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September, 1985
The traditional translation of Lustprinzip into "Pleasure Principle" does have a lot behind it. Freud's own ever-varying accounts of this ancient notion range—quite characteristically—between two poles: (1) Perceived sensations—people always try to avoid unpleasant sensations or to do what they expect to feel good. (2) Regulatory principles: all human activity seeks some constant rhythm, stability, Nirvana, or some such universal aim. The first of these is practically the same as Freud's assumption of psychic determinism, that is, all human behavior is motivated (Smith, 1977). The second was an attempt to divine some psycho-biological law analogous to the Laws of Thermodynamics. Often, Freud (1915) has it both ways at once: "The activities of the most highly developed psychic apparatus submit to the Lustprinzip, that is, are automatically regulated by sensations ranging from Lust to Unlust" (Empfindungen der Lust-Unlustreihe, G. W., 10, p. 214). If one puts the sentence which caught Grossman's eye back into the chapter which Freud crafted for it, I think