Beyond the Pleasure Principle and Other Writings

by Sigmund Freud

  10. [Before acquiring its more modern senses, the word ‘organization’ (Organisation in Freud's German) related chiefly to ‘organ’, ‘organism’ etc.; cf. the OED entry for ‘Organization’: ‘The action of organizing, or condition of being organized, as a living being’; ‘An organized structure, body, or being; an organism’ (etc.).]

  11. [Instanz.]

  12. Cf. Beyond the Pleasure Principle [Chapter III, third paragraph].

  13. [Tiefenpsychologie. Freud appears to use the term as a synonym for ‘psychoanalysis’ (cf. OED: ‘depth psychology’).]

  14. [Cf. the 1921 example of the term ‘pathological’ quoted in the OED: ‘The pathological method… traces the decay or demoralization of mental life instead of its growth.’]

  15. See Beyond the Pleasure Principle [Chapter IV, fifth paragraph].

  16. ‘Das Unbewusste’ (1915) [‘The Unconscious’; see Chapter VII].

  17. [The terms of Freud's argument here are likely to prove baffling unless the reader refers back to the relevant passage in ‘The Unconscious’ (see preceding footnote), where he asserts inter alia that as subjects we entertain a dual notion of objects: a ‘thing-notion’ (Sachvorstellung), and a ‘word-notion’ (Wortvorstellung). A conscious notion includes both ‘thing-notion’ and ‘word-notion’; an unconscious notion consists solely of a ‘thing-notion’; a pre-conscious notion consists of a ‘thing-notion’ potentiated by direct association with the corresponding ‘word-notion’. Matters are further complicated by the fact that Freud's terminology is even more difficult to translate than usual: as noted earlier, it can often be difficult to know precisely what Freud means by Vorstellung – but the neologism Wortvorstellung is likely to perplex even the most sophisticated German reader, and any English rendering of it can be little more than an approximation (the term ‘word-presentation’ used in the Standard Edition is a particularly bizarre and misleading concoction).]

  18. [See above, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Chapter IV, second paragraph, and the associated note 23.]

  19. [In his very early treatise on aphasia, Zur Auffassung der Aphasien (1891) (On Aphasia), Freud asserts that for the purposes of psychology ‘the word’ is the basic unit of speech-function, and as such is a complex entity or ‘notion’ compounded of four distinct elements: a sound image; a visual image; a dynamic image of spoken language; a dynamic image of written language.]

  20. [According to the aphasia treatise, the development of our dynamic image of spoken language is dependent on our first learning to speak.]

  21. [See J. Varendonck, The Psychology of Day-Dreams (London and New York, 1921). Freud provided the Introduction to this volume.]

  22. [See Beyond the Pleasure Principle, above, pp. 67f.]

  23. [See Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Chapter I, second paragraph.]

  24. [ein quantitiv-qualitativ Anderes. The Standard Edition incomprehensibly chooses to ignore Freud's notion of ‘otherness’, and instead turns ein Anderes into ‘a “something”’.]

  25. [Empfindungen. Throughout this volume the words Gefühl and Empfindung are rendered as ‘feeling’ and ‘sensation' respectively – though it might be noted that Freud appears to use the words more or less interchangeably.]

  26. [See below, note 40.]

  27. G[eorg] Groddeck, Das Buch vom Es [The Book of the Id] (1923).

  28. [‘Ego’ and ‘id’ are rather fancy, rather opaque Latinisms, whereas Freud's own terms das Ich and das Es are plain and forceful, being simply noun forms of the personal pronouns ‘I’ and ‘it’. The ‘I’ is self-explanatory, but the ‘It’ perhaps less so. What is implied is clearly the impersonal form of the pronoun, as in ‘It's raining. In German, this impersonal usage is not only very common, but can also convey an unnerving sense of a particular and yet unidentifiable, unbiddable presence or force that can assert itself both within us and in the world around us. Where in English one might say ‘There was a sudden knocking at the door’ or ‘I shudder when I think of it’, German can more ominously say ‘Es klopfte plötzlich an der Tür’, ‘Es schaudert mich, wenn ich daran denke’. It is this potentially menacing order of things that Freud is referring to in his Groddeck-inspired image of ‘unknown and uncontrollable forces’ at the very heart of our existence. See also below, Inhibition, Symptom, and Fear, note 5.]

  29. [The unshakeably well-established terms ‘ego’ and ‘id’ are retained throughout the present translation – but the real force of this particular sentence can only be appreciated by substituting the direct English equivalents of Freud's own terms: we are essentially an ‘it’, and on top of this ‘it’ sits our comparatively puny ‘I’.]

  30. [The Standard Edition alleges that this ‘its’ means ‘the ego's’ – but both logic and the grammar of Freud's German suggest that he means ‘the id's'.]

  31. [See above, note 14.]

  32. [See Beyond the Pleasure Principle, above, p. 65f.]

  33. [See above, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, note 3.]

  34. [Das Ich ist vor allem ein körperliches, es ist nicht nur ein Oberflächenwesen, sondern selbst die Projektion einer Oberfläche. There are surely few statements in Freud's work at once so laconic and enigmatic. The original (1927) English translation sought to clarify things with a footnote (duly reprinted in the Standard Edition) that was allegedly ‘authorized by Freud’ – but which arguably puts a slant on his words that he never intended. The sentence itself is translated thus: ‘The ego is first and foremost a bodily ego; it is not merely a surface entity, but is itself the projection of a surface’; the footnote then comments: ‘I.e. the ego is ultimately derived from bodily sensations, chiefly from those springing from the surface of the body. It may thus be regarded as a mental projection of the surface of the body, besides, as we have seen above, representing the superficies of the mental apparatus.’ The main clue suggesting that Freud meant something rather different lies in the word ‘projection’ (Projektion), which he surely uses in the modern neurophysiological sense defined thus in the OED: ‘The spatial distribution, in the brain…, of the points to which nerve impulses go from any given area or organ;… also concretely, a tract of projection fibres.’ (See also the sample quotation dated 1938: ‘the cerebral cortex… gives rise to a vast extrapyramidal projection passing to many sub-cortical levels’.) Thus in saying that the ego is not a ‘surface entity’ but the projection of a surface, Freud is surely arguing that it is not merely two-dimensional, but is spatially and hence three-dimensionally embodied within us. On this interpretation, Freud's ‘körperlich’ does not mean that the ego is ‘bodily’, i.e. ‘derived from bodily sensations’, but that it is itself ‘corporeal’ or ‘body-like’. This reading is supported by the ‘cerebral homunculus’ analogy that Freud proceeds to offer by way of illustration: the anatomical representation now best known as ‘Penfield's homunculus’ depicts the cortex surrounded by a (decidedly grotesque) human figure, in order to demonstrate that neural processes in the brain are organized somatotopically, that is, mapped in such a way that they mimic the locations of the organs and tissues that they serve (see the following note). In the end, however, it has to be acknowledged that Freud simply does not explain himself at all clearly…]

  35. [The search terms ‘cerebral homunculus’ and ‘Penfield's homunculus’ yield numerous helpful sites on the internet.]

  36. Precisely such a case was reported to me only recently – as a counter to my description of ‘dream-work’.

  37. [ein Körper-Ich. This must surely qualify as one of the very weirdest of all Freud's compound-noun concoctions.]

  38. [modifiziert; see above, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, note 6.]

  39. ‘Zur Einführung des Narzissmus’ [‘On the Introduction of Narcissism’ (1914)]; Massenpsychologie und Ich-Analyse [Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (1921)].

  40. The only thing that seems erroneous and in need of correction is my contention that this super-ego is responsible for ‘reality-checking’. It would entirely fit in with
the ego's relationship to the world of perception if it turned out that reality-checking had remained one of its own particular tasks. – I should also like to take this opportunity to correct various rather vague statements that I have made in the past concerning the ‘nucleus of the ego’: only the Pcpt-Cs system can properly be regarded as the nucleus of the ego.

  41. ‘Trauer und Melancholie’ [‘Mourning and Melancholia’ (1917)].

  42. The substitution of identification for object-choice has an interesting parallel in the belief of primitive peoples – and the taboos associated therewith – that when an animal is eaten, its qualities accrue to the eater and become part of his own character. As is well known, this belief also contributed to the emergence of cannibalism, and continues to play a part in the whole gamut of successive totem-meal customs, right through to Holy Communion. The results that are supposed – according to this belief – to flow from orally asserting control over the object really do apply when it comes later on to sexual object-choice.

  43. [Ichveranderung. Needless to say, this is another of Freud's special compounds, and does not exist in any parlance other than his own.]

  44. [Charakterveränderung.]

  45. Having now drawn a distinction between the ego and the id, we must acknowledge the id as the great reservoir of the libido that we spoke of in our ‘Narcissism’ essay [see above, On the Introduction of Narcissism, note 10; see also Beyond the Pleasure Principle, note 58]. The libido that flows into the ego as a result of the identifications described above occasions its secondary narcissism.

  46. [Triebentmischung. In inventing this important term, Freud borrowed from chemistry: entmischen is the standard German word for ‘dissociate’, i.e. ‘To separate the elements of (a compound)’ (OED). However, since he frequently (as here) uses Entmischung in tandem with Mischung, it seems wise to adopt a similar word-pair in English – hence ‘merge’/‘de-merge’ throughout this present volume (in preference to ‘fuse’/‘defuse’, the word-pair adopted in the Standard Edition).]

  47. It would perhaps be wiser to say ‘with the parents’, for a child does not esteem its father and its mother any differently until it has become fully aware of the difference between the sexes, namely lack of a penis. Listening to the story of a young woman recently, I discovered that once she had noticed her own lack of a penis, she didn't assume that all women were devoid of this organ, but only those she considered inferior. She continued to believe that her mother possessed one. As it will make it easier to present my argument, I shall deal solely with identification with the father. [The Standard Edition curiously converts the young woman’ (eine junge Frau) into a ‘young married woman’!]

  48. [See On the Introduction of Narcissism, above, pp. 16ff]

  49. Cf. Massenpsychologie und Ich-Analyse [Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (1921)].

  50. [See above, p. 120.]

  51. [The woolliness of expression is Freud's own: it makes little apparent sense to say that a ‘simple Oedipus complex’ represents ‘a simplification’.]

  52. [This may seem confusing, but it faithfully reflects Freud's German. His terms ‘mother-object’ and ‘father-object’ (Mutterobjekt/Vaterobjekt) appear to be shorthand for ‘object-cathexis in respect of the mother’ and ‘object-cathexis in respect of the father’.]

  53. [The Standard Edition incorporates two notable alterations in this sentence – alterations that were already included in the original 1927 English version, allegedly at the specific behest of Freud (although no authograph revisions have ever materialized, and the relevant sentence remained unchanged in subsequent German editions): (i) in place of ‘two… biological factors’, the Standard Edition prints: ‘two… factors, one of a biological and the other of a historical nature’; (ii) in place of ‘which we have of course attributed to’, the Standard Edition prints: ‘the repression of which we have shown to be connected with’.]

  54. [The hypothesis was Ferenczi's. See also Inhibition, Symptom, and Fear, below, p. 223 and the relevant note (63).]

  55. [Freud's word here is Seelenleben, literally ‘life of the soul’. Normally in this volume the word is translated as ‘psychic life’, ‘life of the psyche’ or simply ‘psyche’ – but its essentially religious origins are highly pertinent in this particular context.]

  56. [See below, Inhibition, Symptom, and Fear, note 10.]

  57. We are leaving science and art aside at this point.

  58. [Freud's word here (as also in the second sentence of the closing paragraph of this chapter) is Bewältigung, from the verb bewältigen, which derives from Gewalt (power, force, violence), and means ‘to deal with [a challenge etc.] by deploying sufficient energy/force/staying power’; thus one can bewältigen a difficult task, an arduous journey, an enormous meal. A frequent and important word in Freud's vocabulary, it is normally rendered in this volume as ‘control’, ‘assert control over’ – but in this particular case ‘overcome’ is more apt, given Freud's oft-repeated emphasis on the ultimate ‘dissolution’, ‘destruction’ etc. of the Oedipus complex. In the Standard Edition the term is routinely and somewhat misleadingly rendered as ‘master’.]

  59. [The Standard Edition speaks of ‘a superstructure built upon impulses of jealous rivalry’ – but this is a serious misreading of Freud's German (Überbau über die… Rivalitätsregungen). The strikingly unusual grammar (über + accusative, not dative) means that the phrase unquestionably does not describe some static edifice ‘built upon’ a foundation of jealous feelings, but a construct actively, purposely built out over and above them in order to disguise or – in effect – to sublimate them.]

  60. Cf. Massenpsychologie und Ich-Analyse [Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (1921)], and ‘Über einige neurotische Mechanismen bei Eifersucht, Paranoia und Homosexualität’ [‘Some Neurotic Mechanisms in Jealousy, Paranoia and Homosexuality’, (1921)].

  61. [See the opening paragraphs of Chapter III.]

  62. [Freud's word for ‘its’ is ambiguous: grammatically it can refer to ‘the ego’ or to ‘the Oedipus complex’. The Standard Edition questionably resolves the ambiguity by altering the formulation to ‘cathexis of the latter’, that is, of the Oedipus complex.]

  63. [According to legend, warriors slain in the course of the Romans' defeat of Attila the Hun in the mighty Battle of Châlons continued the fight even in death, and Kaulbach's painting duly depicts not only the battle on the ground, but also the battle in the heavens.]

  64. [See Beyond the Pleasure Principle, above, p. 92.]

  65. [See Beyond the Pleasure Principle, above, p. 89.]

  66. [See also Inhibition, Symptom, and Fear, below, p. 181.]

  67. [The triple use in this sentence of the word ‘object’, though unavoidable, masks the fact that in the first two instances Freud uses the technical term Objekt, whereas in the third he uses Gegenstand – the everyday word for e.g. ‘the subject of his novel’ or ‘the object of our interest’. Regarding the general topic of identification in homosexuality, see above, p. 127, and Freud's references to his own publications in the relevant note (60).]

  68. [Freud's grammar is such that in purely linguistic terms the following interpretation is equally possible: ‘… in the process of overcoming the hostile feelings of rivalry that lead to homosexuality’. In the context of Freud's actual argument here, this reading is far less plausible – but the Standard Edition opts for it none the less.]

  69. [Freud's relative pronoun is unambiguously ‘who’, not ‘what’; he presumably meant it as a personification implying ‘which bit of the psyche?’]

  70. [The notion of an unpleasurable build-up of libido is also mentioned in the Narcissism essay; see above, pp. 13–14.]

  71. [This tale clearly tickled Freud's fancy: he cites it not only here, but also in the final chapter of The Joke and Its Relation to the Unconscious (1905) and in the eleventh of his Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis: New Series (1916–17).]

  72. [See Beyond the Pleasure Princ
iple, Chapter V, second paragraph.]

  73. [See above, pp. 120–21.]

  74. [Freud would appear to be pointing here to the hypothesis he advances in the last paragraph on p. 144.]

  75. [Freud is clumsily elliptical here: it is of course not the narcissism itself that has been ‘withdrawn from objects’, but rather its libido; see Beyond the Pleasure Principle, above, pp. 89f. It might also be noted that this remark of Freud's bears on a crucial and problematic ambivalence in his position concerning the true source of the libido; see On the Introduction of Narcissism, note 10.]

  76. On our understanding of things, the destruction drives directed towards the external world have of course been diverted from the individual's own self through the intervention of Eros. [See above, p. 132.]

  77. [See Beyond the Pleasure Principle, above, pp. 46f.]

  78. [See Beyond the Pleasure Principle, above, p. 85.]

  79. [The Standard Edition has a particularly damaging error here, rendering Freud's unambiguous phrase sich… dem Ich entgegenstellen as ‘stand[ing] apart from the ego’.]

  80. [See above, p. 126.]

  81. One might say that the psychoanalytical or metapsychological ego stands on its head just as the anatomical ego, the ‘cerebral homunculus’, does [see above, p. 117].

  82. [See below, Inhibition, Symptom, and Fear, note 16.]

  83. The fight against the obstacle presented by this unconscious guilt-feeling is not made easy for the analyst. Attempts to tackle it directly are doomed to failure; as for indirect means, the only available option is to slowly lay bare the unconsciously repressed reasons for its existence, in the process of which it gradually turns into a conscious guilt-feeling. One stands a particularly good chance of influencing it if this Ucs guilt-feeling is a ‘borrowed’ one, i.e. the result of identification with some other person who was once the object of an erotic cathexis. A guilt-feeling that has been adopted in this way is often the sole remaining vestige of the abandoned love-relationship, and barely recognizable as such. (The similarity between this and the process that occurs in melancholia is unmistakable.) If one manages to uncover the erstwhile object-cathexis that lies behind the Ucs guilt-feeling, this often brings spectacular therapeutic success; failing that, the outcome of one's therapeutic endeavours is decidedly uncertain. The key factor determining the outcome is the intensity of the guilt-feeling, in as much as the therapy is often unable to counter it with anything of equal force. The outcome may also depend on whether the personality of the analyst is such as to enable the patient to substitute him for his ego-ideal, although there is a temptation here for the analyst to present himself to the patient in the role of a prophet, a redeemer, a saviour of souls. As any such deployment of the physician's personality would run directly counter to the ground-rules of psychoanalysis, we must honestly admit that this constitutes a new barrier to the effectiveness of psychoanalysis, the purpose of which is of course not to render pathological reactions impossible, but to give the patient's ego the freedom to decide one way or the other.