Beyond the Pleasure Principle and Other Writings

by Sigmund Freud

  The next step came about when psychoanalysis was able to feel its way a bit closer to the psychological ego, which initially it had known only as an entity given to repression and censorship, and adept at reaction-formation and the construction of protective mechanisms. 57 It is true that critical spirits and others of a far-sighted disposition had long since objected to the libido concept being restricted solely to the energy manifested by object-oriented sexual drives; but they neglected to tell us the source of this superior knowledge, and they had no idea how to turn it to advantage in the actual practice of psychoanalysis. Things then began to progress in a more considered way when practitioners of psychoanalysis observed how regular an occurrence it was for libido to be withdrawn from the object and directed onto the ego (introversion); and in the process of studying the earliest phases of libido development in children, they came to the conclusion that the ego is the true and original reservoir of the libido, and that it is from there that the libido is first extended to objects.58 The ego thus took its place amongst the sexual objects, and was immediately recognized as the most sophisticated of them all. When the libido resided in the ego in this way, it was termed ‘narcissistic’.59 This narcissistic libido was of course also in psychoanalytical terms a manifestation of energy on the part of sexual drives, which one had no choice but to identify with the ‘self-preservation drives’ that had been acknowledged from the outset. This meant that the original antithesis of ego drives and sexual drives was no longer adequate. A part of the ego drives was now recognized as being libidinal; within the ego there were – in addition to others no doubt – sexual drives at work as well. None the less, it can justifiably be said that the old principle that psychoneurosis60 rests upon a conflict between the ego drives and the sexual drives contains nothing that we would nowadays reject. The distinction between the two kinds of drives, which was originally thought of as being qualitative in some way, now simply has to be differently defined, namely as being topical in nature.61 The transference neuroses in particular - the real object of study in psychoanalysis - are still the result of a conflict between the ego and a libidinal object-cathexis.

  It is all the more necessary that we stress the libidinal character of the self-preservation drives at this point since we want to take the argument a step further by venturing to see in the sexual drive the all-preserving force that is Eros, and to suggest that the ego's narcissistic libido derives from the quotas of libido that enable the soma cells to adhere to each other. But we now find ourselves suddenly confronted by a challenging question: if the self-preservation drives are also libidinal in nature, then perhaps we have no drives whatever except libidinal ones? There are certainly no others in evidence. But if this is so, then we are going to have to concede the point after all to those critics who suspected from the outset that psychoanalysis would explain everything in terms of sexuality, or to those innovators like Jung who opted without further ado to use ‘libido’ for ‘drive-energy’ in general. Is this not the case?

  This would certainly not be the outcome we intended. On the contrary, the starting point of our whole argument was the sharp distinction that we drew between ego drives – death drives – on the one hand, and sexual drives – life drives – on the other. (We were of course prepared at one stage to include amongst the death drives the self-preservation drives attributed to the ego, but we have since decided that this view was incorrect and withdrawn it.62) Our conception has been a dualistic one right from the outset, and remains so today more emphatically than ever, particularly since we started classifying the two opposites as ‘life drives and death drives’ rather than ‘ego drives and sexual drives’. Jung's theory, on the other hand, is monistic; the fact that he used the term ‘libido’ for what he saw as a single drive-energy was bound to cause confusion, but need not concern us any further.63 We strongly suspect that other drives are active within the ego besides the libidinal self-preservation drives; we just need to be able to produce evidence of them. It is regrettable that analysis of the ego has made so little progress that we find it exceedingly difficult to provide this proof. The libidinal ego drives may of course be tied in some very particular way to the other ego drives that are as yet unknown to us. Even before we had fully recognized the phenomenon of narcissism, it was suspected within psychoanalysis that the ‘ego drives’ had acquired libidinal components. But these are distinctly shaky notions that will hardly do much to convince our opponents. It really is most unfortunate that analysis has thus far only ever enabled us to demonstrate the presence of libidinal drives.64 None the less, the conclusion that there simply aren't any others is not one that we are minded to share.

  Given that so much is obscure at present in the theory of drives, it would surely not be sensible of us to reject any idea that promises to cast light on the matter. Our departure point was the great antithesis of life drives and death drives. Object-love itself shows us a second such polarity – that of love (affection) and hate (aggression). What if we succeeded in connecting these two polarities, what if we succeeded in tracing one back to the other! We have always acknowledged a sadistic component in the sexual drive;65 as we know, this component can develop a life of its own and turn into a perversion that dominates a person's entire sexual life. It also occurs as a dominant partial drive in one of those forms of organization of sexual life that I have termed ‘pre-genital’. But how could we possibly suppose that the sadistic drive, which aims to harm its object, derives from Eros, the preserver of life? Isn't it altogether plausible to suppose that this sadism is actually a death drive that has been ousted from the ego at the instance of the narcissistic libido, and as a result only becomes apparent in conjunction with the object? It then becomes an ancillary of the sexual function. In the oral stage of the organization of the libido, ‘taking possession of the love object’ and ‘destroying the object’ are still coterminous; later, the sadistic drive separates off, and ultimately, in the phase of genital primacy, it serves the purposes of reproduction by taking on the role of subjugating the sexual object to the extent necessary for the fulfilment of the sexual act. Indeed, one could say that, following its expulsion from the ego, the sadistic element shows the libidinal components of the sexual drive which direction to take; in due course they follow its example and strive to reach the object. Where the primal sadism element does not undergo any mitigation or dilution, the outcome is an erotic life marked by the familiar ambivalence of love and hate.66

  If such a supposition is indeed permissible, then we might be said to have met the requirement that we produce an example of a death drive, albeit a displaced one. The only problem is that this conception is altogether impalpable, and indeed has a positively mystical air. We will be suspected of having resorted to desperate measures in an effort to escape from a gravely embarrassing situation. In that case we may reasonably point to the fact that such a supposition is by no means new, that we have indeed already put it forward at an earlier stage, before there was ever any mention of an embarrassing situation. At that particular time, clinical observations compelled us to form the view that masochism, the partial drive complementary to sadism, has to be understood as the sadism within an individual turning back upon his own ego. But a drive turning from object to ego is in principle no different from a drive turning from ego to object – the latter phenomenon being the new contention at issue here. That being so, then masochism – an individual's drive turning back upon his own ego – is in reality a return to an earlier stage of the drive, a regression. The account of masochism given at that time may need correcting in one particular, on the grounds that it was altogether too restrictive: masochism could also very possibly be a primary phenomenon – a notion I then sought to dispute.67

  But let us return to the life-preserving sexual drives. As we have already learnt from the research carried out on protista, the coalescence of two individuals without subsequent [cell-]division (i.e. conjugation) has a strengthening and rejuvenating effect on both individuals, assum
ing that they separate from each other soon afterwards (see above, p. 87; cf. also Lipschütz). In later generations they display no symptoms of degeneration, and appear to be capable of withstanding the injurious effects of their own metabolism for a longer period. I believe that this particular observation may also be regarded as exemplifying the effect of sexual union. But in what way does the coalescence of two cells that differ very little from one another bring about such a revitalization? The experiment in which the action of chemical and even of mechanical stimuli68 is substituted for conjugation in protozoa surely allows us to answer this question with complete confidence: it happens because of the supply of new quanta of stimulation. This in turn accords well with the hypothesis that the life process of the individual leads for intrinsic reasons to the equilibration of chemical tensions, that is to death, whereas union with the living matter of a different individual increases these tensions, introduces new vital differentiae as it were, which must then be ‘lived out’. Needless to say, this differentness must be subject to one or more optima. One of our strongest motives for believing in the existence of death drives is indeed the fact that we have perceived the dominant tendency of the psyche, and perhaps of nervous life in general, to be the constant endeavour – as manifested in the pleasure principle - to reduce inner stimulative tension, to maintain it at a steady level, to resolve it completely (the Nirvana principle, as Barbara Low has called it).69

  However, we still see it as a major drawback in our argument that in the case of the sexual drive, of all things, we remain unable to demonstrate a compulsion to repeat, the very attribute that put us on the trail of the death drives in the first place. It is true that the realm of embryonal development processes exhibits a plethora of such repetition phenomena; indeed the two germ-cells involved in sexual reproduction, together with their whole life-history, are themselves but repetitions of the very beginnings of organic life. But the fact remains that the essence of the processes that fall within the purview of the sexual drive is the coalescence of two cell bodies. In the case of the higher organisms, it is this coalescence alone that ensures the living matter's immortality.

  In other words, we would really need to attain to a full understanding of the genesis of sexual reproduction and the origins of the sexual drives in general – a task that non-specialists are bound to shrink from, and one that the specialists themselves have so far been unable to accomplish. Let us therefore focus – in the most compressed and concentrated manner possible - on those elements amidst the mass of conflicting assertions and opinions that will permit us to pick up the thread of our argument.

  One particular interpretation takes the teasing mystery out of the problem of reproduction by treating it as a manifestation of just one aspect of growth (fissiparation, gemmation, blastogenesis). Taking a sober Darwinian view of how reproduction through sexually differentiated germ-cells came about, we might envisage a scenario in which the advantage of amphimixis70 that arose from the chance conjugation of two protista at some point in the past was retained and exploited in the subsequent development process.71 On this premiss, therefore, ‘sex’ is not all that old, and the extraordinarily fierce drives that seek to bring about sexual union are thereby merely repeating something that happened by chance at a random moment in time and subsequently became firmly established because of the advantages it brought.

  The same question arises here as arose earlier in respect of death, namely whether we should rely solely on the characteristics that the protista actually exhibit, and whether we should assume that forces and processes that only become manifest in the higher organisms also only began to exist in those organisms. For our particular purposes, the above-mentioned interpretation of sexuality has very little to offer. One can reasonably object that it presupposes the existence of life drives that were already active in the simplest organisms, for otherwise conjugation – which runs counter to the course of life and makes it more difficult to live life out and then die – would obviously have been avoided, not seized on and elaborated. Therefore if we do not want to abandon the hypothesis of death drives, we have to see them as having been accompanied from the very beginning by life drives. But we then have to admit that we are working on an equation with two unknowns.

  When we look to see what else science can tell us about the origins of sexuality, we find so very little that we can liken the problem to a Stygian darkness that remains unrelieved by even the faintest glimmer of a hypothesis. We do come upon such a hypothesis in a very different sort of place, but one that is so fantastic – unquestionably more myth than scientific explanation – that I would not dare to mention it here but for the fact that it meets precisely that particular condition that we are so keen to see met. For it traces a drive back to the need to restore a prior state.

  Needless to say, I mean the theory that Plato has Aristophanes expound in the Symposium, and which deals with the origins not only of the sexual drive, but also of its most important variation in relation to the object: ‘Long ago, our nature was not the same as it is now but quite different. For one thing, there were three human genders, not just the present two, male and female. There was also a third one, a combination of these two… [the] “androgynous”.’ In these human beings, however, everything was double; they therefore had four hands and four feet, two faces, two sets of genitalia, etc. Zeus then decided to ‘cut humans into two, as people cut sorb-apples in half before they preserve them… Since their original nature had been cut in two, each one longed for its own other half and stayed with it. They threw their arms round each other, weaving themselves together, wanting to form a single living thing.’72

  Shall we follow the poet-philosopher's hint and venture the hypothesis that when living matter became living matter it was sundered into tiny particles that ever since have endeavoured by means of the sexual drives to become reunited? That in the course of the protistan era these drives, in which the chemical affinity of inanimate matter still subsists, gradually overcame the difficulties put in the way of such an endeavour by an environment charged with life-threatening stimuli, and developed a cortical layer as a necessary protection against that environment? That in this way the scattered fragments of living matter achieved multicellularity and ultimately transferred the reunificatory drive to the germ-cells in the most intensely concentrated form? – But this, I think, is the appropriate point at which to stop.

  Not, however, before adding a few words of critical reflection. People might ask me whether and to what extent I myself am convinced by the hypotheses set out here. My answer would be that I am not convinced myself, nor am I trying to persuade others to believe in them. Or to put it more accurately: I do not know how far I believe in them. It seems to me that the emotional factor of ‘conviction’ need not enter into it at all. One can certainly give oneself over completely to a particular line of thought, and follow it through to wherever it leads, out of sheer scientific curiosity, or out of a desire to act as devil's advocate – without signing oneself over to the devil. I am well aware that this third step in the theory of drives that I have undertaken here cannot lay claim to the same degree of certainty as the previous two, namely the broadening of the concept of sexuality, and the postulate of narcissism. These latter innovations were a direct translation of actual observations into theory, and were susceptible to sources of error no greater than those that inevitably pertain in all such cases. To be sure, the assertion that drives are regressive in nature is also based on the observation of facts, namely those manifest in the compulsion to repeat but I have perhaps overestimated their importance. In any event, it is only possible to carry this idea through by repeatedly combining the factual with the purely notional, and thereby moving far away from empirical observation. One knows very well that the more often one does this in elaborating a theory, the more unreliable the end result becomes, but the degree of uncertainty cannot be calculated. One might have made a lucky guess, or one might have gone horribly wrong. In work of this kind I put li
ttle trust in so-called intuition, which, whenever I have encountered it, has always seemed to me more the fruit of a certain impartiality of mind – except that people are unfortunately seldom impartial when it comes to the ultimate questions, the great problems of science and of life. Here, I think, we are all ruled by proclivities that go to the very root of our being, and in our speculations we unwittingly play into their hands. Given such good grounds for mistrust, the only way for us to approach the results of our own intellectual endeavours is probably to regard them with cool benevolence. I hasten to add, however, that a self-critical stance of this kind entails absolutely no obligation to show particular tolerance to discrepant opinions. One can pitilessly reject theories that even the briefest analysis of empirical evidence serves to refute, while at the same time recognizing that the validity of one's own theory is merely provisional.

  In judging our speculations about life drives and death drives we would be little bothered by the fact that so many strange and impalpable processes figure within them, such as one drive being ousted by others, or a drive turning from the ego to the object, and so on. All of this simply arises from the fact that we must necessarily operate with the given scientific terminology, i.e. the figurative language specific to psychology (or, more precisely, depth psychology). Otherwise we couldn't describe the relevant processes at all, indeed we wouldn't even have realized that they were there. The shortcomings in our account of things would probably disappear if, instead of using psychological terminology, we were already in a position to use that of physiology or chemistry. It is true that this terminology, too, belongs to a merely figurative language – but a perhaps simpler one, and one that we have known for a longer period of time.