Beyond the Pleasure

Principle

Beyond the Pleasure Principle (German:

Jenseits des Lustprinzips) is a 1920 essay
by Sigmund Freud. It marks a major
turning point in the formulation of his drive
theory, where Freud had previously
attributed self-preservation in human
behavior to the drives of Eros and the
regulation of libido, governed by the
pleasure principle. Revising this as
inconclusive, Freud theorized beyond the
pleasure principle, newly considering the
death drives[1] (or Thanatos, the Greek
personification of death) which refers to
the tendency towards destruction and
annihilation, often expressed through
behaviors such as aggression, repetition
compulsion, and self-destructiveness.[2]
 Beyond the Pleasure Principle

Author Sigmund Freud

Original title Jenseits des

Lustprinzips

Country Germany

Language German

Publication date 1920

Overview
The essay, marking Freud's major revision
of his drive theory, elaborates on the
struggle between two opposing drives. In
the first few sections, Freud describes
these as Eros, which produces creativity,
harmony, sexual connection, reproduction,
and self-preservation; and the "death
drives" (what some call "Thanatos"), which
brings destruction, repetition, aggression,
compulsion, and self-destruction.

In sections IV and V, Freud posits that the

process of creating living cells binds
energy and creates an imbalance. It is the
pressure of matter to return to its original
state which gives cells their quality of
living. The process is analogous to the
creation and exhaustion of a battery. This
pressure for molecular diffusion is referred
to as a "death-wish". The compulsion of
the matter in cells to return to a diffuse,
inanimate state extends to the whole living
organism. Thus, the psychological death-
wish is a manifestation of an underlying
physical compulsion present in every cell,
which Freud directly corresponds to the
death drives.

Freud also states the basic differences, as

he saw them, between his approach and
Carl Jung's, and summarizes published
research into basic drives in Section VI to
establish his revisions.

Analysis and synopsis

What have been called the "two distinct
frescoes or canti"[3] of Beyond the Pleasure
Principle break between sections III and IV.
If, as Otto Fenichel remarked, Freud's "new
[instinctual] classification has two bases,
one speculative, and one clinical",[4] thus
far the clinical. In Freud's own words, the
second section "is speculation, often far-
fetched speculation, which the reader will
consider or dismiss according to his
individual predilection"[5]—it has been
noted that "in Beyond the Pleasure
Principle, Freud used that unpromising
word "speculations" more than once".[6]

Clinical evidence (sections I–III)

Freud begins with "a commonplace then

unchallenged in psychoanalytic theory:
'The course of mental events is
automatically regulated by the pleasure
principle ... a strong tendency toward the
pleasure principle' ".[7] After considering
the inevitable presence of unpleasant
experiences in the life of the mind, he
concludes the book's first section to the
effect that the presence of such
unpleasant experiences "does not
contradict the dominance of the pleasure
principle ... does not seem to necessitate
any far-reaching limitation of the pleasure
principle."[8]

Exceptions to the pleasure principle

Freud proceeds to look for "evidence, for

the existence of hitherto unsuspected
forces 'beyond' the pleasure principle."[7]
He found exceptions to the universal
power of the pleasure principle
—"situations ... with which the pleasure
principle cannot cope adequately"[9]—in
four main areas: children's games, as
exemplified in his grandson's famous "fort-
da" game;[10] "the recurrent dreams of war
neurotics ...; the pattern of self-injuring
behaviour that can be traced through the
lives of certain people ["fate neurosis"]; the
tendency of many patients in psycho-
analysis to act out over and over again
unpleasant experiences of their
childhood."[11]

Repetition compulsion

From these cases, Freud inferred the

existence of motivations beyond the
pleasure principle.[11] Freud already felt in
1919 that he could safely postulate "the
principle of a repetition compulsion in the
unconscious mind, based upon instinctual
activity and probably inherent in the very
nature of the instincts—a principle
powerful enough to overrule the pleasure-
principle".[12] In the first half of Beyond the
Pleasure Principle, "a first phase, the most
varied manifestations of repetition,
considered as their irreducible quality, are
attributed to the essence of drives"[13] in
precisely the same way.

Building on his 1914 article "Recollecting,

Repeating and Working Through", Freud
highlights how the "patient cannot
remember the whole of what is repressed
in him, and ... is obliged to repeat the
repressed material as a contemporary
experience instead of ... remembering it as
something belonging to the past:"[14] a
"compulsion to repeat."

Independence from the pleasure principle

Freud still wanted to examine the

relationship between repetition
compulsion and the pleasure principle.[15]
Although compulsive behaviors evidently
satisfied some sort of drive, they were a
source of direct unpleasure.[15] Somehow,
"no lesson has been learnt from the old
experience of these activities having led
only to unpleasure. In spite of that, they
are repeated, under pressure of a
compulsion".[16] Also noting repetitions in
the lives of normal people—who appeared
to be "pursued by a malignant fate or
possessed by some daemonic power,"[16]
likely alluding to the Latin motto errare
humanum est, perseverare autem
diabolicum ("to err is human, to persist [in
committing errors] is of the devil")—Freud
concludes that the human psyche includes
a compulsion to repeat that is independent
of the pleasure principle.[17]

Speculation (sections IV–VII)

Arguing that dreams in which one relives
trauma serve a binding function in the
mind, connected to repetition compulsion,
Freud admits that such dreams are an
exception to the rule that the dream is the
fulfillment of a wish.[18] Asserting that the
first task of the mind is to bind excitations
to prevent trauma (so that the pleasure
principle does not begin to dominate
mental activities until the excitations are
bound), he reiterates the clinical fact that
for "a person in analysis ... the compulsion
to repeat the events of his childhood in the
transference evidently disregards the
pleasure principle in every way".[19]
Biological basis for repetition compulsion

Freud begins to look for analogies of

repetition compulsion in the "essentially
conservative ... feature of instinctual life ...
the lower we go in the animal scale the
more stereotyped does instinctual
behavior appear".[20] Thereafter "a leap in
the text can be noticed when Freud places
the compulsion to repeat on an equal
footing with 'an urge ... to restore an earlier
state of things' "[21]—ultimately that of the
original inorganic condition. Declaring that
"the aim of life is death" and "inanimate
things existed before living ones",[22] Freud
interprets an organism's drive to avoid
danger only as a way of avoiding a short-
circuit to death: the organisms seeks to
die in its own way. He thus found his way
to his celebrated concept of the death
drive, an explanation that some scholars
have labeled as "metaphysical biology".[23]

Thereupon, "Freud plunged into the

thickets of speculative modern biology,
even into philosophy, in search of
corroborative evidence"[24]—looking to
"arguments of every kind, frequently
borrowed from fields outside of
psychoanalytic practice, calling to the
rescue biology, philosophy, and
mythology".[25] He turned to prewar
experiments on protozoa—of perhaps
questionable relevance, even if it is not the
case that 'his interpretation of the
experiments on the successive
generations of protozoa contains a fatal
flaw'.[26] The most that can perhaps be
said is that Freud did not find "any
biological argument which contradicts his
dualistic conception of instinctual life",[27]
but at the same time, "as Jones (1957)
points out, 'no biological observation can
be found to support the idea of a death
instinct, one which contradicts all
biological principles' "[28] either.

Masochism as clinical manifestation

Freud then continued with a reference to
"the harbour of Schopenhauer's
philosophy"; but in groping for a return to
the clinical he admitted that "it looks
suspiciously as though we were trying to
find a way out of a highly embarrassing
situation at any price".[29] Freud eventually
decided that he could find a clinical
manifestation of the death instinct in the
phenomenon of masochism, "hitherto
regarded as secondary to sadism ... and
suggested that there could be a primary
masochism, a self-injuring tendency which
would be an indication of the death
instinct".[30] In a footnote he cited Sabina
Spielrein admitting that "A considerable
part of this speculation has been
anticipated in a work which is full of
valuable matter and ideas but is
unfortunately not entirely clear to me:
(Sabina Spielrein: Die Destruktion als
Ursache des Werdens, Jahrbuch für
Psychoanalyse, IV, 1912). She designates
the sadistic component as 'destructive'."[31]
To then explain the sexual instinct as well
in terms of a compulsion to repeat, Freud
inserts a myth from Plato that humans are
driven to reproduce in order to join
together the sexes, which had once
existed in single individuals who were both
male and female—still "in utter disregard
of disciplinary distinctions";[32] and admits
again the speculative nature of his own
ideas, "lacking a direct translation of
observation into theory ... One may have
made a lucky hit or one may have gone
shamefully astray".[33]

Conclusion

Nevertheless, with the libido or Eros as the

life force finally set out on the other side of
the repetition compulsion equation, the
way was clear for the book's closing
"vision of two elemental pugnacious
forces in the mind, Eros and Thanatos,
locked in eternal battle".[24]

The essay's relation to

 e essay s e at o to
Freud's grief
Freud's daughter Sophie died at the start
of 1920, partway between Freud's first
(1919) version and the version of Beyond
the Pleasure Principle reworked and
published in 1920. Freud insisted that the
death had no relation to the contents of
the book. In a July 18, 1920, letter to Max
Eitingon, Freud wrote, "The Beyond is now
finally finished. You will be able to confirm
that it was half ready when Sophie lived
and flourished".[34] He had however
already written (in June) to colleague and
psychoanalyst Sándor Ferenczi "that
'curious continuations' had turned up in it,
presumably the part about the potential
immortality of protozoa". Ernest Jones
considers Freud's claim on Eitingon "a
rather curious request ... [perhaps] an inner
denial of his novel thoughts about death
having been influenced by his depression
over losing his daughter".[35] Others have
also wondered about "inventing a so-called
death instinct—is this not one way of
theorising, that is, disposing of—by means
of a theory—a feeling of the "demoniac" in
life itself ... exacerbated by the unexpected
death of Freud's daughter"?[36]—and it is
certainly striking that "the term 'death
drive'—Todestrieb—entered his
correspondence a week after Sophie
Halberstadt's death"; so that we may well
accept at the very least that the "loss can
claim a subsidiary role ... [in]his analytic
preoccupation with destructiveness".[37]

Continuation of themes in the

essay
On his final page, Freud acknowledges that
his theorising "in turn raises a host of
other questions to which we can at
present find no answer".[38] Whatever
legitimate reservations there may be about
"the improbability of our speculations. A
queer instinct, indeed, directed to the
destruction of its own organic home",[39]
Freud's speculative essay has proven
remarkably fruitful in stimulating further
psychoanalytic research and theorising,
both in himself and in his followers; and
we may consider it as a prime example of
Freud in his role "as a problem finder—one
who raises new questions ... called
attention to a whole range of human
phenomena and processes".[40] Thus for
example André Green has suggested that
Freud "turned to the biology of micro-
organisms ... because he was unable to
find the answers to the questions raised by
psychoanalytic practice": the fruitfulness
of the questions—in the spirit of 'Maurice
Blanchot's sentence, "La réponse est le
malheur de la question" [The answer is the
misfortune of the question]'[41]—remains
nonetheless unimpaired.

Freud's later writing and legacy

The distinction between pleasure principle

and death drive led Freud to restructure his
model of the psyche.[42]

With Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Freud

also introduced the question of violence
and destructiveness in humans.[42] These
themes play an important role in
Civilization and Its Discontents, in which
Freud suggests that civilization has
repeatedly tried and failed to repress the
death drives. Freud's indication "that in
cases of traumatism there is a 'lack of any
preparedness for anxiety' ... is a forerunner
of the distinction he would later make ...
between 'automatic anxiety' and 'anxiety
as a signal' ".[43]

For Jacques Lacan, repetition

compulsion was one of the "four ...
terms introduced by Freud as
fundamental concepts, namely, the
unconscious, repetition, the transference
and the drive".[44]
Eric Berne adapted the way "Freud
speaks of the repetition compulsion and
the destiny compulsion ... to apply them
to the entire life courses"[45] of normals
and neurotics alike.
Gilles Deleuze observed that "in Beyond
the Pleasure Principle, Freud is not really
preoccupied with the exceptions to that
principle", concluding that "there are no
exceptions to the principle—though
there would indeed seem to be some
rather strange complications in the
workings of pleasure."[46]
Both Melanie Klein and Lacan were to
adopt versions of the death drive in their
own theoretical constructs. "Klein's
concept of the death drive differs from
 Freud's ... but there is an ever-increasing
reference to the death drive as a given
cause of mental development"[47] in her
works. Lacan for his part considered
that "the death drive is only the mask of
the symbolic order, in so ... far as it has
not been realised", adding modestly of
Beyond the Pleasure Principle "... either it
makes not the least bit of sense or it has
exactly the sense I say it has".[48]

Critical reception
Beyond the Pleasure Principle may be
Freud's most controversial text. Jacques
Lacan described it as an "extraordinary
text of Freud's, unbelievably ambiguous,
almost confused".[49] Peter Gay remarked
in Freud: A Life for Our Time that "Beyond
the Pleasure Principle is a difficult text ...
the reassuring intimacy with clinical
experience that marks most of Freud's
papers, even at their most theoretical,
seems faint here, almost absent".[50] On
the same terms, Gilles Deleuze wrote in his
1967 literary study Masochism: Coldness
and Cruelty that "the masterpiece which
we know as Beyond the Pleasure Principle
is perhaps the one where he engaged
most directly—and how penetratingly—in
specifically philosophical reflection."[51]
Ernest Jones, one of Freud's closest
associates and a member of his Inner
Ring, stated that "the train of thought [is]
by no means easy to follow ... and Freud's
views on the subject have often been
considerably misinterpreted."[52]

Jones concluded that "This book is further

noteworthy in being the only one of Freud's
which has received little acceptance on
the part of his followers".[53] Many of
Freud's colleagues and students initially
rejected the theories proposed in Beyond
the Pleasure Principle because the idea of
a drive towards death seemed
strange.[54][55]

References
1. Freud used the plural (https://books.google.
com/books?id=LQcUz3FVkNQC&q=%22dea
th+drives%22) "death drives" (Todestriebe)
more often than in the singular (https://boo
ks.google.com/books?id=LQcUz3FVkNQC&
q=%22death+drive%22) .
2. Eric Berne, What Do You Say After You Say
Hello? (London, 1975) pp. 399-400.
3. Laplanche, Life. p. 107.
4. Otto Fenichel, The Psychoanalytic Theory
of Neurosis (London 1946). p. 58.
5. Sigmund Freud, Beyond the Pleasure
Principle in On Metapsychology (Middlesex
1987). p. 295.
6. Gay, Freud. p. 704n.
7. Gay, Freud. p. 399.
 8. Freud, Beyond. p. 280.
9. Jean-Michel Quinodoz, Reading Freud
(London 2005). p. 187.
10. Clark, Robert (October 24, 2005).
"Repetition Compulsion" (http://www.litency
c.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=94
7) . The Literary Encyclopedia. Retrieved
March 15, 2020.
11. Jones, Life. p. 506.
12. Sigmund Freud, "The Uncanny" (1919), in
Studies in Parapsychology (Alix Strachey
trans.). p. 44.
13. Jean Laplanche, Life and Death in
Psychoanalysis (London 1976). p. 107.
14. Freud, Beyond. p. 288.
15. Freud, Beyond. p. 290.
16. Freud, Beyond. p. 292.
17. Freud, Sigmund. Beyond the Pleasure
Principle (The Standard Edition). Trans.
James Strachey. New York: Liveright
Publishing Corporation, 1961.
18. Freud, Beyond. p. 304.
19. Freud, Beyond. p. 308.
20. Jones, Life. p. 507.
21. Gunnar Karlson, Psychoanalysis in a New
Light (Cambridge 2010). p. 147.
22. Freud, Beyond. p. 311.
23. Schuster, Aaron (2016). The Trouble with
Pleasure. Deleuze and Psychoanalysis (http
s://books.google.com/books?id=rWiLCwAA
QBAJ) . Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT
Press. p. 32 (https://books.google.com/bo
oks?id=rWiLCwAAQBAJ&dq=%22Death+dri
ve%22%22metaphysical+biology%22+Freud
+%22compulsion+to+repeat%22&pg=PA3
2) . ISBN 978-0-262-52859-7.
24. Gay, Freud. p. 401.
25. Laplanche, Life. p. 110.
26. Malcolm Macmillan, Freud evaluated (MIT
1997). p. 400.
27. Jean-Michel Quinodoz, Reading Freud
(London 2005). p. 190.
28. Charles Rycroft, A Critical Dictionary of
Psychoanalysis (London 1995). p. 31.
29. Freud, Beyond. p. 322 and p. 328.
30. Jones, Life p. 509
31. Freud, Beyond. p. ?
32. Teresa de Lauretis, Freud's Drive
(Basingstoke 2008). p. 77.
33. Freud, Beyond. p. 333.
34. Gay, Freud. p. 703.
35. Jones, Life. p. 504.
36. Maria Torok, in Nicolas Abraham/Maria
Torok, The Wolf Man's Magic Word
(Minneapolis 1986). p. 90.
37. Gay, Freud. p. 395.
38. Freud, Beyond. p. 336.
39. Sigmund Freud, New Introductory Lectures
on Psychoanalysis (London 1991). p. 139.
40. Howard Gardner, Extraordinary Minds
(London 1997). p. 82.
41. André Green, in P. B. Talamo et al., W. R.
Bion (London 2007). p. 119 and p. 122.
42. Angela Richards, "Editor's Note"
Metapsychology. p. 272.
43. Quinodox, Reading Freud. p. 189.
44. Jacques Lacan, The Four Fundamental
Concepts of Psycho-Analysis (London
1994). p. 12.
45. Eric Berne, What Do You Say After You Say
Hello? (Corgi 1975). p. 58.
46. Gilles Deleuze, Masochism: Coldness and
Cruelty (Zone Books, 1989). p. 111.
47. L. Stonebridge/J. Phillips, Reading Melanie
Klein (London 1998). p. 30.
48. Lacan, Seminar II. p. 326 and p. 60.
49. Jacques-Alain Miller, The Seminar of
Jacques Lacan: Book II (Cambridge 1988).
p. 37.
50. Peter Gay, Freud: A Life for Our Time
(London 1988). p. 398.
51. Gilles Deleuze, Masochism: Coldness and
Cruelty (Zone Books, 1989). p. 111.
52. Ernest Jones, The Life and Work of
Sigmund Freud (London 1964). pp. 510–11.
53. Jones, Life. p. 505.
54. Freud, Sigmund. Civilization and its
Discontents.
55. Boeree, Dr. C. George. "Sigmund Freud."
Webspace. 2009. Web. 22 July 2010 (http://
webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/freud.html) .

Further reading
Jacques Derrida's The Post Card: From
Socrates to Freud and Beyond
Bernard Stiegler's "Desire and
Knowledge: The Dead Seize the Living (h
ttp://www.arsindustrialis.org/desire-and-
knowledge-dead-seize-living) "

External links
Beyond the Pleasure Principle (https://ww
w.bartleby.com/lit-hub/beyond-the-pleasu
re-principle/) (C. J. M. Hubback, trans.,
1922.)
Jenseits des Lustprinzips (https://gutenb
erg.org/ebooks/28220) at Project
Gutenberg (in German)
Laplanche, Jean; Pontalis, Jean-
Bertrand (2018) [1973]. The Language of
Psychoanalysis (https://books.google.co
m/books?id=DRptYDwAAQBA) .
Abingdon-on-Thames: Routledge.
ISBN 978-0-429-92124-7.
"Death Instincts (https://books.goo
gle.com/books?id=RptYDwAAQBAJ
&dq=%22Death+Instincts+=+D.:+To
destriebe%22&pg=PT185) " [sic];
"Thanatos (https://books.google.co
m/books?id=RptYDwAAQBAJ&dq=
Thanatos+%22Greek+term+(=Deat
h)%22&pg=PT800) ";
"Nirvana Principle" (https://books.g
oogle.com/books?id=RptYDwAAQB
AJ&dq=%22Nirvana+Principle+%3D
+D.:+Nirwanaprinzip%22+%22Term
+proposed+by+Barbara+Low%22&p
g=PT493) ;
"Compulsion to Repeat (https://boo
ks.google.com/books?id=RptYDwA
AQBAJ&dq=%22Compulsion+to+Re
peat+(Repetition+Compulsion)+%3
D+D.:+Wiederholungszwang%22&p
 g=PT152) " ("Repetition
compulsion").

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