So maybe Freud WAS onto something, but couldn’t muster up the faith to draw positive conclusions from it. Death does not delude.Īnd St Antony, using conviction and remorse as his personal Reality Principle, succeeded in trashing his noisy personal devils under its aegis. As a release from all our present sorrows. Plus, it hurts.īut - hold on - Christians like the great writer John Donne saw in Death the sure antidote for the ills of the world. and why Freud later judged this book as a non-starter. I think by now we’re beginning to find out why the Death Principle is a sad sorta cure for Narcissism. But in isolated ideal form, it re-enacts the voice of an adult telling us to grow up! And lights all poor witches the way to dusty death.
How many evil-minded old witches are pleased to hear their wall mirrors telling them Snow White is now fairer by far than they are?Įntropy is final, though. So the Reality Principle fixes Narcissism’s wagon pretty handily.Īnd disables it. We may not like it when entropy starts to seize us in mid-age, but speaking as a guy in his Seventies, it’s unavoidable reality. Those of you who know your scientific laws know it as Entropy. Well, that’s where Freud is foisted on his own petard.įor he calls in his own dark deus ex machina - the Grim god Thanatos, or Death. But it’s the hallmark of our original narcissistic neuroses. So we put a hex on those who cross us, figuratively speaking.ĭoes all this translate into maturity? Not on your life, Freud says. Punishing, as we ourselves were disciplined when young.
#Pleasure principle tv#
If this means six straight hours of TV and a few beers in a quiet corner after work, so be it!Īnd if we don’t like something, we will punish it for failing to give us pleasure by playing a childhood game of isolating it - away from our private play area. My good friend and co-philosophe on GR, Alex, has written a very fine heuristic study of this book which I can’t emulate, but to which I will add my two-cent addendum.įreud says, if I understand his meaning aright, that we are born impossible narcissists - and that’ll we’ll do anything in this life to keep pleasing ourselves. In 1938, shortly after the Nazis annexed Austria, Freud left Vienna for London with his wife and daughter Anna.įreud had been diagnosed with cancer of the jaw in 1923, and underwent more than 30 operations. In 1933, the Nazis publicly burnt a number of Freud's books. In 1923, he published 'The Ego and the Id', which suggested a new structural model of the mind, divided into the 'id, the 'ego' and the 'superego'. Jung later broke with Freud and developed his own theories.Īfter World War One, Freud spent less time in clinical observation and concentrated on the application of his theories to history, art, literature and anthropology. In 1910, the International Psychoanalytic Association was founded with Carl Jung, a close associate of Freud's, as the president. Although the medical establishment disagreed with many of his theories, a group of pupils and followers began to gather around Freud.
In 1902, Freud was appointed Professor of Neuropathology at the University of Vienna, a post he held until 1938. In 1900, his major work 'The Interpretation of Dreams' was published in which Freud analysed dreams in terms of unconscious desires and experiences. In 1897, he began an intensive analysis of himself. The same year he married Martha Bernays, with whom he had six children.įreud developed the theory that humans have an unconscious in which sexual and aggressive impulses are in perpetual conflict for supremacy with the defences against them. On his return to Vienna the following year, Freud set up in private practice, specialising in nervous and brain disorders. In 1885, Freud went to Paris as a student of the neurologist Jean Charcot. He collaborated with Josef Breuer in treating hysteria by the recall of painful experiences under hypnosis. After graduating, he worked at the Vienna General Hospital. In 1873, Freud began to study medicine at the University of Vienna. He is regarded as one of the most influential-and controversial-minds of the 20th century. Sigismund Freud (later changed to Sigmund) was a neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, who created an entirely new approach to the understanding of the human personality.
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