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
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.
