Living language and the resonant self
Anthony Korner in Communicative Exchange, Psychotherapy and the Resonant Self, 2020
An enlivening-deadening axis of experience might encompass basic principles of mental functioning in a way that allows a revision of Freud’s pleasure and reality principles (Freud, 1911). The pleasure principle might be restated as “a tendency to seek or continue experiences of liveliness and to seek escape from, or foreshorten, deadening experiences”. The reality principle becomes “the tendency to seek conditions that allow for a sustainable experience of liveliness” (Korner, 2000). Recognition of a primary “seeking system”, associated with strivings towards the environment (Panksepp & Biven, 2012), overcomes some of the apparent conflict between the reality and pleasure principles. The sense of liveliness is largely engendered in ongoing strivings to work, relate and play rather than through the episodic satisfactions of consummatory pleasure.
Psychological approaches to understanding people
Dominic Upton in Introducing Psychology for Nurses and Healthcare Professionals, 2013
Freud also assumed that the mind could be divided into three basic sections; the id, ego and superego. This constitutes Freud’s structural model of the mind and is said to represent impulsivity, rationality and morality respectively. The id is the part of the mind which contains innate sexual (libido) and aggressive instincts and is located in the unconscious, which Freud considered the basic motivating force of human behaviour. The id is based on the ‘pleasure principle’ which drives the desire for immediate satisfaction.The second component is the superego, which contains the morals and rules of society. The superego develops as a result of the Oedipus complex (which will be discussed later on in this chapter) and usually emerges between the ages of three and six years. The main purpose of the superego is to prevent gratification of the id’s desires by observing the rules and regulations that operate within society.Finally, the third component is the ego. The ego is based on the ‘reality principle’ and mediates between the id’s innate desires and the moral standards of the superego.
The Functions of Dreams
Milton Kramer in The Dream Experience, 2013
The dream was troubling and led to an awakening associated with negative affect and the clear recall of the troubling dream (Kramer & Roth, 1977). A dream such as this one that disturbs sleep tests Freud’s proposal that the dream protects sleep and led to his postulation of the only exception to his wish fulfillment theory of dreams, a mastery function in which the repetition of disturbing dreams was an effort to master the anxiety associated with the dream. He hypothesized that the mastery function was a predecessor to the pleasure principle (Freud, 1955a). When the pleasure principle becomes dominant, the wish fulfilling and sleep protecting function of sleep emerges.
Ernst Brücke and Sigmund Freud: Physiological roots of psychoanalysis
Published in Journal of the History of the Neurosciences, 2022
Yunus Anıl Yılmaz
The psychological interpretation of a subject or a society could lead to total negligence of physiological needs. The duty of psychoanalysis is to find the actual cause of the needed discharge and let it be discharged as it should. Freud’s belief in these true causes depends solely on his neurological knowledge. Even when he wrote Beyond the Pleasure Principle, he did not completely retreat from the pleasure principle. Furthermore, in situations in which, seemingly, the pleasure principle is not ruling, he asserted the need for the ego to master traumatic situations for the sake of survival (S. Freud 1986f, 16). He only changed his deeply believed neurological principle in favor of biology, which was a science in equal dignity with neurology in Freud’s eyes. Beyond the Pleasure Principle is filled with biological justifications, as neurology’s scientific ground could only be deserted if replaced with another scientific base. Freud learned this from Brücke also. Therefore, even when he replaced Brücke’s teaching, he did it in his master’s style.
Riding Instincts, Even to Die
Published in Studies in Gender and Sexuality, 2019
Daniel G. Butler
Such need is not what it might seem. Preoccupied responsiveness attends to physical needs, but not physical needs alone. For Winnicott, “a need is either met or not met, and the effect is not the same as that of satisfaction and frustration of id impulse” (1956, p. 301). Clearly, Winnicott’s concern is not with the economic logic of the pleasure principle, but with being and nonbeing, existence and nonexistence, or some form of enlivenment beyond the pleasure principle. Similarly, in Bataille’s (1993) words, “we must satisfy our needs, and we suffer if we fail,” but “beyond need, the object of desire is humanly, the miracle; it is sovereign life … The Gospel says that ‘man does not live by bread alone’ … if there is a truth before all others, it has to be this one” (pp. 199–200). Bataille and Winnicott are clear that humans might live by bread/need, but not by bread/need alone. Thus, for Winnicott need is not just a biological phenomenon—rather, it must be “rescued from the purely biological” (Winnicott, 1956, p. 301)—so while riding instincts, even to die is indeed the meeting of early need, this need is something ordinary yet extraordinary, something not so dissimilar from the divine in everyday life.
Depending on the Dark Triad: exploring relationships between malign personality traits, substance and process addictions
Published in Journal of Substance Use, 2023
John David Gardiner, Johnny Lawson
By examining DT associations with alcohol and exercise addictions the current study provides an opportunity to test the appropriateness of the adapted addiction as excessive appetites model within the biopsychosocial framework. If the pleasure principle and model are accurate reflections of the etiology of both addiction forms, then same directional associations between DT traits and them will be observed. Therefore, it was hypothesized that addiction type would not mediate the relationship with DT traits. Instead, where one DT trait was associated with alcohol addiction then this would be mirrored with same directional associations with the same trait and exercise addiction. This hypothesis contradicts current evidence where positive associations between narcissism and non-substance addictive behavior and no associations between narcissism and substance use disorder have been identified (Jauk & Dieterich, 2019).
Related Knowledge Centers
- Libido
- Psychoanalysis
- Psychophysics
- Pleasure
- Suffering
- Need
- Reality Principle
- Delayed Gratification
- Id, Ego & Super-Ego
- Repetition Compulsion