious that all their play is influenced by a wish that dominates them the whole time the wish to be grown-up and to be able to do what grown-up people do. It can also be observed that the unpleasurable nature of an experience does it,

not always unsuit it for play. If the doctor looks down a child's throat or carries out some small operation on him, we may be quite sure that these frightening experiences will be the subject

we must not in that connection overlook a yield of pleasure from another source. As the child passes over from the passivity of the experience to the activity of the game, he hands on the disagreeable experiof the next game; but the fact that there

is

ence to one of his playmates and in on a substitute.

this

way

revenges himself

Nevertheless, it emerges from this discussion 'that there is no need to assume the existence of a special imitative instinct in order to provide a motive for play. Finally, a reminder may be added that the artistic play and artistic imitation carried out by adults, which, unlike children's, are aimed at an audience, do not spare the spectators (for instance, in tragedy) the most painful experiences and can yet be felt by them as highly enjoyable. 1 This is convincing proof that, even under the dominance of the pleasure principle, there are ways and means enough of making what is in itself unpleasurable into a subject to be recollected and worked over ih the mind. The consideration of these cases and situations, which have a yield of pleasure as their final outcome, should be undertaken by some system of aesthetics with an economic approach to its subject-matter.

They

no use for our purposes, since they presuppose the and dominance of the pleasure principle; they give

are of

existence

no evidence of the operation of tendencies beyond the pleasure more primitive than it and inprinciple, that is, of tendencies dependent of it. * his posthumously [Freud had made a tentative study of this point in on the Stage' (1942a) published paper on 'Psychopathic Characters which was probably written in 1905 or 1906.]

Ill

years of intense work have had as their result that the immediate aims of psycho-analytic technique are quite

TWENTV-HVE

other to-day than they were at the outset. At first the analysing more than discover the unconscious physician could do no material that was concealed from the patient, put it together, and, at the right moment, communicate it to him. Psycho-

was then

analysis

first

and foremost an

art of interpreting.

Since this did not solve the therapeutic problem, a further aim to oblige the patient to confirm the quickly came in view: from his own memory. In that endeavour construction analyst's

upon the patient's resistances: the art in uncovering these as quickly as possible, in out to the patient and in inducing him by human

the chief emphasis lay consisted

now

pointing them

was where suggestion operating as 'transference* to abandon his resistances. But it became ever clearer that the aim which had been set up the aim that what was unconscious should become conis not scious completely attainable by that method. The remember the whole of what is repressed in him, cannot patient and what he cannot remember may be precisely the essential part of it. Thus he acquires no sense of conviction of the correctness of the construction that has been communicated to

influence

played

its

this

part

He is obliged to repeat the repressed material as a contemporary experience instead of, as the physician would prefer 1 to see, remembering it as something belonging to the past. These reproductions, which emerge with such unwished-for exactitude, always have as their subject some portion of infantile

him.

of the Oedipus complex, that is, and its derivatives; life and they are invariably acted cut in the sphere of the trans-

sexual

When

ference, of the patient's relation to the physician. things have reached this stage, it may be said that the earlier neurosis

has 1

now been replaced by a fresh,

'transference neurosis'. It has

paper on 'Recollecting, Repeating and Working Through* (1914). [An early reference will be found in this same paper to the 'compulsion to repeat', which is one of the principle topics discussed in the present work. (See also the Editor's Note above, p. xi.) The term See

my

'transference neurosis' in the special sense in down also appears in that paper.]

lower

12

which

it is

used a few lines

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

13

been the physician's endeavour to keep this transference neurowithin the narrowest limits: to force as much as possible into the channel of memory and to allow as little as possible to emerge as repetition. Th$ ratio between what is remembered and what is reproduced varies from case to case. The physician cannot as a rule spare his patient this phase of the treatment. He must get him to re-experience some portion of his forgotten life, but must see to it, on the other hand, that the patient retains some degree of aloofness, which will enable him, in spite of everything, to recognize that what appears to be reality is in fact only a reflection of a forgotten past. If this can be successfully achieved, the patient's sense of conviction is won, together sis

with the therapeutic success that is dependent on it. In order to make it easier to understand this 'compulsion to repeat', which emerges during the psycho-analytic treatment of neurotics, we must above all get rid of the mistaken notion that what we are dealing with in our struggle against resistances is resistance on the part of the unconscious. The unconscious offers no resistance whatever to that is to say, the 'repressed* the efforts of the treatment. Indeed, it itself has no other endeavour than to break through the pressure weighing down on it and force its way either to consciousness or to a discharge through some real action. Resistance during treatment arises from the same higher strata and systems of the mind which originally carried out repression. But the fact that, as we know from experience, the motives of the resistances, and indeed the resistances themselves, are unconscious at first -during the treatment, is a hint to us that we should correct a shortcoming in our terminology. We shall avoid a lack of clarity if we make our contrast not between the conscious and the unconscious but between the coherent ego l and the repressed. It is certain that much of the ego is itself unconscious, and notably what we may describe as its nucleus; 2 only a small part of it is covered by the

term 'preconscious'. 3 Having replaced a purely descriptive 1

[Cf. a discussion of this in the Editor's Introduction to The Ego and Id (1923ft), Standard Ed., 19, 7-8; I.P.L., 12, xiii-xiv.] [This is corrected in a footnote at the beginning of Chapter III of The Ego and the Id, ibid., 28, and ibid., 16.] 3 [In its present form this sentence dates from 192 1 In the first edition (1920) it ran: 'It may be that much of the ego is itself unconscious; only a part of it, probably, is covered by the term "preconscious'V]

the

*

.

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

14

terminology by one which is systematic or dynamic, we can say 1 that the patient's resistance arises from his ego, and we then at once perceive that the compulsion to repeat must be ascribed to the unconscious repressed. It seems probable that the comitself after

pulsion can only express

the

work of treatment has

meet it and has loosened the repression. 2 gone There is no doubt that the resistance of the conscious and unconscious ego operates under the sway of the pleasure prinavoid the unpleasure which would be produced ciple: it seelcs to of the repressed. Our efforts, on the other hand, liberation the by half-way to

are directed towards procuring the toleration of that unpleasure by an appeal to the reality principle. But how is the compulsion to repeat the manifestation of the power of the repressed related to the pleasure principle? It is clear that the greater part of what is re-experienced under the compulsion to repeat must

cause the ego unpleasure, since it brings to light activities of repressed instinctual impulses. That, however, is unpieasure of a kind we have already considered and does not contradict the pleasure principle : unpleasure for one system and simultaneously 3 satisfaction for the other. But we come now to a new and re-

markable fact, namely that the compulsion to repeat also recalls from the past experiences which include no possibility of pleasure, and which can never, even long ago, have brought satisfaction even to instinctual impulses which have since been '

repressed.

The early efflorescence of infantile sexual life is doomed to extinction because its wishes are incompatible with reality and with the inadequate stage of development which the child has comes to an end in the most disand to the accompaniment of the most painful feelings. Loss of love and failure leave behind them a permanent injury to self-regard in the form of a narcissistic scar, which in my opinion, as well as in Marcinowski's (1918), contributes more than anything to the 'sense of inferiority' reached.

That

efflorescence

tressing circumstances

1

[A fuller and somewhat different account of the sources of resistance be found in Chap.

XI

Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety (1926^).] have argued elsewhere [1923<] that what thus comes to the help of the compulsion to repeat is the factor of

\vill

*

of

[Footnote added 1923:] I

"suggestion' in the treatment which has its roots

physician,

that

is,

deep in

*

the patient's submissiveness to the his unconscious parental complex.

[C Freud's allegorical use of the fairy tale of the 'Three Wishes* at the beginning of Lecture of his Introductory Lectures (1916-17).]

XIV

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

15

which is so common in neurotics. The child's sexual researches, on which limits are imposed by his physical development, lead to no satisfactory conclusion; hence such later complaints as *I

can't accomplish anything; I can't succeed in anything*. The of affection, which binds the child as a rule to the parent of

tie

succumbs to disappointment, to a vain exof satisfaction or to jealousy over the birth of a new pectation baby unmistakable proof of the infidelity of the object of the child's affections. His own attempt to make a baby himself, carried out with tragic seriousness, fails shamefully. The lessening amount of affection he receives, the increasing demands the opposite sex,

of education, hard words and an occasional punishment these at last the full extent to which he has been scorned.

show him

These are a few typical and constantly recurring instances of the ways in which the love characteristic of the age of childhood is brought to a conclusion. Patients repeat all of these unwanted situations and painful emotions in the transference and revive them with the greatest ingenuity. They seek to bring about the interruption of the treatment while it is still incomplete; they contrive once more to feel themselves. scorned, to oblige the physician to

them and

speak

them

coldly; they discover approfor their jealousy; instead of the passionately priate objects desired baby of their childhood, they produce a plan or a

severely to

treat

some grand present which turns out as a rule to be promise of less unreal. None of these tilings can have produced pleasure in the past, and it might be supposed that they would cause less unpleasure to-day if they emerged as memories or dreams instead of taking the form of fresh experiences. They are of course the activities of instincts intended to lead to satisfaction; but no lesson has been learnt from the old experience of these 1 activities having led instead only to unpleasure. In spite of that, a of are under compulsion. they pressure repeated, What psycho-analysis reveals in the transference phenomena of neurotics can also be observed in the lives of some normal is of being pursued by a maligpeople. The impression they give nant fate or possessed by some 'daemonic' power; but psychoanalysis has always taken the view that their fate is for the most themselves and determined by early infantile part arranged by influences. The compulsion which is here in evidence differs in 1 [This sentence was added in 192 1.] no

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE no way from the compulsion to repeat which we have found in neurotics, even though the people we are now considering have 16

never shown any signs of dealing with a neurotic conflict by Thus we have come across people all of producing symptoms. whose human relationships have the same outcome: such as the benefactor who is abandoned in anger after a time by each of his protigiS) however much they may otherwise differ from one another, and who thus seems doomed to taste all the bitterness

of ingratitude; or the man whose friendships all end in betrayal by his friend; or the man who time after time in the course of his life raises someone else into a position of great private or certain interval, himself uppublic authority and then, after a sets that authority and replaces him by a new one; or, again, the lover each of whose love affairs with a woman passes

through the same phases and reaches the same conclusion. This 'perpetual recurrence of the same thing* causes us no astonishment when it relates to active behaviour on the part of the person concerned and when we can discern in him an essential character-trait which always remains the same and which is comof the same experiences. pelled to find expression in a repetition

We are much more impressed by cases where the subject appears to have a passive experience, over which he has no influence, but in which he meets with a repetition of the same fatality. There is the case, for instance, of the woman who married three successive husbands each of whom fell ill soon afterwards and had to be nursed by her on their death-beds. 1 The most moving poetic picture of a fate such as this is given by Tasso in his romantic epic Gerusalemme Liberate. Its hero, Tancred, unwittingly frillg his beloved Clorinda in a duel while she is disguised in the armour of an enemy knight. After her burial he

makes

his

way into a army with

strange magic forest which

terror. He slashes with his but blood streams from the cut and the voice of Clorinda, whose soul is imprisoned in the tree, is heard complaining that he has wounded his beloved once again. If we take into account observations such as these, based upon behaviour in the transference and upon the life-histories of men and women, we shall find courage to assume that there really does exist in the mind a compulsion to repeat which overrides the pleasure principle. Now too we shall be inclined to 1 Cf. the apt remarks on this subject by C, G. Jung (1909). strikes

the Crusaders*

sword at a

tall tree;

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

17

compulsion the dreams which occur in traumatic neuroses and the impulse which leads children to play. But it is to be noted that only in rare instances can we observe the pure effects of the compulsion to repeat, unsupported by other motives. In the case of children's play we have already laid stress on the other ways in which the emergence of the compulsion may be interpreted; the compulsion to repeat and relate to this

instinctual satisfaction which is immediately pleasurable seem to converge here into an intimate partnership. The phenomena

of transference are obviously exploited by the resistance which the ego maintains in its pertinacious insistence upon repression; the compulsion to repeat, which the treatment tries to bring into its service is, as it were, drawn over by the ego to its side 1 (clinging as the ego does to the pleasure principle). great deal of what might be described as the compulsion of destiny seems intelligible on a rational basis; so that we are under no necessity to call in a new and mysterious motive force to explain it. The least dubious instance [of such a motive force] is perhaps that of traumatic dreams. But on maturer reflection we shall be forced to admit that even in the other instances the whole ground is not covered by the operation of the familiar motive forces. Enough is left unexplained to justify the hypothesis of a compulsion to repeat something that seems more primitive, more elementary, more instinctual than the pleasure principle which it over-rides. But if a compulsion to repeat does operate in the mind, we should be glad to know something about it, to learn what function it corresponds to, under what conditions

A

it

can emerge and what to which, after all,

its

relation

is

to the pleasure principle

we have hitherto ascribed dominance over

the course of the processes of excitation in mental 1

life.

[Before 1923 the last clause read: 'the compulsion to repeat is as it to its help by the ego, clinging as it does to the pleasure

were called principle.*]

IV

WHAT

follows

speculation, often far-fetched speculation,

is

which the reader will consider or dismiss according to his individual predilection. It is further an attempt to follow out an idea consistently, out of curiosity to see where it will lead. Psycho-analytic speculation takes as its point of departure the impression, derived from examining unconscious processes,

may be, not the most universal attribute of mental processes, but only a particular function of them.

that consciousness

Speaking in metapsychological terms, it asserts that consciousis a function of a particular system which it describes as C$. 1 What consciousness yields consists essentially of percep-

ness

of excitations coming from the external world and of of pleasure and unpleasure which can only arise from within the mental apparatus; it is therefore possible to assign to tions

feelings

the system Pcpt.-Cs.* a position in space. It must lie on the borderline between outside and inside; it must be turned to-

wards the external world and must envelop the other psychical systems. It will be seen that there is nothing daringly new in these assumptions; we have merely adopted the views on localization held

by cerebral anatomy, which

of consciousness in the cerebral cortex

locates the 'seat

1

the outermost, envelop-

ing layer of the central organ. Cerebral anatomy has no need to consider why, speaking anatomically, consciousness should be lodged on the surface of the brain instead of being safely

housed somewhere in

more

its

inmost interior. Perhaps we shall be

successful in accounting for this situation in the case of

our system

Pcpt.-Cs.

Consciousness

is

not the only distinctive character which

we

On

the basis of impresascribe to the processes in that system. sions derived from our psycho-analytic experience, we assume that all excitatory processes that occur in the other systems leave *[See Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams (1900a), Standard Ed., 5, 610 ff., and "The Unconscious* (1915*), Section II.] 1 [The system Pcpt. (the perceptual system) was first described by Freud in The Interpretation of Dream, Standard Ed., 5, 536 ff In a later paper (1917
system Gr.] IB

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

19

permanent traces behind in them which form the foundation of memory. Such memory-traces, then, have nothing to do with the fact of becoming conscious; indeed they are often most powerful and most enduring when the process which left them behind was one which never entered consciousness. We find it hard to believe, however, that permanent traces of excitation such as these are also left in the system Pcpt.-Cs. If they re-

mained constantly conscious, they would very soon

set limits

to the system's aptitude for receiving fresh excitations. 1 If,

on

the other hand, they were unconscious, we should be faced with the problem of explaining the existence of unconscious

whose functioning was otherwise accompanied by the phenomenon of consciousness. We should, so to say, have altered -nothing and gained nothing by our hypothesis relegating the process of becoming conscious to a special system. Though this consideration is not absolutely conclusive, it neverprocesses in a system

theless leads us to suspect that

becoming conscious and leaving

behind a memory-trace are processes incompatible with each other within one and the same system. Thus we should be able to say that the excitatory process becomes conscious in the system Cs. but leaves no permanent trace behind there; but

that the excitation is transmitted to the systems lying next within and that it is in them that its traces are left. I followed these same lines in the schematic picture which I included in the speculative section of my Interpretation of Dreams. 2 It must

be borne in mind that little enough is known from other sources of the origin of consciousness; when, therefore, we lay down the proposition that consciousness arises instead of a memory-trace^ the assertion deserves consideration, at all events on the ground of

being framed in fairly precise terms. is so, then, the system Cs. is characterized by the peculiarity that in it (in contrast to what happens in the other

its

If this

psychical systems) excitatory processes do not leave behind any permanent change in its elements but expire, as it were, in the phenomenon of becoming conscious. An exception of this sort * What follows is based throughout on Breuer's views in [the second section of his theoretical contribution to] Studies on Hysteria (Breuer and Freud, 1895). [Freud himself discussed the subject in The Interpretation of Dreams, Standard Ed. t 5, 538 and it had previously been fully considered in his 'Project' of 1895 (19500), Part I, Section 3. He returned to 1 the topic later in his paper on the 'Mystic Writing-Pad (1925a).] a \Standard Ed.. 5. 538.1

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

20

to the general ride requires to be explained by some factor that Such a factor, which is applies exclusively to that one system.

absent in the other systems, might well be the exposed situation of the system Cs., immediately abutting as it does on the external world. Let us picture a living organism in its most simplified possible form as an undifferentiated vesicle of a substance that is susceptible to stimulation. Then the surface turned towards the its very situation be differentiated and an organ for receiving stimulL Indeed embryology

external world will from will serve as

s

capacity as a recapitulation of developmental history, actually shows us that the central nervous system originates in

its

from the ectoderm; the grey matter of the cortex remains a derivative of the primitive superficial layer of the organism and may have inherited some of its essential properties. It would be easy to suppose, then, that as a result of the ceaseless impact of external stimuli on the surface of the vesicle, its substance to a certain depth may have become permanently modified, so that excitatory processes run a different course in it from what they run in the deeper layers. A crust would thus be formed which would at last have been so thoroughly 'baked through' by stimulation that it would present the most favourable possible conditions for the reception of stimuli and become incapable of any further modification. In terms of the system Cy., this would mean that its elements could undergo no further permanent modification from the passage of excitation, because they had already been modified in the respect in question to the greatest possible extent: now, however, they would have become capable of giving rise to consciousness. Various ideas may be formed which cannot at present be verified as to the nature of this modification of the substance and of the excitatory process. It may be supposed that, in passing from one element to another, an excitation has to overcome a resistance, and that the diminution of resistance thus effected is what lays down a permanent trace of the excitation, that is, a facilitation. In the system Cs. 9 then, resistance of this kind to passage from one

element to another would no longer exist. 1 This picture can be brought into relation with Breuer's distinction between quiescent (or bound) and mobile cathectic energy in the elements 1 [This passage is foreshadowed in the later half of Section 3 of Part I of the 'Project'.]

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE of the psychical systems; carry no

1

21

the elements of the system Cs. would

bound energy but only energy capable of

free dis-

charge. It seems best, however, to express oneself as cautiously as possible on these points. None the less, this speculation will have enabled us to bring the origin of consciousness into some sort of connection with the situation of the system Cs. and with the peculiarities that must be ascribed to the excitatory processes taking place in it.

But we have more to say of the living vesicle with its receptive This little fragment of living substance is susmiddle of an external world charged with the most powerful energies; and it would be killed by the stimulation emanating from these if it were not provided with a cortical layer. pended in the

protective shield against stimuli. It acquires the shield in this way: its outermost surface ceases to have the structure proper to living matter, becomes to some degree inorganic and thence-

forward functions as a special envelope or membrane resistant to stimuli. In consequence, the energies of the external world are able to pass into the next underlying layers, which have remained living, with only a fragment of their original intensity; and these layers can devote themselves, behind the protective shield, to the reception of the amounts of stimulus which have been allowed through it. By its death, the outer layer has saved all the deeper ones from a similar fate unless, that is to say, stimuli reach it which are so strong that they break through the protective shield. Protection against stimuli is an almost more important function for the living organism than reception

of stimuli.

store of energy

The

protective shield

and must above

is

supplied with

its

own

endeavour to preserve the special modes of transformation of energy operating in it against the effects threatened by the enormous energies at work in the external world effects which tend towards a levelling out of them and hence towards destruction. The main purpose of the reception of stimuli is to discover the direction and nature of the all

external stimuli; and for that it is enough to take small specimens of the external world, to sample it in small quantities. In highly developed organisms the receptive cortical layer of the former vesicle has long been withdrawn into the depths of 1

Breuer and Freud, 1895. [See Section 2 of Brevier's theoretical con-

tribution, and in particular the footnote at the beginning of that section. Cf. also footnote 1 on p. 2 above.]

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

22

the interior of the body, though portions of it have been left behind on the surface immediately beneath the general shield against stimuli. These are the sense organs, which consist

of apparatus for the reception of certain specific but which also include special arrangements for further protection against excessive amounts of stimulation and for excluding unsuitable kinds of stimuli. 1 It is characteristic of them that they deal only with very small quantities of external stimulation and only take in samples of the external world. They may perhaps be compared with feelers which are all the time making tentative advances towards the external world and then drawing back from it. At this point I shall venture to touch for a moment upon a subject which would merit the most exhaustive treatment. As a result of certain psycho-analytic discoveries, we are to-day in a position to embark on a discussion of the Kantian theorem that time and space are 'necessary forms of thought*. We have learnt that unconscious mental processes are in themselves 'timeless*. 2 This means in the first place that they are not ordered temporally, that time does not change them in any way and that the idea of time cannot be applied to them. These are negative characteristics which can only be clearly understood if a comparison is made with conscious mental processes. On the other hand, our abstract idea of time seems to be wholly derived from the method of working of the system Pcpt.-Cs. and to correspond to a perception on its own part of that method of working. This mode of functioning may perhaps constitute another way of providing a shield against stimuli. I know that these remarks must sound very obscure, but I must limit myself to these hints. 8 We have pointed out how the living vesicle is provided with a shield against stimuli from the external world; and we had previously shown that the cortical layer next to that shield must be differentiated as an organ for receiving stimuli from without. This sensitive cortex, however, which is later to become the essentially

effects of stimulation,

system Cs., also receives excitations from within. The situation of the system between the outside and the inside and the differ* 1

[Cf. 'Project*, Part I, Sections 5

[See Section

8

V of

and

9.]

"The Unconscious' (1915*).] [Freud recurs to the origin of the idea of time at the

on "The Mystic Writing-Pad

1

end of his paper

(1925s). The same paper -contains a further discussion of the 'shield against stimuli'.]

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

23

encc between the conditions governing the reception of excitations in the two cases have a decisive effect on the functioning of the system and of the whole mental apparatus. Towards the outside it is shielded against stimuli, and the amounts of excitation impinging on it have only a reduced effect. Towards the inside there can be no such shield; 1 the excitations in the deeper layers extend into the system directly and in undiminished amount, in so far as certain of their characteristics give rise to feelings

in

the

pleasure-unpleasure

coming from within

series.

The

excitations

however, in their intensity and in in their amplitude, perhaps more other, qualitative, respects commensurate with the system's method of working than the stimuli which stream in from the external world. 2 This state of things produces two definite results. First, the feelings of pleasure and unpleasure (which are an index to what is happening in the interior of the apparatus) predominate over all external stimuli. And secondly, a particular way is adopted of dealing with any internal excitations which produce too great an increase of unpleasure: there is a tendency to treat them as though they were acting, not from the inside, but from the outside, so that it may be possible to bring the shield against stimuli into operation as a means of defence against them. This is the origin of projection, which is destined to play such a large part in the causation of pathological processes. I have an impression that these last considerations have brought us to a better understanding of the dominance of the pleasure principle; but no light has yet been thrown on the cases that contradict that dominance. Let us therefore go a step further. We describe as 'traumatic* any excitations from outside which are powerful enough to break through the protective shield. It seems to me that the concept of trauma necessarily implies a connection of this kind with a breach in an otherwise are,

efficacious barrier against stimuli.

Such an event

as

an

ex-

to provoke a disturbance on a large scale in the functioning of the organism's energy and to^ set in motion every possible defensive measure. At the same time, the is pleasure principle is for the moment put out of action. There ternal

trauma

is

bound

possibility of preventing the mental apparatus from being flooded with large amounts of stimulus, and another

no longer any i

[Cf. 'Project', beginning of Section 10 of Part I.] Part I.] [Cf. 'Project*, later part of Section 4 of

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

24

problem arises instead the problem of mastering the amounts of stimulus which have broken in and of binding them, in the psychical sense, so that they can then be disposed of. The specific unpleasure of physical pain is probably the result of the protective shield having been broken through in a limited area. There is then a continuous stream of excitations

from the part of the periphery concerned to the central apparatus of the mind, such as could normally arise only from within the apparatus. And how shall we expect the mind to react to this invasion? Gathectic energy is summoned from all sides to provide sufficiently high cathexes of energy in the 1

environs of the breach.

An

'anticathexis'

on a grand

scale

is

set

up, for whose benefit all the other psychical systems are impoverished,, so that the remaining psychical functions are extenmust endeavour to draw a sively paralysed or reduced.

We

and use them as a basis for our metapsychological speculations. From the present case, then, we infer that a system which is itself highly cathected is capable of taking up an additional stream of fresh inflowing energy and of converting it into quiescent cathexis., that is of binding it psychically. The higher the system's own quiescent cathexis, the greater seems to be its binding force; conversely, therefore, the lower its cathexis, the less capacity will it have for s taking up inflowing energy and the more violent must be the consequences of such a breach in the protective shield against stimuli. To this view it cannot be justly objected that the increase of cathexis round the breach can be explained far more simply as the direct result of the inflowing masses of excitation. If that were so, the mental apparatus would merely receive an increase in its cathexes of energy, and the paralysing character of pain and the impoverishment of all the other systems would remain unexplained. Nor do the very violent phenomena of discharge to which pain gives rise affect our explanation, for they occur in a reflex manner that is, they follow without the intervention of the mental apparatus. The indefiniteness of all our discussions on what we describe as metapsychology is of course due to the fact that we know nothing of the nature of the excitatory process that takes place in the elements of the lesson

1

from examples such

Cf. 'Instincts

Inhibitions , *

and

as this

their Vicissitudes' (1915*:) [and-

Addendum C

of

Symptoms and Anxiety (1926^)].

[Cf. the 'principle of the insusceptibility to excitation of uncathected systems* in a footnote near the end of Freud, 1917'd.]

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

25

psychical systems, and that we do not feel justified in framing any hypothesis on the subject. We are consequently operating all the time with a large unknown factor, which we are

obliged to carry over into every new formula. It may be reasonably supposed that this excitatory process can be carried out with energies that vary quantitatively, it may also seem probable

has more than one quality (in the nature of amplitude, As a new factor we have taken into consideration Breuer's hypothesis that charges of energy occur in two forms [see pp. 20-1]; so that we have to distinguish between two kinds that

it

for instance).

of cathexis of the psychical systems or their elements a freely flowing cathexis that presses on towards discharge and a quiescent cathexis. We may perhaps suspect that the binding of the energy that streams into the mental apparatus consists in its change from a freely flowing into a quiescent state.

We may, I think, tentatively venture to regard the common traumatic neurosis as a consequence of an extensive breach being made in the protective 'shield against stimuli. This would seem to reinstate the old, naive theory of shock, in apparent contrast to the later and psychologically more ambitious theory which attributes aetiological importance not to the effects of mechanical violence but to fright and the threat to life. These opposing views are not, however, irreconcilable; nor is the psycho-analytic view of the traumatic neurosis identical with the shock theory in its crudest form. The latter regards the essence of the shock as being the direct damage to the molecular structure or even to the histological structure of the elements of the nervous system; whereas what we seek to understand are the effects produced on the organ of the mind by the breach in the shield against stimuli and by the problems that follow in its And we still attribute importance to the element of fright.

train.

It is caused by lack of any preparedness for anxiety, * including lack of hypercathexis of the systems that would be the first to receive the stimulus. Owing to their low cathexis those

systems are not in a good position for binding the inflowing amounts of excitation and the consequences of the breach in the protective shield follow all the more easily. It will be seen, then, that preparedness for anxiety and the hypercathexis of the receptive systems constitute the last line of defence of the shield against stimuli. In the case of quite a number of traumas, the 1

[Cf. footnote

1

on

p. 7 above.]

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

26

between systems that are unprepared and systems that are well prepared through being hypercathected may be a decisive factor in determining the outcome; though where the strength of a trauma exceeds a certain limit this factor will no difference

doubt cease to carry weight. The fulfilment of wishes is, as we know, brought about in a hallucinatory manner by dreams, and under the dominance of the pleasure principle this has become their function. But it is not in the service of that principle that the dreams of patients suffering from traumatic neuroses lead them back with such regularity to the situation in which the trauma occurred. We may assume, rather, that dreams are here helping to carry out another task, which must be accomplished before the dominance of the pleasure principle can even begin. These dreams are endeavouring to master the stimulus retrospectively, by developing the anxiety whose omission was the cause of the traumatic neurosis. They thus afford us a view of a function of the mental apparatus which, though it does not contradict the pleasure principle, is nevertheless independent of it and seems to be more primitive than the purpose of gaining

and avoiding unpleasure. This would seem to be the place, then, at which to admit for the first time an exception to the proposition that dreams are fulfilments of wishes. Anxiety dreams, as I have shown repeatedly and in detail, offer no such exception. Nor do 'punishment dreams', for they merely replace the forbidden pleasure

wish-fulfilment

by the appropriate punishment for

it;

that

is

to

say, they fulfil the wish of the sense of guilt which is the reaction to the repudiated impulse. 1 But it is impossible to classify as

wish-fulfilments the

dreams we have been discussing which

occur in traumatic neuroses, or the dreams during psychoanalyses which bring to memory the psychical traumas of childhood. They arise, rather, in obedience to the compulsion to repeat, though

it is

true that in analysis that compulsion

is

a supported by the wish (which is encouraged by 'suggestion') to conjure up what has been forgotten and repressed. Thus it would seem that the function of dreams, which consists in i [Sec The Interpretation of Dreams (1900a), Standard Ed., 5, 557, and Section 9 of Freud's 'Remarks on the Theory and Practice of Dream-

Interpretation* (1923*:).] 8 [The clause in brackets is

was substituted in 1923 for the words 'which not unconscious* which appeared in the earlier editions.]

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

27

any motives that might interrupt sleep, by fulfilling the wishes of the disturbing impulses, is not their original function. It would not be possible for them to perform that

setting aside

function until the whole of mental

life had accepted the dominance of the pleasure principle. If there is a 'beyond the pleasure principle', it is only consistent to grant that there was also a time before the purpose of dreams was the fulfilment of wishes. This would imply no denial of their later function. But if once this general rule has been broken, a further question arises. May not dreams which, with a view to the psychical binding of traumatic impressions, obey the compulsion to repeat may not such dreams occur outside analysis as well? And the reply can only be a decided affirmative. I have argued elsewhere * that 'war neuroses' (in so far as that term implies something more than a reference to the circumstances of the illness's onset) may very well be traumatic neuroses which have been facilitated by a conflict in the ego. The fact to which I have referred on page 6, that a gross physical injury caused simultaneously by the trauma diminishes the chances that a neurosis will develop, becomes intelligible if one bears in mind two facts which have been stressed by psycho-analytic research: firstly, that mechanical agitation must be recognized as one of the sources of sexual excitation, 3 and secondly, that painful and feverish illnesses exercise a powerful effect, so long as they last, on the distribution of libido. Thus, on the one hand, the mechanical violence of the trauma would liberate a quantity of sexual excitation which, owing to the lack of preparation for anxiety, would have a traumatic effect; but, on the other hand, the simultaneous physical injury, by calling for a narcissistic hypercathexis of the injured organ, 3 would bind the excess of excitation. It is also well known, though the libido theory has not yet made sufficient use of the fact, that such severe disorders in the distribution of libido as melancholia are temporarily brought to an end by intercurrent organic illness, and indeed that even a fully developed condition of dementia praecox is capable of a temporary remission in these

same circumstances. 1

See

2

Cf.

my introduction (I9l9d) to Psycho-Analysis and the War Neuroses. my remarks elsewhere (Three Essays [Standard Ed., 7, 201-2; on the effect of swinging and railway-travel. paper on narcissism (19 14*:) [Beginning of Section II].

I.P.L., 57, 67-8]) 3

See

my

V THE fact that the cortical layer which receives stimuli is without any protective as

its

shield against excitations

from within must have of stimulus have a

result that these latter transmissions

preponderance in economic importance and often occasion economic disturbances comparable with traumatic neuroses. The most abundant sources of this internal excitation are what are described as the organism's 'instincts*

the representatives

of all the forces originating in the interior of the body and transmitted to the mental apparatus at once the most important and the most obscure element of psychological research. It will perhaps not be thought too rash to suppose that the impulses arising from the instincts do not belong to the type of bound nervous processes but of freely mobile processes which

The best part of what we know of these derived from our study of the dream- work. there discovered that the processes in the unconscious systems were press towards discharge.

processes

We

is

fundamentally different from those in the preconscious (or conscious) systems. In the unconscious, cathexes can easily be completely transferred, displaced and condensed. Such treatment, however, could produce onfy invalid results if it were applied to preconscious material; and this accounts for the familiar peculiarities exhibited by manifest dreams after the preconscious residues of the preceding day have been worked over in accordance with the laws operating in the unconscious.

of process found in the unconscious as the 'primary' psychical process, in contradistinction to the 'secondary' process which is the one obtaining in our normal I described the type

waking

impulses have the unconscious systems as their point of impact, it is hardly an innovation to say that they obey the primary process. Again, it is easy to

life.

Since

the

primary psychical process with Breuer's

all instinctual

identify

cathexis

freely mobile in his bound or

and the secondary process with changes it would be the task of the higher

tonic cathexis. 1 If so,

strata of

the mental apparatus to bind the instinctual excitation reaching 1

Cf.

Cf. also

my Interpretation of Dreams,

Chapter VII [Standard Ed., 5, 588 ff. Breuer and Freud, 1895 (Section 2 of Breuer's theoretical con-

tribution)].

28

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

29

A

failure to effect this binding would the primary process. provoke a disturbance analogous to a traumatic neurosis; and only after the binding has been accomplished would it be

dominance of the pleasure principle (and of its modification, the reality principle) to proceed unhindered. Till then the other task of the mental apparatus, the task of mastering or binding excitations, would have precedence not, indeed, possible for the

in opposition to the pleasure principle, but independently of and to some extent in disregard of it.

it

The manifestations of a compulsion to repeat (which we have described as occurring in the early activities of infantile mental life as well as among the events of psycho-analytic treatment) exhibit to a high degree an instinctual 1 character and, when they act in opposition to the pleasure principle, give the appear-

ance of some 'daemonic' force at work. In the case of children's play we seemed to see that children repeat unpleasurable experiences for the additional reason that they can master a powerful impression far more thoroughly by being active than they could by merely experiencing it passively. Each fresh repetition seems to strengthen the mastery they are in search of. Nor can children have their pleasurable experiences repeated often enough, and they are inexorable in their insistence that the repetition shall be an identical one. This character trait disappears later on. If a joke is heard for a second time it produces almost no effect; a theatrical production never creates so great an impression the second time as the first; indeed, it is hardly possible to persuade an adult who has very much enjoyed reading a book to re-read it immediately. Novelty is always the condition of enjoyment. But children will never tire of asking an adult to repeat a game that he has shown them or played with them, till he is too exhausted to go on. And if a child has been told a nice story, he will insist on hearing it over and over again rather than a new one; and he will remorselessly stipulate that the repetition shall be an identical one and will correct any alterations ofwhich the narrator may be guilty though they may 8 actually have been made in the hope of gaining fresh approval. 1

['Triebhaf? here

word

*

Trieb* bears

the next paragraph. The of a feeling of urgency than the English

and at the beginning of

much more

'instinct*.] * [Cf. some remarks on this towards the end of the Chapter VII of Freud's book on jokes (1905
sixth section of

5U

tfiiYUJND

THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

None of

this contradicts the pleasure principle; repetition, the re-experiencing of something identical, is clearly in itself a source of pleasure. In the case of a person in analysis, on the contrary, the compulsion to repeat the events of his childhood in the transference evidently disregards the pleasure

principle in ev^ry way. The patient behaves in a purely infantile fashion and thus shows us that the repressed memory-traces of his primaeval experiences are not present in him in a bound

and are indeed in a sense incapable of obeying the secondary process. It is to this fact of not being bound, moreover, that they owe their capacity for forming, in conjunction with the residues of the previous day, a wishful phantasy that emerges in a dream. This same compulsion to repeat frequently meets us as an obstacle to our treatment when at the end of an analysis we try to induce the patient to detach himself completely from his physician. It may be presumed, too, that when people una dread of rousing familiar with analysis feel an obscure fear state

something that, so they feel, is better left sleeping what they are afraid of at bottom is the emergence of this compulsion with its hint of possession by some 'daemonic* power. But how is the predicate of being 'instinctual' 1 related to the compulsion to repeat? At this point we cannot escape a suspicion that we may have come upon the track of a universal attribute of instincts and perhaps of organic life in general which has not hitherto been clearly recognized or at least not explicitly stressed. 2 It seems, then, that an instinct is an urge inherent in organic

an earlier state of things which the living entity has been obliged to abandon under the pressure of external disturbing forces; that is, it is a kind of organic elasticity, or, to put it another way, the expression of the inertia inherent in life to restore

3

organic life. This view of instincts strikes us as strange because we have become used to see in them a factor impelling towards change

and development, whereas we are now asked to recognize in them the precise contrary an expression of the conservative nature of living substance. On the other hand we soon call to mind examples from animal life which seem to confirm the 1

[See the last footnote but one.] [The last six words were added in 1921.] * I have no doubt that similar notions as to the nature of have already been put fonvard repeatedly. *

'instincts*

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

31

view that instincts are historically determined. Certain fishes, for instance, undertake laborious migrations at spawning-time in order to deposit their spawn in particular waters far removed

from their customary haunts. In the opinion of many biologists what they are doing is merely to seek out the localities in which their species formerly resided but which in the course of time they have exchanged for others. The same explanation is believed to apply to the migratory flights of birds of passage but we are quickly relieved of the necessity for seeking for further examples by the reflection that the most impressive proofs of there being an organic compulsion to repeat lie in the

phenomena of heredity and the how the germ of a living animal

facts is

of embryology.

We

see

obliged in the course of its

if only in a transient and abbreviated fashion) the structures of all the forms from which it is sprung, instead of proceeding quickly by the shortest path to its final shape. This behaviour is only to a very slight degree attributable to mechanical causes, and the historical explanation cannot accordingly be neglected. So too the power of regenerating a lost organ by growing afresh a precisely similar one extends far up into the animal kingdom. We shall be met by the plausible objection that it may very well be that, in addition to the conservative instincts which impel

development to recapitulate (even

towards repetition, there may be others which push forward towards progress and the production of new forms. This argument must certainly not be overlooked, and it will be taken into account at a later stage. 1 But for the moment it is tempting to pursue to its logical conclusion the hypothesis that all instincts tend towards the restoration of an earlier state of things. The outcome may give an impression of mysticism or of sham profundity; but we can feel quite innocent of having had any such purpose in view. We seek only for the sober results of research or of reflection based on it; and we have no wish to find in those 3 results any quality other than certainty. Let us suppose, then, that all the organic instincts are conservative, are acquired historically and tend towards the half of this sentence was added in 1921.] The reader should not overlook the fact that what follows is the development of an extreme line of thought. Later on, when account is taken of the sexual instincts, it will be found that the necessary limitations and corrections are applied to it. i

[The

3

[Footnote added 1925:]

last

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

32

restoration of an earlier state of things. It follows that the pheno niena of organic development must be attributed to externa

and diverting influences. The elementary living would from its very beginning have had no wish tc change; if conditions remained the same, it would do no mor< than constantly repeat the same course of life. In the last resort what has left its mark on the development of organisms must be the history of the earth we live in and of its relation to the sun. Every modification which is thus imposed upon the course oi disturbing entity

the organism's life is accepted by the conservative organic and stored up for further repetition. Those instincts are therefore bound to give a deceptive appearance of being forces instincts

tending towards change and progress, whilst in fact they are merely seeking to reach an ancient goal by paths alike old and new. Moreover it is possible to specify this final goal of all organic striving. It would be in contradiction to the conservative nature of the instincts if the goal of life were a state of things which had never yet been attained. On the contrary, it must be an old state of things, an initial state from which the living entity has at one time or other departed and to which it is

striving to return by the circuitous paths along leads. If we are to take it as a truth that

development

which its knows no

exception that everything living dies for internal reasons then we shall be compelled to say that 'the aim of all life is death and, looking backwards, that

becomes inorganic once again

9

9

'inanimate things existed before living ones . The attributes of life were at some time

evoked in inanimate matter by the action of a force of whose nature we can form no conception. It may perhaps have been a process similar in type to that which later caused the development of consciousness in a particular stratum of living matter. The tension which then arose in what had hitherto been an inanimate substance endeavoured to cancel itself out. In this way the first instinct came into being: the instinct to return to the inanimate state. It was still an easy matter at that time for a living substance to die; the course of its life was probably only a brief one, whose direction was determined by the chemical structure of the young life. For a long time, perhaps, living substance was thus being constantly created afresh and easily dying, till decisive external influences altered in such a way as to oblige the still surviving substance to diverge ever more widely from its original course

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

33

life and to make ever more complicated detours before reaching its aim of death. These circuitous paths to death, faithfully kept to by the conservative instincts, would thus present us to-day with the picture of the phenomena of life. If we firmly maintain the exclusively conservative nature of instincts, we cannot arrive at any other notions as to the origin and aim

of

of life.

The

implications in regard to the great groups of instincts we believe, lie behind the phenomena of life in

which, as

organisms must appear no

less

bewildering.

such as

The

hypothesis of

we

attribute to all living opposition to the idea that instinctual

self-preservative instincts,

beings, stands in marked as a whole serves to bring about death. Seen in this light, the theoretical importance of the instincts of self-preservation,

life

of self-assertion and of mastery greatly diminishes. They are

component

instincts

whose function

it

is

to assure that the

organism shall follow its own path to death, and to ward off any possible ways of returning to inorganic existence other than those which are immanent in the organism itself. We have no longer to reckon with the organism's puzzling determination (so hard to fit into any context) to maintain its own existence in the face of every obstacle. What we are left with is the fact that the

organism wishes to die only in its own fashion. Thus these guardians of life, too, were originally the myrmidons of death.

Hence

the paradoxical situation that the living organism most energetically against events (dangers, in fact) which might help it to attain its life's aim rapidly by a kind of short-circuit. Such behaviour is, however, precisely what chararises

struggles

acterizes

purely instinctual

as

contrasted

with intelligent

efforts. 1

But

The

let

us pause for a

moment and

reflect. It

cannot be

so.

sexual instincts, to which the theory of the neuroses gives

a quite special place, appear under a very different aspect. The external pressure which provokes a constantly increasing extent of development has not imposed itself upon every organism. Many have succeeded in remaining up to the present time at their lowly level. Many, though not all, such creatures, which must resemble the earliest stages of the higher animals 1

[In the editions before 1925 the following footnote appeared at this 'A correction of this extreme view of the self-preservative instincts

point.

follows.*]

34

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

and plants, are, indeed, living to-day. In the same way, the whole path of development to natural death is not trodden by all the elementary entities which compose the complicated body of one of the higher organisms. Some of them, the germ-cells, probably retain the original structure of living matter and, after a certain time, with their full complement of inherited and freshly acquired instinctual dispositions, separate themselves from the organism as a whole. These two characteristics may be precisely what enables them to have an independent existence. Under favourable conditions, they begin to develop that is, to repeat the performance to which they owe their existence; and in the end once again one portion of their substance pursues its development to a finish, while another portion harks back once

again as a fresh residual germ to the beginning of the process of development. These germ-cells, therefore, work against the death of the living substance and succeed in winning for it

what we can only regard as potential immortality, though that may mean no more than a lengthening of the road to death. We must regard as in the highest degree significant the fact that this function of the germ-cell possible, if it coalesces with

differing from it. The instincts which

is

another

reinforced, or only

made

cell similar to itself and

yet

watch over the destinies of these elemen-

tary organisms that survive the whole individual, which provide them with a safe shelter while they are defenceless against the stimuli of the external world, with other germ-cells, and so

which bring about their meeting on these constitute the group of

They are conservative in the same sense other instincts in that they bring back earlier states of living substance; but they are conservative to a higher degree in that they are peculiarly resistant to external influences; and they are conservative too in another sense in that they preserve the sexual instincts. as the

life itself

for a comparatively long period. 1

They are the true They operate against the purpose of the other instincts, which leads, by reason of their function, to death; and this fact indicates that there is an opposition between them and

life instincts.

the other instincts, an opposition whose importance was long ago recognized by the theory of the neuroses. It is as though the 1 [Footnote added 1923:] Yet it is to them alone that we can attribute an internal impulse towards 'progress' and towards higher development! (See below [pp. 42-3].)

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

35

of the organism moved with a vacillating rhythm. One group of instincts rushes forward so as to reach the final aim of life as swiftly as possible; but when a particular stage in the advance has been reached, the other group jerks back to a certain point to make a fresh start and so prolong the journey. And even though it is certain that sexuality and the distinction between the sexes did not exist when life began, the possibility remains that the instincts which were later to be described as sexual may have been in operation from the very first, and it may not be true that it was only at a later time that they started life

upon their work of opposing the Let us now hark back for a whether there is any basis at

activities

moment

of the 'ego-instincts'. 1 and consider

ourselves

all for these speculations. Is it really the case that, apart from the sexual instincts there are no instincts that do not seek to restore an earlier state of things?

f

none that aim at a state of things which has never yet been attained? I know of no certain example from the organic world that would contradict the characterization I have thus proposed. There is unquestionably no universal instinct that there are

towards higher development observable in the animal or plant world, even though it is undeniable that development does in fact occur in that direction. But on the one hand it is often merely a matter of opinion when we declare that one stage of development is higher than another, and on the other hand biology teaches us that higher development in one respect is very frequently balanced or outweighed by involution in another. Moreover there are plenty of animal forms from whose early stages we can infer that their development has, on the contrary, assumed a retrograde character. Both higher development and involution might well be the consequences of adapta-

tion to the pressure of external forces; and in both cases the part played by instincts might be limited to the retention (in the form of an internal source of pleasure) of an obligatory

modification. 3 1 [Footnote added 1925:] It should be understood from the context that the term *ego-instincts* is used here as a provisional description and derives from the earliest psycho-analytical terminology. [See below,

pp. 44-5 and 55.] 1 [These five words were italicized from 1921 onwards.] 8 Ferenczi (1913, 137) has reached the same conclusion along different lines: *If this thought is pursued to its logical conclusion, one must make oneself familiar with the idea of a tendency to perseveration or

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

36 It

may

be

difficult, too, for

many of us,

to

abandon the

belief

an instinct towards perfection at work in human beings, which has brought them to their present high level of intellectual achievement and ethical sublimation and which may be expected to watch over their development into supermen. I have no faith, however, in the existence of any such internal instinct and I cannot see how this benevolent illusion is to be preserved. The present development of human beings requires, as it seems to me, no different explanation from that of that there

animals.

is

What

appears in a minority of

human

individuals as

an untiring impulsion towards further perfection can

easily be understood as a result of the instinctual repression upon which is based all that is most precious in human civilization. The repressed instinct never ceases to strive for complete satisfaction, which would consist in the repetition of a primary experience of satisfaction. No substitutive or reactive formations and no

sublimations will suffice to remove the repressed instinct's persisting tension; and it is the difference in amount between the pleasure of satisfaction which is demanded and that which is actually achieved that provides the driving factor which will permit of no halting at any position attained, but, in the poet's

words, 'ungebandigt immer vorwdrts

1

dringt'.

The backward path

that leads to complete satisfaction is as a rule obstructed by the resistances which maintain the repressions. So there is no alternative but to advance in the direction in which growth is free though with no prospect of bringing the process to a conclusion or of being able to reach the goal. The processes involved in the formation of a neurotic phobia, which is nothing still

else

than an attempt at

from the satisfaction of an instinct, manner of origin of this suptowards perfection' an instinct which canflight

present us with a model of the posititious 'instinct

not possibly be attributed to conditions for

its

every

human

being.

The

dynamic

are, indeed, universally present; only in rare cases that the economic situation appears

development

but it is to favour the production of the phenomenon. I will add only a word to suggest that the efforts of Eros to

regression dominating organic life as well, while the tendency to further development, to adaptation, etc., would become active only as a result

of external stimuli.' 1 [Tresses ever forward unsubdued,'] Mephistopheles in Faust, Part [Scene 4].

I

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE combine organic substances into ever larger

unities

37

probably

provide a substitute for this 'instinct towards perfection' whose existence we cannot admit. The phenomena that are attributed to it seem capable of explanation by these efforts of Eros taken in conjunction with the results of repression. 1 1 [This paragraph, which was added in 1923, anticipates the account of Eros that is to follow in the next chapter, p. 44 fF.]

VI

THE

upshot of our enquiry so far has been the drawing of 2 sharp distinction between the 'ego-instincts' and the sexual instincts, and the view that the former exercise pressure toward* death and the latter towards a prolongation of life. But thii conclusion is bound to be unsatisfactory in many respects ever to ourselves. Moreover, it is actually only of the former group oi instincts that we can predicate a conservative, or rather retrograde, character corresponding to a compulsion to repeat. Foi

on our hypothesis the

ego-instincts arise from the coming tc of inanimate matter and seek to restore the inanimate state; whereas as regards the sexual instincts, though it is true that life

they reproduce primitive states of the organism, what the^ are clearly aiming at by every possible means is the coalescence of two germ-cells which are differentiated in a particular way, If this union is not effected, the germ-cell dies along with all the other elements of the multicellular organism. It is only on this condition that the sexual function can prolong the cell's life and lend it the appearance of immortality. But what is the important event in the development of living substance which is being repeated in sexual reproduction, or in its fore-runner, the conl jugation of two protista? We cannot say; and we should con-

sequently feel relieved if the whole structure of our argument turned out to be mistaken. The opposition between the ego or death instincts s and the sexual or Hfe instincts would then cease to hold and the compulsion to repeat would no longer possess the importance we have ascribed to it. Let us turn back, then, to one of the assumptions that we have already made, with the expectation that we shall be able

We

to give it a categorical denial. have drawn far-reaching conclusions from the hypothesis that all living substance is bound to die from internal causes. made this assumption thus carelessly because it does not seem to us to be an

We

tion. 1

We

assump-

are accustomed to think that such

[In what follows Freud appears

to use the

is

the fact, and

terms 'protista* and 'pro-

tozoa* indifferently to signify unicellular organisms. follows the original.] 1

[The

first

published appearance of the term.]

38

we

The

translation

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

39

are strengthened in our thought by the writings of our poets. Perhaps we have adopted the belief because there is some com-

we are to die ourselves, and first to lose in death are dearest to us, it is easier to submit to a remorselaw of nature, to the sublime 'Avdyxrj [Necessity], than to

fort in

those less

it.

If

who

a chance which might perhaps have been escaped. It may be, however, that this belief in the internal necessity of dying is only another of those illusions which we have created 'urn die Schwere des Daseins zu belief.

The notion of

1

ertragen'.'

It

is

'natural death'

certainly not a primaeval is

quite foreign to primi-

they attribute every death that occurs among them to the influence of an enemy or of an evil spirit. We must therefore turn to biology in order to test the validity of the tive races;

belief.

If we do so, we may be astonished to find how little agreethere is among biologists on the subject of natural death and in fact that the whole concept of death melts away under their hands. The fact that there is a fixed average duration of

ment

at least among the higher animals naturally argues in favour of there being such a thing as death from natural causes. But this impression is countered when we consider that certain large animals and certain gigantic arboreal growths reach a very life

advanced age and one which cannot at present be computed. According to the large conception of Wilhelm Fliess [1906], all the phenomena of life exhibited by organism and also, no doubt, their death

are linked with the completion of fixed

which express the dependence of two kinds of living substance (one male and the other female) upon the solar year. When we see, however, how easily and how extensively the periods,

influence of external forces

is able to modify the date of the appearance of vital phenomena (especially in the plant world) to precipitate them or hold them back doubts must be cast upon the rigidity of Fliess's formulas or at least upon whether

the laws laid

down by him

are the sole determining factors.

The

greatest interest attaches from our point of view to the treatment given to the subject of the duration of life and the death of organisms in the writings of Weismann (1882, 1884,

1892, etc.) It was he who introduced the division of living substance into mortal and immortal parts. The mortal part is 1

['To bear the burden of existence.' (Schiller, Die Braut von Messina,

1,8.]

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

40 the

body in the narrower

sense

the 'soma'

which alone

is

subject to natural death. The germ-cells, on the other hand, are potentially immortal, in so far as they are able, under certain

favourable conditions, to develop into a new individual, or, in other words, to surround themselves with a new soma. (Weis-

mann,

1884,)

What strikes us in this is the unexpected analogy with our own view, which was arrived at along such a different path. Weismann, regarding living substance morphologically, sees in one portion which is destined to die the soma, the body apart from the substance concerned with sex and inheritance and an immortal portion the germ-plasm, which is concerned with the survival of the species, with reproduction. We, on the

it

other hand, dealing not with the living substance but with the it, have been led to distinguish two kinds of

forces operating in

which seek to lead what is living to death, and which are perpetually attempting and achieving a renewal of life. This sounds like a dynamic corollary to Weismann's morphological theory. But the appearance of a significant correspondence is dissipated as soon as we discover Weismann's views on the problem of death. For he only relates the distinction between the mortal soma and the immortal germ-plasm to multicellular organisms; in unicellular organisms the individual and the reproductive cell are still one and the same (Weismann, 1882, 38). Thus he considers that unicellular organisms are potentially immortal, and that death only makes its appearance with the multicellular

instincts: those

others, the sexual instincts,

metazoa. It is true that this death of the higher organisms is a natural one, a death from internal causes; but it is not founded on any primal characteristic of living substance (Weismann, 1884, 84) and cannot be regarded as an absolute necessity with basis in the very nature of life (Weismann, 1882, 33). Death is rather a matter of expediency, a manifestation of adaptation to the external conditions of life; for, when once the cells of the its

soma and germ-plasm, an unwould become a quite pointless luxury. When this differentiation had been made in the multicellular organisms, death became possible and expedient. Since then, the soma of the higher organisms has died at fixed

body have been divided

into

limited duration of individual

life

periods for internal reasons, while the protista have remained immortal. It is not the case, on the other hand, that reproduc-

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

41

On

tion was only introduced at the same time as death. the contrary, it is a primal characteristic of living matter, like

growth (from which it originated), and life has been continuous from its first beginning upon earth. (Weismann, 1884, 84 f.) It will be seen at once that to concede in this way that higher organisms have a natural death is of very little help to us. For if death is a late acquisition of organisms, then there can be no question of there having been death instincts from the very beginning of life on this earth. Multicellular organisms may die for internal reasons, owing to defective differentiation or to imperfections in their metabolism, but the matter is of no

from the point of view of our problem. An account of the origin of death such as this is moreover far less at variance with our habitual modes of thought than the strange assumption

interest

of *death

The

instincts'.

led, so far as I

Some

which followed upon Weismann's suggestions can see, to no conclusive results in any direction. 1

discussion

who reHartmann

writers returned to the views of Goette (1883),

garded death as a direct

result of reproduction.

a (1906, 29) does not regard the appearance of a *dead body* as the criterion of death, living substance

dead portion of the

but defines death as 'the termination of individual development*. In this sense protozoa too are mortal; in their case death always coincides with reproduction, but is to some extent obscured by it, since the whole substance of the parent animal may be transmitted directly into the young offspring. Soon afterwards research was directed to the experimental

on unicellular organisms of the alleged immortality of living substance. An American biologist, Woodruff, experimenting with a ciliate infusorian, the *slipper-animalcule ,

testing

s

which reproduces by fission into two individuals, persisted until the 3029th generation (at which point he broke off the experiment), isolating one of the part-products on each occasion and placing it in fresh water. This remote descendent of the first slipper-animalcule was just as lively as its ancestor and showed no signs of ageing or degeneration. Thus, in so far as figures of this kind prove anything, the immortality of the protista seemed to be experimentally demonstrable. 2 Other experimenters arrived at different results. Maupas, i

Cf.

For

Hartmann (1906), Lipschiitz (1914) and Doflein (1919). this and what follows see Lipschiitz (1914, 26 and 52 fF.).

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

42

Calkins and others, in contrast to Woodruff, found that after a

number of divisions these infusoria become weaker, diminish in size, suffer the loss of some part of their organization and eventually die, unless certain recuperative measures are certain

applied to them. If this is so, protozoa would appear to die after a phase of senescence exactly like the higher animals thus completely contradicting Weismann's assertion that death is a

of living organisms. the aggregate of these experiments two facts emerge which seem to offer us a firm footing. First: If two of the animalculae, at the moment before they show signs of senescence, are able to coalesce with each other,

late acquisition

From

(soon after which they once more 'conjugate' from growing old and become *reare saved they separate), juvenated*. Conjugation is no doubt the fore-runner of the sexual reproduction of higher creatures; it is as yet unconnected with propagation, and is limited to the mixing of the substances of the two individuals. (Weismann's 'amphimixis'.) The recuperative effects of conjugation can, however, be replaced by that

is

to

certain stimulating agents, by alterations in the composition of the fluid which provides their nourishment, by raising their

temperature or by shaking them. We are reminded of the celebrated experiment made by J. Loeb, in which, by means of certain chemical stimuli, he induced segmentation in sea-urchins' eggs a process which can normally occur only after fertilization. Secondly: It is probable nevertheless that infusoria die a natural death as a result of their own vital processes. For the

and the others is due having provided each generation with fresh nutrient fluid. If he omitted to do so, he observed the same signs of senescence as the other experimenters. He concluded that the animalculae were injured by the products of metabolism which they extruded into the surrounding fluid. He was then able to prove conclusively that it was only the products of its own metabolism which had fatal results for the particular kind of animalcule. For the same animalculae which inevitably perished if they were

contradiction between Woodruff's findings to his

crowded together in their own nutrient fluid flourished in a solution which was over-saturated with the waste products of a distantly related species. An infusorian, therefore, if it is left to itself, dies a natural death owing to its incomplete voidance of

the products of its

own metabolism.

(It

may

be that the same

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE incapacity

is

the ultimate cause of the death of

43 all

higher

animals as well.)

At this point the question may well arise in our minds whether any object whatever is served by trying to solve the problem of natural death from a study of the protozoa. The primitive organization of these creatures may conceal from our eyes important conditions which, though in fact present in them too, only become visible in higher animals where they are able to find morphological expression.

And if we abandon the morpho-

of view and adopt the dynamic one, it becomes a matter of complete indifference to us whether natural death can be shown to occur in protozoa or not. The substance which is later recognized as being immortal has not yet become separated in them from the mortal one. The instinctual forces which seek to conduct life into death may also be operating in protozoa from the first, and yet their effects may be so completely concealed by the life-preserving forces that it may be very hard to find any direct evidence of their presence. We have logical point

made by biologists allow us to assume that internal processes of this kind leading to death do occur also in protista. But even if protista turned out to be seen, moreover, that the observations

immortal in Weismann's sense, his assertion that death is a late acquisition would apply only to its manifest phenomena and would not make impossible the assumption of processes tending towards it. Thus our expectation that biology would flatly contradict the recognition of death instincts has not been fulfilled. We are at liberty to continue concerning ourselves with their possibility,

we have other reasons for doing so. The striking similarity between Weismann*s distinction of soma and germ-plasm and our separation of the death instincts from the life instincts persists and retains its significance. We may pause for a moment over this pre-eminently dualistic view of instinctual life. According to E. Hering's theory, two kinds of processes are constantly at work in living substance, operating in contrary directions, one constructive or assimilatory and the other destructive or dissimilatory. May we venture to recognize in these two directions taken by the vital processes the activity of our two instinctual impulses, the life instincts and the death instincts? There is something else, at any rate, that we cannot remain blind to. We have unwittingly if

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

44

steered our course into the

sophy. For him death

is

harbour of Schopenhauer's philo-

the 'true result

and

to that extent the

1 instinct is the embodiment of purpose of life', while the sexual the will to live. [Cf. the Appendix to Freud, 19250.] Let us make a bold attempt at another step forward. It is that the union of a number of cells into generally considered a vital association the multicellular character of organismshas become a means of prolonging their life. One cell helps to preserve the life of another, and the community of cells can survive even if individual cells have to die. We have already heard that conjugation, too, the temporary coalescence of two unicellular organisms, has a life-preserving and rejuvenating effect on both of them. Accordingly, we might attempt to apply the libido theory which has been arrived at in psycho-analysis to the mutual relationship of cells. We might suppose that the life instincts or sexual instincts which are active in each cell take the other cells as their object, that they partly, neutralize the death

is, the processes set up by them) in those cells and thus preserve their life; while the other cells do the same for them, and still others sacrifice themselves in the performance of this libidinal function. The germ-cells themselves would behave to use the phrase that we in a completely 'narcissistic* fashion

instincts (that

are accustomed to use in the theory of the neuroses to describe a whole individual who retains his libido in his ego and pays

none of it out in object-cathexes. The germ-cells require

their

libido, the activity of their life instincts, for themselves, as a reserve against their later momentous constructive activity.

(The cells of the malignant neoplasms which destroy the organism should also perhaps be described as narcissistic in this same sense: pathology is prepared to regard their germs as innate and to ascribe embryonic attributes to them.) 2 In this way the libido of our sexual instincts would coincide with the Eros of the poets and philosophers which holds all living things together. Here then is an opportunity for looking back over the slow development of our libido theory. In the first instance the analysis of the transference neuroses forced upon our notice the opposition between the 'sexual instincts', which are directed towards an object, and certain other instincts, with which we were very insufficiently acquainted and which we described 1 2

Schopenhauer (1851; Samtliche Werke, ed. Hubscher, 1938, 5, 236). [This sentence was added in 1921.]

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE 1

45

A

foremost place among provisionally as the 'ego-instincts'. these was necessarily given to the instincts serving the selfwhat preservation of the individual. It was impossible to say

other distinctions were to be

drawn among them. No knowledge would have been more valuable as a foundation for true psychological science than an approximate grasp of the common characteristics and possible distinctive features of the instincts. But in no region of psychology were we groping more in the dark. Everyone assumed the existence of as many instincts or 'basic instincts' as he chose, and juggled with them like the ancient Greek natural philosophers with their four elements and water. Psycho-analysis, which could not

earth, air, fire

escape making some assumption about the instincts, kept at first to the popular division of instincts typified in the phrase 'hunger arid love'. At least there was nothing arbitrary in this; and by its help the analysis of the psychoneuroses was carried forward 1 quite a distance. The concept of 'sexuality , and at the same time of the sexual instinct, had, it is true, to be extended so as to cover many things which could not be classed under the

reproductive function; and this caused no little hubbub in an austere, respectable or merely hypocritical world.

The

next step was taken

when

psycho-analysis

closer towards the psychological ego, which it know only as a repressive, censoring agency,

had

felt its first

way come to

capable of erecting

protective structures

seeing minds had,

and

reactive formations. Critical

and

far-

true, long since objected to the concept of libido being restricted to the energy of the sexual instincts directed towards an object. But they failed to explain how they it is

had arrived at their better knowledge or to derive from it anything of which analysis could make use. Advancing more cautiously, psycho-analysis observed the regularity with which libido is withdrawn from the object and directed on to the ego (the process of introversion); and, by studying the libidinal development of children in its earliest phases, came to the conclusion that the ego is the true and Original reservoir of libido, 8 x [So, for instance, in the account of this opposition given in Freud's paper on psychogenic disturbances of vision (1910i).] * [This idea was fully stated by Freud in his paper on narcissism (1914*), Section I. See, however, his later footnote, near the beginning of Chapter III of The Ego and the Id (1923), in which he corrects this

statement and describes the id as 'the great reservoir of libido'.]

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

46

and that

it is

to objects.

only from that reservoir that libido

The ego now found

its

is

extended on

among sexual place among them.

position

and was at once given the foremost Libido which was in this way lodged in the ego was described as Narcissistic*. 1 This narcissistic libido was of course also a manifestation of the force of the sexual instinct in the analytical sense of those words, and it had necessarily to be identified with objects

the 'self-preservative instincts' whose existence had been recogfirst. Thus the original opposition between the ego-instincts and the sexual instincts proved to be

nized from the

inadequate. portion of the ego-instincts was seen to be libidinal; sexual instincts probably alongside others operated in the ego. Nevertheless we are justified in saying that the old formula

A

which lays it down that psychoneuroses are based on a conflict between ego-instincts and sexual instincts contains nothing that we need reject to-day. It is merely that the distinction between the two kinds of instinct, which was originally regarded as in some sort of way qualitative) must now be characterized differently namely as being topographical. And in particular it is still true that the transference neuroses, the essential subject of psycho-analytic study, are the result of a conflict between the ego and the libidinal cathexis of objects.

But it is all the more necessary for us to lay stress upon the libidinal character of the self-preservative instincts now that we are venturing

upon

the further step of recognizing the sexual

instinct as Eros, the preserver of all things, and of deriving the narcissistic libido of the ego from the stores of libido means

of which the

we now

by

of the

soma

are attached to one another. But find ourselves suddenly faced by another question. If cells

the self-preservative instincts too are of a libidinal nature, are there perhaps no other instincts whatever but the libidinal ones? At all events there are none other visible. But in that case we shall after all

be driven to agree with the

from the first that psycho-analysis explains

critics

who

suspected

everything by sexuality,

or with innovators like Jung who, making a hasty judgement, have used the word 'libido' to mean instinctual force in general. Must not this be so? It was not our intention at all events to produce such a result. Our argument had as its point of departure a sharp distinction between ego-instincts, which we equated with death instincts, i See my paper on narcissism (1914
BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE and sexual

instincts,

which we equated with

47

life instincts.

(We

were prepared at one stage [p. 33] to include the so-called selfinstincts of the ego among the death instincts; but preservative

we subsequently

[p. 46] corrected ourselves

on

this

point and

withdrew it.) Our views have from the very first been dualistict and to-day they are even more definitely dualistic than before now that we describe the opposition as being, not between egoinstincts and sexual instincts but between life instincts and death instincts. Jung's libido theory

is

on the contrary

monistic;

the fact that he has called his one instinctual force *libido* bound to cause confusion, but need not affect us otherwise. 1

is

We

suspect that instincts other than those of self-preservation operate in the ego, and it ought to be possible for us to point to them.

Unfortunately, however, the analysis of the ego has made so little

headway that

it is

very

difficult for us to

do

so. It is possible, in-

deed, that the libidinal instincts in the ego may be linked in a 2 peculiar manner with these other ego-instincts which are still strange to us. Even before we had any clear understanding of narcissism, psycho-analysts had a suspicion that the 'ego-instincts' had libidinal components attached to them. But these are very uncertain possibilities, to which our opponents will pay very attention. The difficulty remains that psycho-analysis has not enabled us hitherto to point to any [ego-] instincts other than the libidinal ones. That, however, is no reason for our falling in with the conclusion that no others in fact exist. In the obscurity that reigns at present in the theory of the instincts, it would be unwise to reject any idea that promises to started out from the great opposition throw light on it. between the life and death instincts. Now object-love itself presents us with a second example of a similar polarity that between love (or affection) and hate (or aggressiveness). If only we could succeed in relating these two polarities to each other and in deriving one from the other! From the very first we recognized the presence of a sadistic component in the sexual little

We

As we know, it can make itself independent and can, form of a perversion, dominate an individual's entire

instinct. 3

in the 1

were added in 1921.] [The two preceding sentences * by instinctual "confluence", to tiorrow [In the first edition only: a term used by Adler [1908] '.] * This was already so in the first edition of Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality in 1905 [Standard Ed., 7, 157 ff.; I.P.I., 57, 23 ff.]. *

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

48

sexual activity. It also emerges as a predominant component instinct in one of the 'pregenital organizations', as I have named them. But how can the sadistic instinct, whose aim it is the object, be derived from Eros, the preserver of life? to injure

not plausible to suppose that this sadism is in fact a death under the influence of the narcissistic libido, has been forced away from the ego and has consequently only emerged in relation to the object? It now enters the service of the sexual function. During the oral stage of organization of the libido, the act of obtaining erotic mastery over an object coincides with that object's destruction; later, the sadistic instinct separates off, and finally, at the stage of genital primacy, it takes on, for the purposes of reproduction, the function of overpowerIs

it

instinct which,

ing the sexual object to the extent necessary for carrying out the sexual act. It might indeed be said that the sadism which has been forced out of the ego has pointed the way for the libidinal components of the sexual instinct, and that these follow after it to the object. Wherever the original sadism has undergone no mitigation or intermixture, we find the familiar ambivalence of

and hate in erotic life. 1 an assumption as this

love

If such

demand

the

that

is permissible, then we have met we should produce an example of a death

though, it is true, a displaced one. But this way of looking at things is very far from being easy to grasp and creates a positively mystical impression. It looks suspiciously as though we were trying to find a way out of a highly embarrassing situation at any price. may recall, however, that there is nothing instinct

We

an assumption of this kind. We put one forward on an earlier occasion, before there was any question of an embarrass-

new

in

ing situation. Clinical observations led us at that time to the view that masochism, the component instinct which is complementary to sadism, must be regarded as sadism that has been turned round upon the subject's own ego. 2 But there is no difference in principle between an instinct turning from an object to the ego and its turning from the ego to an object which is the new point now under discussion. Masochism, the turning round of the instinct upon the subject's own ego, would 1

[This foreshadows Freud's discussion

Chap. IV of The Ego and 2

and

See

my

the

of instinctual 'fusion* in

Id (19236).]

Three Essays (1905
'Instincts

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

49

be a return to an earlier phase of the instinct's The account that was formerly given of masochism requires emendation as being too sweeping in one be such a thing as primary masochism respect: there might in that case

history, a regression.

a possibility which I had contested at that time. 1 Let us, however, return to the self-preservative sexual instincts. The experiments upon protista have already shown us that conjugation that is, the coalescence of two individuals

which separate soon afterwards without any subsequent cellhas a strengthening and rejuvenating effect 3 upon both of them. In later generations they show no signs of degenerating and seem able to put up a longer resistance to the injurious effects of their own metabolism. This single observation may, I think, be taken as typical of the effect produced by sexual union as well. But how is it that the coalescence of two only slightly different cells can bring about this renewal of life? The experiment which replaces the conjugation of protozoa by the application of chemical or even of mechanical stimuli (cf. Lipschtitz, 1914) enables us to give what is no doubt a conclusive reply to this question. The result is brought about by the influx of fresh amounts of stimulus. This tallies well with the hypothesis that the life process of the individual leads for internal reasons to an abolition of chemical tensions, that is to say, to death, whereas union with the living substance of a division occurring

different individual increases those tensions, introducing what may be described as fresh 'vital differences* which must then

be lived off. As regards this dissimilarity there must of course be one or more optima. The dominating tendency of mental life, and perhaps of nervous life in general, is the effort to reduce, to keep constant or to remove internal tension due to 1 A considerable portion of these speculations have been anticipated by Sabina Spielrein (1912) in an instructive and interesting paper which, however, is unfortunately not entirely clear to me. She there describes the sadistic components of the sexual instinct as 'destructive'. A. Starke (1914), again, has attempted to identify the concept of libido itself with the biological concept (assumed on theoretical grounds) of an impetus towards death. See also Rank (1907). All these discussions, like that in the text, give evidence of the demand for a clarification of the [A later theory of the instincts such as has not yet been achieved. discussion of the destructive instinct by Freud himself occupies Chapter VI of Civilization and its Discontents (1930a).] * See the account quoted above, pp. 41-2, from Lipschxitz (1914).

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

50

stimuli (the 'Nirvana principle', to

Low

borrow a term from Barbara

a tendency which finds expression in the * pleasure principle; and our recognition of that fact is one of our strongest reasons for believing in the existence of death [1920, 73])

instincts.

But we

still feel

our

line

of thought appreciably hampered by

we cannot

ascribe to the sexual instinct the characteristic of a compulsion to repeat which first put us on the

the fact that

track of the death instincts. The sphere of embryonic developmental processes is no doubt extremely rich in such phenomena of repetition; the two germ-cells that are involved in sexual

reproduction and their life history are themselves only repetitions of the beginnings of organic life. But the essence of the processes to which sexual life is directed is the coalescence of two cell-bodies. That alone is what guarantees the immortality of the living substance in the higher organisms. In other words, we need more information on the origin of sexual reproduction and of the sexual instincts in general. This

a problem which is calculated to daunt an outsider and which the specialists themselves have not yet been able to solve. We shall therefore give only the briefest summary of whatever seems relevant to our line of thought from among the many discordant assertions and opinions. One of these views deprives the problem of reproduction of its mysterious fascination by representing it as a part manifestais

tion of growth.

(Cf. multiplication

by

fission,

sprouting or

gemmation.) The origin of reproduction by sexually differentiated germ-cells might be pictured along sober Darwinian lines by supposing that the advantage of amphimixis, arrived at on some occasion by the chance conjugation of two protista, was

and further exploited in later development.* On this would not be anything very ancient; and the extraordinarily violent instincts whose aim it is to bring about retained

view

*sex

s

1 [Cf. p. 1 ff. The whole topic is further considered in 'The Economic Problem of Masochism* (1924<:).] * Though Weismann (1892) denies this advantage as well: 'In no case

does fertilization correspond to a rejuvenescence or renewal of life, nor occurrence necessary in order tha* life may endure: it is merely an arrangement which renders possible the intermingling of two different

is its

hereditary tendencies.' [English translation, 1893, 231.] He nevertheless believes that an intermingling of this kind leads to an increase in the variability of the organism concerned.

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE sexual union

51

would be repeating something that had once and had since become established as

occurred by chance being advantageous.

The question arises here, as in the case of death [p. 43], whether we do right in ascribing to protista those characteristics alone which they actually exhibit, and whether it is correct to assume that forces and processes which become visible only in the for the first higher organisms originated in those organisms time. The view of sexuality we have just mentioned is of little be raised against it help for our purposes. The objection may that it postulates the existence of life instincts already operating in the simplest organisms; for otherwise conjugation, which works counter to the course of life and makes the task of ceasing to live more difficult, would not be retained and elaborated but would be avoided. If, therefore, we are not to abandon the them to be hypothesis of death instincts, we must suppose associated from the very first with life instincts. But it must be admitted that in that case we shall be working upon an equation with two unknown quantities. Apart from this, science has so little to tell us about the to a darkorigin of sexuality that we can liken the problem ness into which not so much as a ray of a hypothesis has penetrated. In quite a different region, it is true, we do meet with such a hypothesis; but it is of so fantastic a kind a myth rather than a scientific explanation that I should not venture to produce it here, were it not that it fulfils precisely the one condition whose fulfilment we desire. For it traces 5

the origin of

an

instinct to a need

to restore

an

earlier state

of

things.

What put

I

have in mind

into the

is,

of course, the theory which Plato

mouth of Aristophanes in the Symposium, and which

deals not only with the origin of the sexual instinct but also with the most important of its variations in relation to its object. 'The original human nature was not like the present, but different. In the first place, the sexes were originally three in number, not two as they are now; there was man;, woman, and the union of the two. . .* Everything about these primaeval .

double: they had four hands and four feet, two faces, two privy parts, and so on. Eventually Zeus decided to cut these men in two, 'like a sorb-apple which is halved for pickAfter the division had been made, 'the two parts of man,

men was

ling'.

52

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

each desiring his other half, came together, and threw their arms about one another eager to grow into one'. 1 Shall we follow the hint given us by the poet-philosopher, and venture upon the hypothesis that living substance at the time of its coming to life was torn apart into small particles, which have ever since endeavoured to reunite through the sexual instincts? that these instincts, in which the chemical affinity of inanimate matter persisted, gradually succeeded, as they developed through the kingdom of the protista, in overcoming the difficulties put in the way of that endeavour by an environment

charged with dangerous stimuli stimuli which compelled them to form a protective cortical layer? that these splintered fragments of living substance in this way attained a multicellular condition and finally transferred the instinct for reuniting, in the most highly concentrated form, to the germ-cells? But here, I think, the moment has come for breaking off. 1 Qowett's translation. Footnote added 1921 :] I have to thank Professor Hcinrich Gomperz, of Vienna, for the following discussion on the origin of the Platonic myth, which I give partly in his own words. It is to be

remarked that what is essentially the same theory is already to be found in the Upanishads. For we find the following passage in the Brihaddranyoka-upanishad, 1, 4, 3 [Max-Mullcr's translation, 2, 85 f.], where the origin of the world from the Atman (the Self or Ego) is described: *But he felt no delight. Therefore a man who is lonely feels no delight. He wished for a second. He was so large as man and wife together. He then made this his Self to fall in two, and then arose husband and wife. Therefore Yagflavalkya .said:''" We two are thus (each of us) like half a shell.*' Therefore the void which was there, is filled by the wife.* The Brihaddranyaka-upanishadis, the most ancient of all the Upanishads, and no competent authority dates it later than about the year 800 B.C. In contradiction to the prevailing opinion, I should hesitate to give an unqualified denial to the possibility of Plato's myth being derived, even if it were only indirectly, from the Indian source, since a similar possibility cannot be excluded in the case of the doctrine of transmigration. But even if a derivation of this kind (through the Pythagoreans in the first instance) were established, the significance of the coincidence between the two trains of thought would scarcely be diminished. For Plato would not have adopted a story of this kind which had somehow reached him through some oriental tradition to say nothing of giving it so important a place unless it had struck him as containing an element of truth. In a paper devoted to a systematic examination of this line of thought before the time of Plato, Ziegler (1913) traces it back to Babylonian origins.

[Freud had already alluded to Plato's Standard Ed., 7, 136; I.P.L., 57, 2.]

myth

in his Three Essays,

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

53

Not, however, without the addition of a few words of critical

may be asked whether and how far I am myself convinced of the truth of the hypotheses that have been set out answer would be that I am not convinced in these pages. myself and that I do not seek to persuade other people to believe in them. Or, more precisely, that I do not know how far I believe in them. There is no reason, as it seems to me, why the emotional factor of conviction should enter into this question reflection. It

My

at all. It is surely possible to throw oneself into a line of thought and to follow it wherever it leads out of simple scientific curiosity, or, if the reader prefers, as an advocatus diaboli, who is not on that account himself sold to the devil. I do not dispute the fact that the third step in the theory of the instincts, which I have taken here, cannot lay claim to the same degree of certainty as the two earlier ones the extension of the concept of sexuality and the hypothesis of narcissism. These two innovations were a direct translation of observation into theory and were no more open to sources of error than is inevitable in all such cases. It is

assertion of the regressive character of instincts namely on the facts of the

true that

my

also rests

upon observed material

may be, however, that I have overestimated their significance. And in any case it is impossible to pursue an idea of this kind except by repeatedly combining factual material with what is purely speculative and thus diverging widely from empirical observation. The more frequently this is done in the course of constructing a theory, the more compulsion to repeat. It

untrustworthy, as we know, must be the final result. But the degree of uncertainty is not assignable. One may have made a lucky hit or one may have gone shamefully astray. I do not think a large part is played by what is called 'intuition* in work of this kind. From what I have seen of intuition, it seems to

me

to

be the product of a kind of

intellectual impartiality.

Unfortunately, however, people are seldom impartial where ultimate things, the great problems of science and life, are concerned. Each of us is governed in such cases by deep -rooted internal prejudices, into whose hands our speculation unwittingly plays. Since we have such good grounds for being distrustour attitude towards the results of our own deliberations cannot well be other than one of cool benevolence. I hasten to

ful,

add, however, that self-criticism such as this is far from binding to any special tolerance towards dissentient opinions. It is

one

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

54

perfectly legitimate to reject remorselessly theories which are contradicted by the very first steps in the analysis of observed

while yet being aware at the same time that the validity of one's own theory is only a provisional one. We need not feel greatly disturbed in judging our speculation upon the life and death instincts by the fact that so many bewildering and obscure processes occur in it such as one instinct being driven out by another or an instinct turning from the ego to an object, and so on. This is merely due to our being obliged to operate with the scientific terms, that is to say with facts,

the figurative language, peculiar to psychology (or, more precisely, to depth psychology). We could not otherwise describe the processes in question at all, and indeed we could not have become aware of them. The deficiencies in our description would probably vanish if we were already in a position to replace the psychological terms by physiological or chemical ones. It is true that they too are only part of a figurative language; but it is one with which we have long been familiar

and which

perhaps a simpler one as well. it should be made quite clear that the uncertainty of our speculation has been greatly increased by the necessity for borrowing from the science of biology. Biology is truly a land of unlimited possibilities. We may expect it to give us the most surprising information and we cannot guess what answers it will return in a few dozen years to the questions we have put to it. They may be of a kind which will blow away the whole of our artificial structure of hypotheses. If so, it may be asked why I have embarked upon such a line of thought as the present one, and in particular why I have decided to make I cannot deny that some of the analogies, it public. Well

On

is

the other hand

and connections which deserve consideration. 1

correlations

it

contains seemed to

me to

1 1 will add a few words to clarify our terminology, which has undergone some development in the course of the present work. We came to know what the 'sexual instincts' were from their relation to the sexes

and

to the reproductive function.

We retained

this

name

after

we had

been obliged by the findings of psycho-analysis to connect them less closely with reproduction. With the hypothesis of narcissistic libido and the extension of the concept of libido to the individual cells, the sexual was transformed for us into Eros, which seeks to force together and hold together the portions of living substance. What are commonly called the sexual instincts are looked upon by us as the part of Eros instinct

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

55

directed towards objects. Our speculations have suggested that Eros operates from the beginning of life and appears as a *Jife instinct* in opposition to the *death instinct* which was brought into being by the coming to life of inorganic substance. These speculations seek to solve the riddle of life by supposing that these two instincts were struggling with each other from the very first. [Added 1921 :] It is not so easy, perhaps, to follow the transformations through which the concept of the *ego-instincts* has passed. To begin with we applied that name to all the instinctual trends (of which we had no closer knowledge) which could be distinguished from the sexual instincts directed towards an object; and we opposed the ego-instincts to the sexual instincts of which the libido is the manifestation. Subsequently we came to closer grips with the analysis of the ego and recognized that a portion of the 'ego1 instincts is also of a Hbidinal character and has taken the subject's own ego as its object. These narcissistic self^preservative instincts had thenceforward to be counted among the iibidinal sexual instincts. The opposition between the ego-instincts and the sexual instincts was transformed into one between the ego-instincts and the object-instincts, both of a Iibidinal nature. But in its place a fresh opposition appeared between the

which

is

Iibidinal (ego- and object-) instincts and others, which must be presumed to be present in the ego and which may perhaps actually be observed in the destructive instincts. speculations have transformed this opposition into one between the life instincts (Eros) and the death

Our

instincts. [

For a general account of the development of Freud's views on the the Editor's Note to 'Instinc'ts and their Vicissitudes"

instincts, see ),

Standard Ed. t 14, 111.]

VII really the case that seeking to restore an earlier state of such a universal characteristic of instincts, we need not things be surprised that so many processes take place in mental life

IF

it is

is

independently of the pleasure principle. This characteristic would be shared by all the component instincts and in their

would aim at returning once more to a particular stage in the course of development. These are matters over which the pleasure principle has as yet no control; but it does not follow

case

that any of them are necessarily opposed to it, and we have still to solve the problem of the relation of the instinctual processes of repetition to the dominance of the pleasure principle.

We

have found that one of the

earliest

and most important

functions of the mental apparatus is to bind the instinctual impulses which impinge on it, to replace the primary process prevailing in them by the secondary process and convert their freely mobile cathectic energy into a mainly quiescent (tonic) cathexis. While this transformation is taking place no

can be paid to the development of unpleasure; but does not imply the suspension of the pleasure principle. the contrary, the transformation occurs on behalf of the

attention this

On

pleasure principle; the binding is a preparatory act which introduces and assures the dominance of the pleasure principle.

Let us make a sharper distinction than we have hitherto made between function and tendency. The pleasure principle, then, is a tendency operating in the service of a function whose business it is to free the mental apparatus entirely from excitation or to keep the amount of excitation in it constant or to cannot yet decide with certainty keep it as low as possible.

We

in favour of any of these ways of putting it; but it is clear that the function thus described would be concerned with the most universal endeavour of

all living substance to the quiescence of the inorganic world. enced how the greatest pleasure attainable

namely to return have all experi-

We

sexual act,

is

by us, that of the momentary extinction of a highly The binding of an instinctual impulse

associated with a

intensified excitation.

would be a preliminary function designed to prepare the excitation for

its final

elimination in the pleasure of discharge. 56

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

57

of whether feelings of pleasure and This can be produced equally from bound and from unpleasure unbound excitatory processes. And there seems to be no doubt whatever that the unbound or primary processes give rise to far more intense feelings in both directions than the bound or secondary ones. Moreover the primary processes are the earlier in time; at the beginning of mental life there are no others, and raises the question

we may infer that if the pleasure principle had not already been operative in them it could never have been established for the thus reach what is at bottom no later ones.

We

very simple

conclusion, namely that at the beginning of mental life the struggle for pleasure was far more intense than later but not so unrestricted: it had to submit to frequent interruptions. In later

dominance of the pleasure principle is very much it itself has no more escaped the process of taming than the other instincts in general. In any case, whatever it is that causes the appearance of feelings of pleasure and unpleasure in processes of excitation must be present in the times the

more

secure, but

secondary process just as it is in the primary one. Here might be the starting-point for fresh investigations.

Our

consciousness communicates to us feelings from within not only of pleasure and unpleasure but also of a peculiar tension which in its turn can be either pleasurable or unpleasurable. Should the difference between these feelings enable us to distinguish between bound and "unbound processes of energy? or is the feeling of tension to be related to the absolute magnitude, or

perhaps to the level, of the cathexis, while the pleasure and unpleasure series indicates a change in the magnitude of the cathexis within a given unit of time? * Another striking fact is that the life instincts have so much more contact with our internal perception emerging as breakers of the peace and constantly

producing tensions whose release is felt as pleasure while the death instincts seem to do their work unobtrusively. The pleasure principle seems actually to serve the death instincts. It is true that it keeps watch upon stimuli from without, which are regarded as dangers by both kinds of instincts; but it is more especially on guard against increases of stimulation from

within, which would make the task of living more difficult. This in turn raises a host of other questions to which we can at 1 [Cf. above, p. 2. These questions had already been touched on by Freud in his 'Project', e.g. in Part I, Section 8 and Part III, Section L]

BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

58

no answer. We must be patient and await fresh methods and occasions of research. We must be ready, too, to abandon a path that we have followed for a time, if it seems to be leading to no good end. Only believers, who demand that science shall be a substitute for the catechism they have given up, will blame an investigator for developing or even transforming his views. We may take comfort, too, for the slow advances of our scientific knowledge in the words of the poet: present find

Was man Die

nicht erfliegen kann,

Schrift sagt, es

ist

muss

man

erhinken.

keine Siinde zu hinken. 1

1 The ['What we cannot reach flying we must reach limping. Book tells us U is no sin to limp.' The last lines of 'Die beiden Gulden', a version by Riickert of one of the Maqdmdt of al-Hariri. Freud also .

.

.

quoted these lines in a letter to FUess of Oct. 20, 1895 (Freud 1950a Letter 32).]

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS = Freud, Gesammclte Schriften (12 vols.), Vienna, 1924-34. = Freud, Gesarnmdtc W&rke (18 vols), London, from 1940.

G

QW. '

--

P

^" ,

j

TJ\

Standard Ed.) /.

PX.

Freud,

Collected Papers (5 vols.),

London, 1924-50.

= Freud, Standard Edition (24 vols.), London, from 1953. = International Psycho-Analytical Library, Hogarth Press and Institute of Psycho-Analysis,

Theoretische SehrifUn

= Freud,

London, from 1921.

Theoretischt Schriften (79/7-^5),

1931,

59

Vienna,

BIBLIOGRAPHY AND AUTHOR INDEX books and periodicals are in italics; tides of papers are in commas. Abbreviations are in accordance with the World List

[Titles of

inverted

of Scientific Periodicals (London, 1952). Further abbreviations used in this volume \vill be found in the List on page 59. Numerals in thick type refer to volumes; ordinary numerals refer to pages. The figures in round brackets at the end of each entry indicate the page or pages of this volume on which the work in question is mentioned. In the case of the Freud entries, the letters attached to the dates of publication are in accordance with the corresponding entries in the complete bibliography of Freud's writings to be included in the last volume of the Standard Edition.

For non-technical authors, and for technical authors where no work is mentioned, see the General Index.]

specific

ABLER, A.

'Der Aggressionsbetrieb im Leben und in der Neurose', Mid., No. 19, (47)

(1 908)

Forisckr.

J., and FREUD, S. (1893) See FREUD, S. (1893
BREUER,

(1940) See FREUD, S.(1940<0 DOFLEIN, F. (1919) Das Problem des Todes und der Unsterblichkeit bd dm Pflanzen und Tieren, Jena. (41) FECHNER, G. T. (1873) Einige Ideen zur Schopfungs- und Entwicktungsgeschichte der Organismen, Leipzig. (2, 4) J

FERENCZI,S. (1913) 'EntwicklungssUifendesWirklichkeitssinnes ,/n^<;. 1, 124. (35)

PsychoanaL,

[Trans.: 'Stages in the

Development of the Sense of Reality', London, 1952, Chap. VIII.]

First Contributions to Psycho-Analysis,

FUESS,

W.

FREUD,

S. (1893a)

(1906) DerAblaufdesLebens, Vienna. (39)

With BREUER, J.,'t)ber den psychischcn Mechanismus Phanomene: Vorlaufige Mittcilung', G.S., 1, 7;

hysterischer

2,3.] (1895rf)

G.W.,

With BREUER, 1, 75.

J.,

Stodun uber Hysterie, Vienna, G.S.,

Omitting Breuer's contributions.

(3, 19,

1;

21, 28)

[Trans.: Studies on Hysteria, Standard Ed., 2; I.P.L., 50. Including

Breuer*s contributions.]

(1900a) Die Traumdtutung, Vienna,

O, 2-3; G.W., 2-3.

(x,

8-9,

18-19, 26, 28) [Trans.:

The

Interpretation

5; Standard Ed.,

of Dreams, London and

-S.]

60

New

York,

BIBLIOGRAPHY FREUD,

61

S. (cont.)

Der Witz and seine Beziehung zum Unbewussten, Vienna. G.S., G. W., 6. (29) [Trans.: Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious, London, 1960;

(1905c) 9, 5;

Standard Ed., 8.] (1905
Vienna. G.S.,

5, 3;

G. W.,

47-8, 52)

[Trans.: Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, London, 1949; Standard Ed., 7, 125; I.P.L., 57.] (1910:) 'Die psychogene Sehstorung in psychoanalytischer Auffassung', G.S., 5, 301; G.W., 8, 94. (45) [Trans.: 'The Psycho-Analytic View of Psychogenic Disturbance of Vision', C.P., 2, 105; Standard Ed., 11, 211.] (19116) 'Formulierungen iiber die zwei Prinzipien des psychischen Geschehens', G.S., 5, 409; G.W., 8, 230. (xi, 4) [Trans.: *Formulations on the Two Principles of Mental Functioning', C.P., 4, 13; Standard Ed., 12, 215.] (1914c) 'Zur Einfuhrung des Narzissmus', G.S., 6, 155; G.W., 10, 138. (xii, 27, 45-6) [Trans.: 'On Narcissism: Ed., 14, 69.]

an

Introduction', C.P., 4, 30; Standard

(1914^) *Weitere Ratschlage zur Technik der Psychoanalyse: II Erinnern, Wiederholen und Durcharbeiten', G.S. t 6, 109; G. W., 10, 126. (12) [Trans.:

(Further

Repeating and Working Through Recommendations on the Technique of Psycho-

'Recollecting,

Analysis, II)', C.P., 2, 366; Standard Ed., 12, 147.] (1915c) 'Triebe und Triebschicksale', G.S., 5, 443; G.W., 10, 210. (xii, 24, 48, 55) [Trans.: Instincts and their Vicissitudes', C.P., 4, 60; Standard Ed., 14, 111.] (1915*) 'Das Unbewusste', G.S.> 5, 480; G.W., 10, 264. (1, 18, 22) [Trans.: 'The Unconscious', C.P 4, 98; Standard Ed., 14, 161.] in die Psychoanalyse, Vienna. 11. (14) [Trans.: Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis, revised ed., Lon-, York, don, 1929 (A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis,

(1916-17) Vorlesungen zur Einfuhrung G.S.,

7;G.W.,

New

1935); Standard Ed., 15-16.] (19176) *Eine Kindheitserinnerung aus Dichtung und Wahrheif, G.S., 10, 357; G.W., 12, 15. (10) [Trans.: 'A Childhood Recollection from Dichtung und Wahrhdt\ C.P., 4, 357; Standard Ed., 17, 147.]

5 (1917^) 'Metapsychologische Erganzung zur Traumlehre*, G.S., t 520;
Dreams', OP., 4, 137; Standard Ed., 15, 219.] der Kriegsneurosm, Vienna. (1919 12, 321. (6, 27)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

62

FREUD,

S. (cont.)

and the War Neuroses, [Trans.: Introduction to Psycho-Analysis London and York, 1921. C.P., 5, 83; Standard Ed., 17, 207.] G.S. y 10, 369; G.W., 12, 229. (ix-x) (19194) 'Das Unheimliche', Standard Ed., 17, 219.] [Trans.: 'The Uncanny*, C.P., 4, 368;

New

of Congress (1920/) 'Erganzungen zur Traumlehre' (Abstract Address), Int. %. Psychoan., 6, 397. of Dreams', Standard Ed., [Trans.: 'Supplements to the Theory 18, 4; I.P.L., 4, x.]

(1920^) Jenseitsdes Lustprinzips, Vienna. G.S., 6, 191; G.W., 13, 3. Standard Ed., 18, 7; [Trans.: Beyond the Pleasure Principle, I.P.L., 4.]

(1921) Introduction in English to J. Varendonck's The Psycho271. (xi) logy of Day-Dreams, London; Standard Ed., 18, [German Text (part only): G.S., 11, 264; G.W., 13, 439.] (1923) Das Ich und das Es, Vienna. G.S., 6, 353; G.W., 13, 237. 13,45,43) Ego and the Id, Standard Ed,, 19, 3; I.P.L., 12.] (1923c [1922]) 'Bemerkungcn zur Theorie und Praxis der Traumdeutung', G.S., 3, 305; G.W., 13, 301. (14, 26) [Trans.: 'Remarks on the Theory and Practice of DreamInterpretation*, C?., 5, 136; Standard Ed., 19, 109.] (1924c) 'Das okonomische Problem des Masochismus', G.S., 5, 374; G.W., 13, 371. (2, 50) [Trans.: 'The Economic Problem of Masochism', C.P., 2, 255; (xi,

[Trans.: The

Standard Ed,, 19, 157.]

(1925a [1924]) 'Notiz uber den "Wunderblock" *, G.S., 6, 415; G.W., 14,3. (19,22) [Trans.: 'A Note upon the "Mystic Writing-Pad" ', C.P., 5, 175; Standard Ed., 19,227.] (1925* [1924]) 'Die Widerstande gegen die Psychoanalyse', GJS., 11, 224; G.W., 14, 99. (44) [Trans.: *The^ ^Resistance to Psycho-Analysis', C.P., 5, 163; Standard Ed., 19,213.] (1926rf) Hemmung, Symptom und Angst, Vienna. G.S. t 11, 23; G.W.,

14,113.

(7,

14,24)

[Trans.: Inhibitions^ Symptoms and Anxiety, Standard Ed., 20, 77; I.P.L., 28.] (1930a) Das Unbehagen in der Kuttur, Vienna. G.S., 12, 29; G.W., 14, 421. (49)

[Trans.: Civilization and its Discontents, 1930; Standard Ed., 21, 59.]

--

London and New York,

(1940<0 With BREUER, J., 'Zur Theorie des hysterischen Anfalls',

G.W., 17,

9. (3)

'On the Theory of

Hysterical Attacks', C.P., 5, 27; Standard Ed., 1.] (1941s) Brief an Josef Breuer, G.W., 17, 5. (3) Letter to Josef Breuer, OP., 5, 25; Standard Ed., 1.] [Trans.: (1942
A

BIBLIOGRAPHY

63

S. (cont.)

FREUD,

305. Translation of 'Psychopathische Personen auf der Buhne', which has not been published in German. (11)

Aus den Anfangen der Psychoanalyse, London. [Includes 'Entwurf einer Psychologic' (1895).] (xii, 2-3, 19-20, 22-4,

(19500)

57-8) [Trans.: The Origins of Psycho-Analysis, 1954. (Partly, including 'A Project for

in Standard Ed., 1.)] (1955c) 'Gutachten iiber die elektrische [Trans.:

a

Scientific Psychology',

Behandlung der Kriegs-

German

text unpublished. (6) Memorandum on the Electrical

neurotiker'; *

London and New York,

Treatment of

War

Neuroses', Standard Ed., 17, 211.]

FREUD,

S.,

FERENCZI,

S.,

and

others* (1919)

%ur Psychoanalyse

der Krieg$~

neurosm, Vienna. (6) [Trans.: Psycho-Analysis

and

the

War

Neuroses,

London and New

York, 1921.] GOETTE, A. (1883) Uber den Ursprung des Todes, Hamburg. (41) HARTMANN, M. (1906) Tod und Fortpflanzung, Munich. (41) JUNG, C. G. (1909) 'Die Bedeutung des Vaters fur das Schicksal dcs Einzelnen', Jb. psychoanal. psychopath. Forsch., 1, 155. (16) [Trans.: "The Significance of the Father in the Destiny of the Individual', Collected Papers on Analytical Psychology, London, 1916, 156.]

Warum wir sterben, Stuttgart. (41, 49) Low, B. (1920) Psycho-Analysis, London. (50) MARCINOWSKI, J. (1918) 'Die erotischen Quellen der Minderwertig. Sexualwiss., 4, 313. (14) keitsgefuhle', LIPSCHUTZ, A. (1914)

1

PFEIFER, S. (1919) 'Ausserungen infantil-erotischer Triebe im Spiele , Imago, 5, 243. (8) RANK, O. (1907) Der Kunstler, Vienna. (49) RICKMAN, J. (ed.) (1937) A General Selection from the Works of Sigmund Freud, London, (xii) SCHOPENHAUER, A. (1851)

't^ber die anscheinende Absichtlichkeit

im

Schicksale des Einzelnen', Parerga und Paralipomena, 1 (Sdmtliche Werke, ed. Hubscher, Leipzig, 1938, 5, 213). (44) SPIELREIN, S. (1912) 'Die Destruktion als Ursache des Werdens', Jb. psychoanaL psychopath. Forsch., 4, 465. (49) STARCKE, A. (1914) Introduction to Dutch translation of Freud's '

"Civilized"

Sexual Morality and Modern Nervous

Illness',

Leyden. (49) Psychology of Day-Dreams, London, (xi) (1882) Uber die Dauer des Lebens, Jena. (39) (1884) DberLeben und Tod, Jena. (39-41) (1892) Das fCeimplasma, Jena. (39HM), 50) [Trans.: The Germ-Plasm, London, 1893.] klass. ZIEGLER, K. (1913) 'Menschen- und Weltenwerden', Neue Jb.

VARENDONCK, J. (1921) The

WEBMANN, A.

Altert.,

31, 529. (52)

GENERAL INDEX This index includes the names of non-technical authors. It also includes the names of technical authors where no reference is made in the text to specific works. For references to specific technical works, the Bibliography should be consulted. Abraham, K., 6 n. I Abreaction, 11 Active and passive in children's play,

Child, desire to have,

KM 1,29

compulsion to repeat 8-11, 17,29-30 play of, 8-11, 17,29

Ambivalence and the opposition between the life and death instincts, 47-8 Amphimixis, 42, 50

sexual researches

47-9, 56 Compulsion to repeat as an attribute of organic 30-2, 34, 38, 50-3, 56

ality,51-2

life,

12during psycho-analysis, 17, 29-30 in children, ix, xi, 8-1 1, 1 7, 29-30 in dreams during traumatic neuroses, 7, 17, 26-7 in normal people, 15-16

conservative nature of instinct in,

ix, xi,

29-34, 36 death of, 39-43 duration of life in, 39-44 Anticathexis, 24

Fear;

15

Component instincts,

Animals

also

of,

in, ix, xi,

Ctorinda (in Gerusalenane Liberata), 16

Analogy, Plato's myth of bisexu-

(set

15

ality)

Aggressiveness, 47

Anxiety

by father,

Childhood, traumas of, xi, 26 Children (sec also Infantile sexu-

Fright;

instinctual character of, ix, xi, 14-

defined,

6-7

15,17,29-31,50-3,56 Condensation, 28 Confluence of instincts, 47

preparedness for, 7 n. 1, 25-7 Anxiety dreams, x, 7, 26 Aristophanes, 51-2 Art, 11

Atman

(in the Upanishads), 1 'Autistic thinking , xi

52

.

1

Biological

concept of death, 39-43, 49 n.

Cs. (see

Conscious system)

51-2 1

'Daemonic force , 15, 29-30 Danger, perception of, 5-6, 33, 52 Darwin, Charles, 50 Day's residues, 28, 30

'Bound*

energy (see psychical Energy, psychical, bound and

unbound) Brain, anatomy of the, 18 Braut mm Messina, Die,- 39 Breutr, 7. (see also Bibliography),

Death aim oflife is, 32-4, 3&-9, 49

20-1, 25, 28

biological

49 Calkins,

also

m 2,

56

1

54

Bisexuality,

2

Constancy, principle of (see Excitatory processes), 3, 3

Beiden Gulden, Die, 58

factors,

n.

Conscience, x Conscious system, 18-22, 28 Consciousness admissibility to, 12-13, 19 origin of, 19-21

Cathexis

(set

42

concept

of,

39-43,

n. 1

internal necessity of, 32, 38-41, 43 'natural', 34, 39-43

Excitatory processes)

Wtismanrfs views on, 39-43

Censorship, x, 45

64

GENERAL INDEX Death instinct (seealso Ego-instincts),

54 ix, 32-5, 38, 40-1, 43-51, equated with ego-instinct, 38, 46,

54.

in opposition to life instinct, xi, 34-5, 38, 43, 47, 54 n.

Dementia praecox, 27 Destiny, compulsion of, 15-17 Destructiveness, xi, 49 n. 1 Displacement in dreams, 28 Dream-content, manifest, 28

65

External world, 18, 20-2

Fairy tales, 14 Father

3

daughter's desire for a child by, 15 jealousy of, 10 Faust (Goethe), 36

Fear

also (see Anxiety; Fright; Phobia), 6, 7 . Fechnert G. T. (see also Bibliography), 2 4 >.

Dreams and sleep, 26-7

Ferencziy S.

6

n. 1,

(see also

26-7,

39,

58

Bibliography),

7

Fliess, Wilhelm

26

anxiety-, x, 7, as wish-fulfilments, x~xi, 7,

B.

(see also

Bibliography),

n.

censorship of, x, 45

Forgetting, 26 Fright (see also Anxiety; Fear), 6-7,

displacement in, 28 during psycho-analysis, 15, 26 hallucinatory character of, 26 'prospective* function of, x

Genital primacy, 48 Gervsalemme Liberata (Tasso), 16

punishment-, x, 26

Goethe, 10 n. 2,

30

traumatic, xi,

7, 17,

26

Dream-thoughts, latent, xi

Dream-work,

xi,

25

36

Gompcrz, H., 52 n. Guilt, sense of, 26

1

28 Hague, The, x Hallucinatory character of dreams,

Ego and

pleasure principle, 14, 17 as reservoir of libido, 44-6, 48 masochistic trends of, 7-8, 48-9 nucleus of, 13 repressive forces of, 13-14, 17 unconscious part of, 13-14 unification of, 4-5, 13, 27

Ego

ideal,

x

Ego-instincts (see also Death instinct; Self-preservation, instinct of),

38,4^7 equated with death 46,

54

instinct, 38,

n.

26 Hereditary factors, 31 Hering, E. t 43

Hunger, 45 Hypochondria, 6 Hysteria, x, 6-7 Id, the, 45 . 2 Inertia, neuronic, principle of, 3 Infantile sexuality, 1 2, 14-15, 45 Inferiority, sense of, 14-15 Instincts

also

(see

stincts;

Death

Component

.

in-

Ego-

instinct;

in opposition to sexual instinct, 35, 38, 44-9, 54 n. Eitingon, Dr. Af., ix

instincts; Life instinct; Self-preservation, instinct of; Sexual

Embryology, 20, 31, 50

45-7, 49

Energy, psychical, bound and unbound, 1-2, 20-5, 27-30, 56-7 Eros (see also Libido; Life instinct; Sexual instinct), xi, 36-7, 44, 46, 48, Excitations

54

external, 20-6, 34, 35 n. 3, 49-50,

instinct),

4-5, n. 1,

14-15,

28-38,

53-7

'conservatism' of, 30-5, 38 Instinctual character of the compulsion to repeat, ix, xi, 14-15, 17, 29-31, 50-3, 56 International Psycho-Analytical Congress, x

Introversion,

45

52,57 internal, 22-3, 28, 57 Excitatory processes, 1, 3, 17, 30,

56-7

Jealousy of father, 10 of younger child, 10

B. 1,

15

GENERAL INDEX

66 Jokes, 29

Jones, E.,6n. I Jowctt, B., 52 n. I Jung, C. G. (see also Bibliography),

46-7

Oedipus complex, 12, 14-15 Oral phase, 48 Organic injury, and neurosis, 6, 27 life, and the compulsion to repeat, 30-2, 34, 38, 53, 56

Kant,

/.,

22

Libido

48

as reservoir of, 44-6,

ego Jung's view

46-7

of,

54 n. Libido theory, 27, 44-8, 49 n. Narcissistic, 46, 48,

54 n.

1 ,

Life

aim of,

death, 32, 34, 38-9, 49 duration of, 39-44 origin of, 32-3, 35, 50 Life instinct (see also Eros; Sexual is

instinct), 34-5, 38, 43-8, 51, 54,

57 loeb,

Pain, physical, 24 Pan-sexualism, 46 Parental complex, 14m 2 Parents and children, relation between (see also Father; Mother;

Oedipus complex), 14-15 Ptpt. (see Perceptual system) PCS. (see Preconscious system)

Perceptual system, 18-19,22 Periodicity (Fliess's theory of), 39 Perversion, 47-8

Phantasies

unconscious, xi

3; 42

wishful,

Maqdmdt of al-Hariri, 58

n.

Masochism, 7-8, 48-9 Maupas, E., 41-2 Melancholia, 6, 27

Memory- traces,

18-19, 30

Mental apparatus, 3-5,

8, 18,

23-6,

28-9, 56

30

Anxiety), 36 Physical injury and neurosis, 6, 27 pain, 24 Plants, 33-4, 39 Plato, 51-2, 52 n. 1 Play of children, 8-1 1, 1 7, 29 Pleasure principle

Phobias

(see also

Mephistopheles (in Faust}, 36 Migration of birds and fishes, 3 1 Mother, child's fear of losing, 8-10

dominance of, 1-4, 11, 14, 23-9, 49-50, 56-7 over-ridden by compulsion to re-

Myths, 51, 52

peat, ix, 8-1 1, 14-18, 36-40, 56 relation to principle of constancy,

n. 1

3 Preconscious system, xi, 13, 28 Primary process (see also Energy,

Narcissism, 14, 46-8, 53^ and physical injury, 27 'of germ-cells',

Neuroses

44

(see also

rosis;

Obsessional neu-

Transference-neuroses;

Traumatic neuroses;

War

neu-

roses)

sexual aetiology of, 33-*, 45 theory of, 33-4, 44-5 Neurotics

compared

to

normal persons, 15

16 psycho-analysis

of, ix, xi,

29-30 'Nirvana principle*, 50 Object-choice, 44-9, 54 Object-instincts, 54 n. Obsessional neurosis, x

13-16,

psychical, bound and unbound), 4, 28-9, 56-7 Primitive peoples, superstitious beliefs of,

39

Principle constancy,

3

n. 2,

insusceptibility

of 2

3,

systems, 24

n.

neuronic inertia, 3 'Nirvana*, 50

n.

uncathected 2

pleasure (see Pleasure principle) reality, 4-5, 14, 29 stability (Fechner),

n.

56

2-3

Projection, 23 'Prospective* function of dreams, x Protective shield against stimuli,

21-6

GENERAL INDEX Protista,

12-15

Psycho-analytic technique, 1 Psycho-analytic theory, 46 'pan-sexualism' of, Psycho-analytic treatment of neurotics, ix, xi, 13-16, 29-

30 termination

of,

of,

1,7

Superstitious belieis, 39

sion to repeat)

Repression

and compulsion to repeat, 12-14, 26,30 and pleasure principle, 5, 14 13-14, 17, 45

36-7

Resistance

and

n.

Symposium, The, 51-2

Reaction-formation, 45 Reality-principle, 4-5, 14, 29 Regression, masochism as, 49 Repeat, compulsion to (see Compul-

of,

origin of, 50-2 Sexual intercourse, 56 Shock and traumatic neurosis, 25

Suggestion as a factor in psychoanalysis, 14n. 2, 26

Quality, 2-3, 23, 25 Quantity, 2, 2 n. 1, 25

instinctual, 5, 14,

ego, 14

of, in psycho-analytic treatment, 12-14 transference exploited by, 17

overcoming

Ruckert F., 58 n.

Tancred (in Gerusalemme Liberaia), 16 Tasso, 16 Three Wishes, The, 14 n. 3 Time, sense of, related to Pcpt.-Cs.,

22 Tragedy,

11

Transference, 12, 15-17, 30 exploited by resistance, 17 Transference neuroses (see also HysObsessional Neurosis), teria; 12-13, 44, 46 Transmigration, 52 n. 1

Trauma,

6-8, 23-7

infantile, xi,

26

Traumatic dreams,

26 17,25-9

x, xi, 7, 1 7,

neurosis, 6-8,

Sadism, 47-8, 49 39 Schopenhauer, A.

instinct, 34-5,

Sleep and dreams, 26-7 Stability, principle of (Feehner), 2-3 Stimuli, 20-6, 34, 35 n. 3, 49-50, 52, 57

12-13

Psychoneuroses (see Neuroses) Punishment-dreams, x, 26 n. I Pythagoras, 52

ego as agent

life

38, 40, 44, 47, 54 n. in opposition to ego-instincts, 35, 38, 44-7, 54 .

Simmel, E., 6

30

therapeutic aspect

67

equated with

38-44, 49-52

n. 1

Uncathected

Schiller, F.,

also

Biblio-

(see also

Energy,

(see

graphy), 44

Secondary process

psychical, bound 28, 30, 56-7

and unbound)

Self-preservation, instinct of (see also Ego-instincts), 4, 33, 45-7, 49,

54 n. Sexual aetiology of the neuroses, 33-

4,45 Sexual curiosity of children, 15 Sexual excitement and mechanical agitation, 27 Sexual instinct (see also Eros; Libido;

systems,

insuscepti-

bility to excitation of,

Unconscious ego, 13-14 mental processes, 12-13, systems, 28 Unconscious, the, 28 relation to Cs., 19, 22, tixnelessness of,

24 n. 2

18,

22

28

22

Unpleasure, 1-5, 10-11, 14-15, 18, 23-4, 32, 56-7 Fechner's

view

of,

2-4

neurotic, 'pleasure that cannot felt as such', 5 Upanishads, 52 n.

be

1

Life instinct)

and component instincts, 47-8, 49 n. 1,53 and pleasure principle, 4-5

Varendonck,J. (see also Bibliography),

GENERAL INDEX

68

Waking

life,

relation of

dreams

to,

28

War of 1914-18, War neuroses, 6 Weismann, A.

39-43

6

(see also

Wsh-nilfilment in dreams, x-xl, 26-7, 30 Woodruff, L. L. 9 41-2

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