Pleasure principle
"pleasure principle" (Fr. principe de plaisir)
Even when Lacan uses the word "pleasure" on its own, he is always referring to the pleasure principle, and never to a sensation.
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The pleasure principle is one of the "two principles of mental functioning" posted by Freud in his metapsychological writings (the other being the reality principle).
The pleasure principle aims exclusively at avoiding unpleasure and obtaining pleasure.
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Lacan's first extended discussion of the pleasure principle appears in the seminar of 1954-5.
Here Lacan compares the pleasure principle to a homeostatic device that aims at maintaining excitation at the lowest function level.[1]
This accords with Freud's thesis that unpleasure is related to the increase of quantities of excitation, and pleasure to their reduction.
Lacan opposes the pleasure principle, which he dubs the "restitutive tendency," to the death drive (the "repetitive tendency"), in accordance with Freud's view that the death drive is "beyond the pleasure principle."[2]
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In 1960, Lacan develops what soon comes to be an important concept in his work; the idea of an opposition between pleasure and jouissance.
Jouissance is now defined as an excessive quantity of excitation which the pleasure principle attempts to prevent.
The pleasure principle is thus seen as a symbolic law, a commandment which can be phrased "Enjoy as little as possible" (which is why Freud originally called it the unpleasure principle).[3]
Pleasure is the safeguard of a state of homeostasis and constancy which jouissance constantly threatens to disrupt and traumatize.
Put another way, the pleasure principle is the prohibition on incest, "that which regulates the distance between the subject and das Ding."[4]
When the subject transgresses this prohibition, gets too near to the Thing, then he suffers.
Since it is the drives which permit the subject to transgress the pleasure principle, it follows that every drive is a death drive.
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Since the pleasure principle is related to prohibition, to the law, and to regulation, it is clearly on the side of the symbolic, whereas jouissance is on the side of the real.
The pleasure principle is thus "nothing else than the dominance of the signifier."[5]
This involves Lacan in a paradox, since the symbolic is also the realm of the repetition compulsion, which is, in Freud's terms, precisely that which goes beyond the pleasure principle.
Indeed, some of Lacan's descriptions of the pleasure principle make it sound almost identical to the repetition compulsion.
"The function of the pleasure principle is to make man always search for what he has to find again, but which he will never attain."[6]
See Also
References
- ↑ Lacan, Jacques. The Seminar. Book II. The Ego in Freud's Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis, 1954-55. Trans. Sylvana Tomaselli. New York: Nortion; Cambridge: Cambridge Unviersity Press, 1988. p.79-80
- ↑ Lacan, Jacques. The Seminar. Book II. The Ego in Freud's Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis, 1954-55. Trans. Sylvana Tomaselli. New York: Nortion; Cambridge: Cambridge Unviersity Press, 1988. p.79-80
- ↑ Freud, Sigmund. SE V. 1900a. p.574
- ↑ Lacan, Jacques. The Seminar. Book VII. The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, 1959-60. Trans. Dennis Porter. London: Routledge, 1992. p.69
- ↑ Lacan, Jacques. The Seminar. Book VII. The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, 1959-60. Trans. Dennis Porter. London: Routledge, 1992. p.134
- ↑ Lacan, Jacques. The Seminar. Book VII. The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, 1959-60. Trans. Dennis Porter. London: Routledge, 1992. p.68
