Editorial Comments, Modifications, and Extensions on 'Beyond The Pleasure Principle' (Freud, 1920)

1. Introduction

In this essay, we will look at some of the strengths, weaknesses, possible modifications, and/or extensions of 'the death instinct' -- a still controversial concept created by Freud in one of his most famous works, 'Beyond The Pleasure Principle', published in 1920.

We sometimes use the expression...'He has a death wish'....in the context of what most of us would view as 'very high risk-taking behavior' by some people, especially when they keep gravitating back to these types of behaviors...

Perhaps the expression,

'There is a life force, and a death force -- in everything'....

Might sit with some people better...

Let's look at some of the variables that may or may not be involved in making sense -- and/or nonsense -- out of the idea of a 'death instinct' or 'death wish' or 'death force' -- particularly the last one which may be the most palatable of the three of them...

But like usual, Freud wasn't generally interested in the 'palatable'....

He would sooner deliver the 'unpalatable' rather than the 'palatable'...

The 'shocking' rather than the 'mundane'...

And except for 1896 (when his family income and professional career may have been seriously threatened),

To 'unappease' rather than to 'appease'....

That was Freud...

And in 'Beyond The Pleasure Principle' (BPP), we enter one of his most controversial essays.

Did creating the dualism and the dialectic between 'the life instinct' and 'the death instinct' help Freud, or hinder Freud, in his post-1920 theorizing?

In some ways -- or at least partial ways -- BPP seemed like Freud 'returning to his largely dismissed 1895 Traumacy Theory' -- attempting to account for those clinical facts that he could not otherwise account for using his 'Pleasure-Unpleasure Principle' (PUP, pup) Theory.

Specifically, Freud had to deal with the clinical phenomenon of 'the repetition compulsion'. But that may have been partly why Freud largely abandoned the traumacy theory in the first place. Freud's rendition of the 'traumacy theory' back in 1895 might have been better labelled as his 'traumacy-repression-pleasure-unpleasure-principle (pup)' theory because, for Freud back then, if there was no 'repression' and/or 'resistance', then there was no 'neurosis'. If clients were 'bringing up' and 'repeating' their supposedly 'most traumatic moments' way too easily, then that seemed to violate both his repression-resistance theory and his pleasure-unpleasure (pup) principle. Freud 'solved' this clinical problem -- or so he thought at the time -- by dropping his 'painful traumacy' theory and replacing it with his new theory at the time (1897 onwards...) -- 'pleasurble fantasy' theory. But even this did not seem to entirely work -- to solve the clinical phenomenon of the 'repetition compulsion'...

So Freud took another stab at soving the 'repetition compulsion' problem in 1920. Back was the Traumacy Theory (or at least partly). Gone was his PUP Theory (or at least partly). And replacing his PUP Theory -- was his new 'Death Instinct' (DI) Theory...

Did this work? Or not? ....

Let's start to look at some of the different variables surrounding BPP and Freud's new addition to Classical Psychoanalysis in 1920 -- 'the death instinct'...

....dgb, July 26th, 2011... 
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2. Language, Perceptual-Interpretations, and Paradigms


Interpreting somone else's essay can be a dangerous, misguided enterprise. Words, concepts, and theories can all play havoc with our minds -- both as writer-theorists, and as readers trying to interpret someone else's writing and theorizing.

Every word has both a 'range of self and social meaning' and a 'focus of self and social meaning', and it is quite easy for us as readers --  based partly on the 'range of self and social meaning' phenomenon, partly on our own unique 'interpretive understanding of a particular, word, concept, and/or theory, as we apply it to a particular reading context, and in this regard, our own range and focus of different ideas and/or experiences that we are most likely to apply to a given reading context, all else being equal -- based on all of these different factors, it becomes extremely easy in many instances to 'end up on a different page of meaning than the writer we are trying (or not trying) to properly understand' . In so doing, as readers, we may easily miss what the author really had in mind by using the same word shared by author and reader alike -- but in a totally or significantly different sense of meaning.

In reading and writing -- just as in life as a whole -- there are some readers and some writers who are more or less 'narcissistic' than others, meaning more or less willing to take the time and energy to communicate a 'shared meaning' as opposed to a 'we, as reader and writer respectively, locked in a dialectic relationship that has some significant limitations in terms of different goals and agendas, lack of visual ques, voice ques, full context ques, and the opportunity for 'checking meaning' (in the case of a written piece of work) -- may or may not have the patience and/or motivation in our 'fast moving world' to do anything other than to 'look for instant gratification and/or miracle solution pills', on our terms, meaning we don't want to work too hard (like not wanting to exercise or change our diet to lose the pounds we want to lose), at the expense of missing an opportunity to 'dialectically and democraticly connect' -- meaning both sides reaching out to understand the other person's frame of reference, while at the same time, being assertive in our own frame of reference, and when necessary, working hard to find the necessary common ground, to work out a mutally negotiated 'compromise-formation' that gets a settlement done and working, not forever locked in a 'strike', a 'lockout', an 'impasse', an 'either/or ultimatum'....that brings both parties into contact with what might be called 'the death, destructive, and/or self-destructive, instinct'.  We can't or won't look outside of our 'old paradigm', replace our 'old, near-sighted pair of glasses', step outside of our old 'repetition compulsion', our lifelong 'transference compulsion', our 'serial behavior pattern'  -- and adapt to a changing world, with new modified, and/or integrative responses, that work better than the 'out of date' old ones...

We evolve or we get left behind. Those who are best adapted to meet the challenges of a fast changing world, are those who have both a strong 'will to power or self-empowerment', and at the same time, a 'social sensitivity and a willingness and flexibility' to modify our own personal goals and agendas to meet those of whom we need to interact and 'share our world' with...

'Too weak' or 'too strong' are both likely to have their own respective 'death instincts, wishes, and/or forces' attached to them. Indeed, in the paradigm of Hegel, every word, every concept, every characteristic, every person, has its own respective 'life' and 'death' force attached to it...in different degrees, in different contexts, and at different times... In different ways, we all need to 'nurture' our 'life wishes' and find different, functional ways of 'quelling our death instincts, wishes, and/or forces' before they eventually destroy us...This perhaps, is the best message to be taken from Freud's 'Beyond The Pleasure Principle' although this is perhaps a more 'existential message' than the more 'mechanistic, deterministic message' that Freud was delivering in 1920.  

 The dangers of language and the dangers of life are basically one and the same: 'not 'zigging when life zags'.

In terms of language, we must not get caught in the 'one word, one meaning fallacy'. As long as language is 'flexible' in both its range of 'narcissistic' (self), and its various range of 'social' meanings, it always will breed 'referent misinterpretation and/or confusion'.

We need to better understand how 'words' are following 'the fitting game'. Language, for the most part, was -- and is -- meant to 'symbolically represent' our internal and external world -- and the types of similar and different types of 'dynamic processes' that go on in both these worlds.

In this regard, language was created -- and is being 're-created' each and every day -- to twist and turn, zig and zag, as life twists and turns. zigs and zags, in a 'cat and mouse game' -- the 'language-life fitting game'.

No problem as long as life doesn't 'zig' as language 'zags'.....Too much of this and you have the 'deconstruction and eventual death of a concept or theory'... The constancy principle, the pleasure principle, the inertia principle, the equillibrium principle, the entropy principle, the reality principle...they all, at one point or another, have 'zigged' while life 'zagged'....They have all been 'constructed' by this or that ambitious, creative theorist; they all in turn have also been 'deconstructed' when the concept/theory missed too many 'zags' in the road of life....and left the reader conceptually flying off the cliff of 'language-life structural and/or dynamic dis-similarity'...

Every concept, every theory can be viewed as having both a life and a death instinct....

Hegel's 'death instinct' meets Freud's 'death instinct'....

In the paraphrased words of Hegel, every concept, every theory, every characteristic, carries within it, the seeds of its own self-destruction....it carries its own private 'Thanatos (death) energy' which paradoxically destroys the concept or takes it out of fashion as soon as it loses its 'predictability of life' function... 

-- dgb, July 28th, 2011

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To be continued...