Pleasure principle (psychology)
In Freudian psychoanalysis, the pleasure principle (German: Lustprinzip)[1] is the instinctive seeking of pleasure and avoiding of pain to satisfy biological and psychological needs.[2] Specifically, the pleasure principle is the animating force behind the id.[3]
This article is about the psychoanalytical term. For other uses, see Pleasure principle.Precursors[edit]
Epicurus in the ancient world, and later Jeremy Bentham, laid stress upon the role of pleasure in directing human life, the latter stating: "Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure".[4]
Freud's most immediate predecessor and guide however was Gustav Theodor Fechner and his psychophysics.[5]
Freudian developments[edit]
Freud used the idea that the mind seeks pleasure and avoids pain in his Project for a Scientific Psychology of 1895,[6] as well as in the theoretical portion of The Interpretation of Dreams of 1900, where he termed it the 'unpleasure principle'.[7]
In the Two Principles of Mental Functioning of 1911, contrasting it with the reality principle, Freud spoke for the first time of "the pleasure-unpleasure principle, or more shortly the pleasure principle".[7][8] In 1923, linking the pleasure principle to the libido he described it as the watchman over life; and in Civilization and Its Discontents of 1930 he still considered that "what decides the purpose of life is simply the programme of the pleasure principle".[9]
While on occasion Freud wrote of the near omnipotence of the pleasure principle in mental life,[10] elsewhere he referred more cautiously to the mind's strong (but not always fulfilled) tendency towards the pleasure principle.[11]