Pleasure principle

Sigmund Freud

According to Freud, the pleasure principle is one of the "two principles of mental functioning" -- the other being the reality principle.

The pleasure principle directs all mental or psychical activity towards obtaining pleasure and avoiding unpleasure.

The pleasure principle directs all mental functioning towards obtaining pleasure and avoiding unpleasure.

All mental or psychical activity is directed -- by the pleasure principle -- towards obtaining pleasure and avoiding unpleasure.

The pleasure principle aims exclusively at obtaining (seek, achieve) pleasure and avoiding unpleasure (or pain).

Freud’s theory regarding the id’s desire to maximize pleasure and minimize pain in order to achieve immediate gratification.

is the tendency or drive to achieve pleasure and avoid pain as the chief motivating force in behavior in psychoanalysis

Unpleasure is related to the increase of quantities of excitation. (and plesure to their reduction_

The latter results from increased excitation.

The pleasure principle therefore serves to reduce tension and to return the psyche to a state of equilibrium or constancy.

Freud suggests that there is something "beyond the pleasure principle" -- namely the death drives -- which attempt to reduce psychic tension to zero, and thus to return living beings to an inorganic state.

Jacques Lacan

For Lacan

The pleasure principle

is an obstacle to jouissance

that takes the subject to that extreme point

where the erotic borders upon death and

where subjectivity risks extinction.

The pleasure principle is closely linked to the prohibition of incest

The pleasure principle is closely related to the prohibition of incest, the symbolic law and the regulation of desire.

The pleasure principle is "that which regulates the distance between the subject and das Ding.

In 1960, Lacan develops an important opposition between pleasure and jouissance.

Jouissance is an excessive quanitity of excitation which the pleasure principle tries to prevent.

The pleasure principle is a symbolic law

The pleasure principle

is a commandment -- which can be phrased -- "Enjoy as little as possible."

Pleasure is a safe

The function of the pleasure principle is, in effect, to lead the subject from signifier to signifier, by generating as amny signifiers as are required to maintain at as low a level as possible the tension that regulates the whole functioning of the psychic apparatus.

The "pleasure principle" and the "reality principle" are two psychoanalytical terms coined by Sigmund Freud.

The pleasure principle governs the functioning of the primary process

Lacan describes the pleasure principle in the seminar of 1954-5.

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In psychoanalysis, the demand that an instinctive need (usually sexual or aggressive) be gratified, regardless of the social or practical consequences. Sigmund Freud held that the id was dominated totally by the pleasure principle, but that, with the development of the ego and superego, individuals become aware of the demands of social reality (the reality principle), and thereby learn to temper and regulate their quest for pleasure.

The pleasure principle and the reality principle are two psychoanalytical terms coined by Sigmund Freud.

Respectively, the desire for immediate gratification versus the deferral of that gratification. Quite simply, the pleasure principle drives one to seek pleasure and to avoid pain. However, as one matures, one begins to learn the need sometimes to endure pain and to defer gratification because of the exigencies and obstacles of reality: "An ego thus educated has become reasonable; it no longer lets itself be governed by the pleasure principle, but obeys the reality principle, which also at bottom seeks to obtain pleasure, but pleasure which is assured through taking account of reality, even though it is pleasure postponed and diminished" (Sigmund Freud, Introductory Lectures 16.357).