Who is the founder of
Abnormal Psychology?
Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, was a physiologist,
medical doctor, psychologist and influential thinker of the early
twentieth century. Working initially in close collaboration with Joseph
Breuer, Freud elaborated the theory that the mind is a complex
energy-system, the structural investigation of which is the proper
province of psychology. He articulated and refined the concepts of the
unconscious, infantile sexuality and repression, and he proposed a
tripartite account of the mind’s structure—all as part of a
radically new conceptual and therapeutic frame of reference for the
understanding of human psychological development and the treatment of
abnormal mental conditions. Notwithstanding the multiple manifestations
of psychoanalysis as it exists today, it can in almost all fundamental
respects be traced directly back to Freud’s original work.
Freud’s innovative treatment of human actions, dreams, and indeed
of cultural artifacts as invariably possessing implicit symbolic
significance has proven to be extraordinarily fruitful, and has had
massive implications for a wide variety of fields including psychology,
anthropology, semiotics, and artistic creativity and appreciation.
However, Freud’s most important and frequently re-iterated claim,
that with psychoanalysis he had invented a successful science of the
mind, remains the subject of much critical debate and controversy.
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Sigmund Freud (1856–1939). Beyond the Pleasure Principle.
1922
Chapter I
IN the
psycho-analytical theory of the mind we take it for granted that the
course of mental processes is automatically regulated by ‘the
pleasure-principle’: that is to say, we believe that any given
process originates in an unpleasant state of tension and thereupon
determines for itself such a path that its ultimate issue coincides
with a relaxation of this tension, i. e. with avoidance of
‘pain’ or with production of pleasure. When we consider the
psychic processes under observation in reference to such a sequence we
are introducing into our work the economic point of view. In our
opinion a presentation which seeks to estimate, not only the
topographical and dynamic, but also the economic element is the most
complete that we can at present imagine, and deserves to be
distinguished by the term meta-psychological. 1
We are not interested in examining how far in our assertion of
the pleasure-principle we have approached to or adopted any given
philosophical system historically established. Our approach to such
speculative hypotheses is by way of our endeavour to describe and
account for the facts falling within our daily sphere of observation.
Priority and originality are not among the aims which psycho-analysis
sets itself, and the impressions on which the statement of this
principle is founded are of so unmistakable a kind that it is scarcely
possible to overlook them. On the other hand, we should willingly
acknowledge our indebtedness to any philosophical or psychological
theory that could tell us the meaning of these feelings of pleasure and
‘pain’ which affect us so powerfully. Unfortunately no
theory of any value is forthcoming. It is the obscurest and least
penetrable region of psychic life and, while it is impossible for us to
avoid touching on it, the most elastic hypothesis will be, to my mind,
the best. We have decided to consider pleasure and ‘pain’
in relation to the quantity of excitation present in the psychic
life—and not confined in any way—along such lines that
‘pain’ corresponds with an increase and pleasure with a
decrease in this quantity. We do not thereby commit ourselves to a
simple relationship between the strength of the feelings and the
changes corresponding with them, least of all, judging from
psycho-physiological experiences, to any view of a direct proportion
existing between them; probably the amount of diminution or increase in
a given time is the decisive factor for feeling. Possibly there is room
here for experimental work, but it is inadvisable for us analysts to go
further into these problems until we can be guided by quite definite
observations. 2
We cannot however profess the like indifference when we find
that an investigator of such penetration as G. Th. Fechner has
advocated a conception of pleasure and ‘pain’ which in
essentials coincides with that forced upon us by psycho-analytic work.
Fechner’s pronouncement is to be found in his short work
‘Einige Ideen zur Schöpfungs- und Entwicklungsgeschichte der
Organismen’, 1873 (Section XI, Note p. 94) and reads as follows:
‘In so far as conscious impulses always bear a relation to
pleasure or “pain”, pleasure or “pain” may be
thought of in psycho-physical relationship to conditions of stability
and instability, and upon this may be based the hypothesis I intend to
develop elsewhere, viz.: that every psycho-physical movement rising
above the threshold of consciousness is charged with pleasure in
proportion as it approximates—beyond a certain limit—to
complete equilibrium, and with “pain” in proportion as it
departs from it beyond a certain limit; while between the two limits
which may be described as the qualitative thresholds of
“pain” or pleasure, there is a certain area of aesthetic
indifference.’ 3
The facts that have led us to believe in the supremacy of the
pleasure-principle in psychic life also find expression in the
hypothesis that there is an attempt on the part of the psychic
apparatus to keep the quantity of excitation present as low as
possible, or at least constant. This is the same supposition only put
into another form, for, if the psychic apparatus operates in the
direction of keeping down the quantity of excitation, all that tends to
increase it must be felt to be contrary to function, that is to say
painful. The pleasure-principle is deduced from the principle of
constancy; in reality the principle of constancy was inferred from the
facts that necessitated our assumption of the pleasure-principle. On
more detailed discussion we shall find further that this tendency on
the part of the psychic apparatus postulated by us may be classified as
a special case of Fechner’s principle of the tendency towards
stability to which he has related the pleasure-pain
feelings. 4
In that event, however, it must be affirmed that it is not
strictly correct to speak of a supremacy of the pleasure-principle over
the course of psychic processes. If such existed, then the vast
majority of our psychic processes would necessarily be accompanied by
pleasure or would conduce to it, while the most ordinary experience
emphatically contradicts any such conclusion. One can only say that a
strong tendency towards the pleasure-principle exists in the psyche, to
which, however, certain other forces or conditions are opposed, so that
the ultimate issue cannot always be in accordance with the
pleasure-tendency. Compare the comment of Fechner in a similar
connection. 1 ‘Therewithal it is to be noted that the tendency
towards the goal does not imply the attainment of it and that in
general the goal is only approximately attainable….” If we
now address ourselves to the question of what circumstances have the
power to frustrate the successful carrying out of the
pleasure-principle we shall be treading on safer and better-known
ground, and we can draw in abundant measure on our analytical
experiences for the answer. 5
The first case of such a check on the pleasure-principle is
perfectly familiar to us in the regularity of its occurrence. We know
that the pleasure-principle is adjusted to a primary mode of operation
on the part of the psychic apparatus, and that for the preservation of
the organism amid the difficulties of the external world it is ab
initio useless and indeed extremely dangerous. Under the influence of
the instinct of the ego for self-preservation it is replaced by the
‘reality-principle’, which without giving up the intention
of ultimately attaining pleasure yet demands and enforces the
postponement of satisfaction, the renunciation of manifold
possibilities of it, and the temporary endurance of ‘pain’
on the long and circuitous road to pleasure. The pleasure-principle
however remains for a long time the method of operation of the sex
impulses, which are not so easily educable, and it happens over and
over again that whether acting through these impulses or operating in
the ego itself it prevails over the reality-principle to the detriment
of the whole organism. 6
It is at the same time indubitable that the replacement of the
pleasure-principle by the reality-principle can account only for a
small part, and that not the most intense, of painful experiences.
Another and no less regular source of ‘pain’ proceeds from
the conflicts and dissociations in the psychic apparatus during the
development of the ego towards a more highly co-ordinated organisation.
Nearly all the energy with which the apparatus is charged comes from
the inborn instincts, but not all of these are allowed to develop to
the same stage. On the way it over and again happens that particular
instincts, or portions of them, prove irreconcilable in their aims or
demands with others which can be welded into the comprehensive unity of
the ego. They are thereupon split off from this unity by the process of
repression, retained on lower stages of psychic development, and for
the time being cut off from all possibility of gratification. If they
then succeed, as so easily happens with the repressed sex-impulses, in
fighting their way through—along circuitous routes—to a
direct or a substitutive gratification, this success, which might
otherwise have brought pleasure, is experienced by the ego as
‘pain’. In consequence of the old conflict which ended in
repression the pleasure-principle has been violated anew, just at the
moment when certain impulses were at work on the achievement of fresh
pleasure in pursuance of the principle. The details of the process by
which repression changes a possibility of pleasure into a source of
‘pain’ are not yet fully understood, or are not yet capable
of clear presentation, but it is certain that all neurotic
‘pain’ is of this kind, is pleasure which cannot be
experienced as such. 7
The two sources of ‘pain’ here indicated still do
not nearly cover the majority of our painful experiences, but as to the
rest one may say with a fair show of reason that their presence does
not impugn the supremacy of the pleasure-principle. Most of the
‘pain’ we experience is of a perceptual order, perception
either of the urge of unsatisfied instincts or of something in the
external world which may be painful in itself or may arouse painful
anticipations in the psychic apparatus and is recognised by it as
‘danger’. The reaction to these claims of impulse and these
threats of danger, a reaction in which the real activity of the psychic
apparatus is manifested, may be guided correctly by the
pleasure-principle or by the reality-principle which modifies this. It
seems thus unnecessary to recognise a still more far-reaching
limitation of the pleasure-principle, and nevertheless it is precisely
the investigation of the psychic reaction to external danger that may
supply new material and new questions in regard to the problem here
treated. |
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