You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Human activities are determined either directly by a tendency toward or indirectly by the interests of self-preservation, which develop the reality principle, e.g., the faculty of postponing discharge and tolerating tensions. Actions executed in the interest of self-preservation are, it is true, often not only condensed with pleasure-seeking tendencies but are also apt to create a new kind of pleasure, a pleasure of mastery or achievement—'functional pleasure'.
The play of children is primarily directed at the immediate gaining of pleasure; it satisfies autoerotic, component instincts or impulses which do not come into consciousness in their original form. At the same time, however, it also develops the capacity of mastering external and internal difficulties. In contrast, while the working of adults is primarily determined by the reality principle and self-preservation, and is a striving for achievement, it is also to a certain extent a continuation of the pleasure function of playing. Between 'playing' and 'working' lies the field of 'learning', e.g., preparation for subsequent working. Learning is more interspersed with playing than is working, but like working, it is directed at achievement (or at the pleasure of being needed or rewarded).
The development from playing through learning to working takes place mostly during the latency period. 'The latency period of the sexual instincts has a parallel in the learning organization of the ego activities.' In the same way in which the component instincts are united under the primacy of the genitals, the different ego activities converge, during this time, under 'the primacy of work'. Mrs. Lantos stresses that this is not done by a 'sublimation of genital impulses'; it is rather pregenital libido which is sublimated. Artistic creation takes a strange intermediate position between playing and working.
We should like to add that work—and especially the attitude of the average superego toward work—means something en