Chapter 2. Learning from Experience

1 Describing the institution of the reality principle Freud said, “The increased significance of external reality heightened the significance also of the sense-organs directed towards that outer world, and of the consciousness attached to them; the latter now learned to comprehend the qualities of sense in addition to the qualities of pleasure and pain which hitherto had alone been of interest to it.” I emphasize, “the latter now learned to comprehend”; by “the latter” Freud presumably means “the consciousness attached to the sense impressions”.1 The attribution of comprehension to consciousness I discuss later. Of immediate concern is the function of comprehension itself; comprehension of the sense impressions and comprehension of the qualities of pleasure and pain are both investigated in this discussion. I treat sense impressions, pleasure and pain as alike real, thereby discarding the distinction that Freud makes between the “outer-world” and pleasure and pain, as irrelevant to the theme of comprehension. I shall, however, discuss the bearing of the Pleasure principle and the Reality principle on the choice that a patient can be seen to make between modifying frustration and evading it.

2 The attribution of comprehension to consciousness leads to contradictions which are avoided by accepting, for purposes of the theory I wish to propound, Freud's later conceptualization, “but what part is there left to be played in our scheme of consciousness,

which was once so omnipotent and hid all else from view? Only that of a sense-organ for the perception of psychical