Beyond the Pleasure Principle quotes

first that the chief causal factor seemed to lie in the element of surprise, in the fright; and secondly that an injury or wound sustained at the same time generally tended to prevent the occurrence of the neurosis.

Fright, fear, apprehension are incorrectly used as synonymous expressions: in their relation to danger they admit of quite clear distinction.

Apprehension (Angst) denotes a certain condition as of expectation of danger and preparation for it, even though it be an unknown one; fear (Furcht) requires a definite object of which one is afraid;

it lays stress on the element of surprise. In my opinion apprehension cannot produce a traumatic neurosis; in apprehension there is something which protects against fright and therefore against the fright-neurosis. We shall return later to this dictum.

The study of dreams may be regarded as the most trustworthy approach to the exploration of the deeper psychic processes.

Now in the traumatic neuroses the dream life has this peculiarity: it continually takes the patient back to the situation of his disaster, from which he awakens in renewed terror. This fact has caused less surprise than it merits.

Nor does the further pursuit of the question of play resolve our hesitations between two conceptions.

We see that children repeat in their play everything that has made a great impression on them in actual life, that they thereby abreact the strength of the impression and so to speak make themselves masters of the situation.

But on the other hand it is clear enough that all their play is influenced by the dominant wish of their time of life: viz. to be grown-up and to be able to do what grown-up people do.

What follows now is speculation, speculation often far-fetched, which each will according to his particular attitude acknowledge or neglect.

Or one may call it the exploitation of an idea out of curiosity to see whither it will lead.

Psycho-analytic speculation starts from the impression gained on investigating unconscious processes that consciousness cannot be the most general characteristic of psychic processes, but merely a special function of them.

The Kantian proposition that time and space are necessary modes of thought may be submitted to discussion to-day in the light of certain knowledge reached through psycho-analysis.

We have found by experience that unconscious mental processes are in themselves ‘timeless’. That is to say to begin with: they are not arranged chronologically, time alters nothing in them, nor can the idea of time be applied to them.

These are negative characteristics, which can be made plain only by instituting a comparison with conscious psychic processes.

a theatrical performance will never make the same impression the second time that it did on the first occasion; indeed it is hard to persuade the adult to read again at all soon a book he has enjoyed.

Novelty is always the necessary condition of enjoyment.

The child, however, never gets tired of demanding from a grown-up the repetition of a game he has played with him before or has shown him, till at last the grown-up refuses, utterly worn out;

If then all organic instincts are conservative, historically acquired, and are directed towards regression, towards reinstatement of something earlier, we are obliged to place all the results of organic development to the credit of external, disturbing and distracting influences.

The rudimentary creature would from its very beginning not have wanted to change, would, if circumstances had remained the same, have always merely repeated the same course of existence.

But in the last resort it must have been the evolution of our earth, and its relation to the sun, that has left its imprint on the development of organisms.

Let us boldly try to go a step further. According to general opinion the union of numerous cells into one vital connection, the multicellularity of organisms, has become a means to the prolongation of their span of life.

One cell helps to preserve the life of the others, and the cell-community can go on living even if single cells have to perish.

We have already heard that also conjugation, the temporary mingling of two unicellular entities, has a preservative and rejuvenating effect on both.

No knowledge would have been so important for the establishment of a sound psychology as some approximate understanding of the common nature and possible differences of the instincts. But in no department of psychology did one grope more in the dark.

Everyone posited as many instincts or ‘fundamental instincts’ as he pleased, and contrived with them just as the ancient Greek philosophers did with their four elements: earth, air, fire and water.

Psycho-Analysis, which could not dispense with some kind of hypothesis as to the instincts, adhered to begin with to the popular distinction, typically represented by the phrase ‘hunger and love’. It was at least no new arbitrary creation.

If, then, we are not to abandon the hypothesis of death-instincts maintained, we must associate them with life-instincts from the beginning.

But we must admit that we are working here at an equation with two unknown quantities.

Anything else that science can tell us of the origin of sexuality amounts to so little that this problem may be likened to an obscurity into which not even the ray of an hypothesis has penetrated.

We know that the final result becomes the more untrustworthy the oftener one does this in the course of building up a theory, but the precise degree of uncertainty is not ascertainable.

One may thereby have made a brilliant discovery or one may have gone ignominiously astray.

In such work I trust little to so-called intuition:

Where there are such good grounds for distrust, only a tepid feeling of indulgence is possible towards the results of one’s own mental labours. But I hasten to add that such self-criticism does not render obligatory any special tolerance of divergent opinions.

One may inexorably reject theories that are contradicted by the very first steps in the analysis of observation and yet at the same time be aware that those one holds oneself have only a tentative validity.

Were we to appraise our speculations upon the life and death-instincts it would disturb us but little that so many processes go on which are surprising and hard to picture, such as one instinct being expelled by others, or turning from the ego to an …

More accurately: I do not know how far I believe in them. It seems to me that the affective feature ‘conviction’ need not come into consideration at all here.

One may surely give oneself up to a line of thought, and follow it up as far as it leads, simply out of scientific curiosity, or—if you prefer—as advocatus diaboli, without, however, making a pact with the devil about it.

I am perfectly aware that the third step in the theory of instinct which I am taking here cannot claim the same certainty as the two former ones, viz. the extending of the conception of sexuality and the establishing of narcissism.

We must be patient and wait for other means and opportunities for investigation. We must hold ourselves too in readiness to abandon the path we have followed for a time, if it should seem to lead to no good result.

Only such ‘true believers’ as expect from science a substitute for the creed they have relinquished will take it amiss if the investigator develops his views further or even transforms them.

For the rest we may find consolation in the words of a poet for the slow rate of progress in scientific knowledge: