The book beyond the pleasure principle was written in 1920 by Sigmund Freud; it marked a significant turn to his theoretical approaches. Previously, the author attributed human actions to sexual instincts (libido or Eros), but with this book, Freud went above the simple pleasure principle and developed his theory with the addition to death drives, often known as “Thanatos.” The book illustrates human struggling between to forces: Eros which carries creativity, sexual relationships harmony, self-preservation and reproduction; and Thanatos which causes destruction, compulsion, aggression and repetition among others. This work of Freud has inspired researchers into contemporary methods of psychoanalysis. Moreover, the work carries a lot of speculation and conjectural all over the book.
The author reassesses his previous work, where he had argued that the ID which is the most prominent section of the human mind, which drives human beings to look after pleasure while still avoiding any form of pain. Freud concluded that there existed another drive after he worked with patients who showed weird behaviors. Throughout this work, he observed that people were forced to engage repetitively to actions that did not seem to be a pleasure source. Consequently, after reflecting his earlier theories, one can derive the explanations for the mysterious actions. Fortunately, the book does not deny that most of the human behaviors are driven by self-fulfillments, although there are other drivers of human practices that tend to collide with this self-fulfillment desires. For instance, one can point to the drive called reality which, according to Freud can cause superego to postpone the id’s need; a bid to protect survival and prosperity. At the end of the first section of the book, the author states his plans of studying how the human mind reacts to the peril, identified as the primary source of discontent.
Later in the book, Freud started to look for the cause of post-traumatic disorders. This book was written shortly after the first world war, and people were suffering as victims of that misfortune. During this time, it was possible to associate the traumas with mental effects of war particularly to the soldiers who served and their sustained injuries. However, such an issue did not convince Freud, he observed that others who were not on the war frontline still had the same symptoms. Even some civilians who took no part in the war possessed these challenges. In his career, he noted that people experiencing trauma-related neurosis issues acquired them from frightful involvements, and he was able to differentiate anxiety from the traumatic experiences (Sigmund, 1).
In the curse of the work, Freud returned to his earlier writings of how dreams work. Moreover, he noted that they resembled fulfillment of desires. In simpler terms, dreams were just escape used by the mind to acquire solutions to conflicts existing between wishes and the social restrictions. Nevertheless, patients with these traumatic experiences continued to face the sad dreams, despite avoiding things that would remind them of their working hour's experiences. To cater for that explanation, Freud gave an example of a kid who would continually throw away a toy. The child would select the favorite toy and fling it farthest possible. Here, Freud was not deriving pleasure by having to pick up the toy but instead, he was bringing the kid’s mother. In this case, the mother had already left, which must have been traumatizing. The author postulates that the kid was trying to control a situation that went beyond his capacity. Moreover, the book asserts that human mind strives to replay traumatic experiences to exert control for a more favorable result. However, Freud knew it was speculation requiring more research.
In his third part of the book, the author observed the mind’s overwhelming desires of replaying the traumatic experiences. Some of the observations he encountered include his patients repeating incidences that were suppressed before in the deepest parts of the mind. To explain those acts, Freud started to analyze biological theories, and he noted that as people sink lower into the creature's classifications, these repetitive actions became more common, and thus he deducted that human cells have instinctual energy compelling them to return to their non-existence state. Then he named that power as death drive which opposed the desire to live; he called it Eros.
In the book's sixth chapter, the author considered some philosophy to find out information concerning the death instincts. Plato’s work was one of the details he thought, Plato gave him tales of people who continually tried to find a relationship with one another after they had lost connection two years. Freud questioned whether the death instincts might have driven the reconnection desire and he argued that there was a natural desire of the human body cells to disintegrate to the prior non-existence state.
Other works of Freud, he connects to the Beyond the pleasure principle (BPP) themes, amounting to thirty-eight pages of supplemental texts that began when BPP was in preparation. This section features the masochism economic problems. Masochism was clinical manifestation where he admitted that it looked suspicious as if he was trying to escape an embarrassing situation. It is at this point where he decided to find a clinical manifestation of death instincts in the challenges of masochism and suggested that there was a possibility of primary masochism, an indication of death instincts. In one of the footnotes, he cited Sabina admitting that he anticipated a considerable section of speculation in a work inhabited with matters and ideas, unfortunately, not everything was clear. To explain the sexual instincts, Freud considered Plato’s idea that human beings are forced to reproduce to join the sexes that once existed as a single male and female individuals. Appendix B goes above 230 pages featuring twenty-five entries, but the first four are reference points for Freud while the rest are responses to Freud starting ijn1939 with Benjamin. The information inserted here reveal general reading trends and re-interpreting Freud in the context of psychoanalysis.
The modern research on biology has disapproved most of the Freud’s work. However, his concerns raise some interesting discussions, or instance, the human desires to create mass destruction weapons has never been fully elaborated. That is despite the fact that human beings are likely to gain more if they work together as a race as opposed to when they work against each other. Moreover, Freud’s work has been helpful in treating people with traumatic disorders although the work was rudimentary to some extent, other people in the psychology field have developed this information to derive methods of treating post-traumatic pressures. In concluding this essay, the author recognized that the work was just speculation requiring further research.
Work cited
Sigmund, F. (1990), beyond the pleasure principle. Available at: https://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Pleasure-Principle-Norton-Library/dp/0393007693 [accessed at 24 Feb 2018]: 1-38
