The Metapsychology of Pleasure1

This paper is relatively succinct. Addressed as it is to psycho-analysts, it has not seemed necessary to dwell on facts known to all. In one sense, it may be said that the problem of pleasure is central to all analytic concepts. It is related to the interplay of the instinctual drives, it controls the dynamic and economic processes of our mental life, it can even be found underlying the painful symptoms of neurosis, from which it obtains a secondary satisfaction. Throughout this paper an attempt has been made to discuss only such problems as are specifically related to pleasure, and such themes as present the greatest stimulus to discussion.

It is proposed to discuss the subject under the four following headings:

• I.The organization of psychological energy under the pleasure-pain principle;

• II.The study of pleasure as affect;

• III.The metapsychology of cure;

• IV.The pathology of pleasure.

I. THE ORGANIZATION OF PSYCHOLOGICAL ENERGY UNDER THE PLEASURE-PAIN PRINCIPLE

It would not be possible to quote from all the texts in which Freud has discussed this important subject, but I have chosen those which appear essential to an understanding of his thought. Let us begin with the 'Project for a Scientific Psychology' (S. Freud [1895], 1954): 'The residues of the two kinds of experiences [of satisfaction and of pain] which we have been discussing are affects and wishful states. These have in common the fact that both of them involve a heightening of the quantitative tension in Psi: in the case of the affect this is brought about by a sudden release, and in that of a wish by means of summation. Both of these states are of the greatest importance in relation to the passage of quantity in Psi, since they leave motive forces behind them which affect that passage in compulsive fashion. A wishful state produces what amounts to a positive attraction to the object of the wish, or rather to its memory-image; an experience of pain results in a repulsion, a disinclination