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In chapter 3 I referred to Freud's statement that the id “obeys” the pleasure-unpleasure principle without restriction. Similar statements about the relationship between the mental processes that take place in the id can be found in most of Freud's discussions of the id (see Chapters 3 and 5). Such conceptualizations of the interrelationship between the id and the pleasure-unpleasure principle have been greatly complicated by Freud's introduction of the “repetition compulsion” as a superordinated principle of mental functioning operating beyond the pleasure principle as an expression of the death instinct.
For this reason, as pointed out in the Introduction, a meaningful discussion of the pleasure-unpleasure principle, which in turn is intimately related to the concept id, must concern itself with the other regulatory principles. In the following chapters I shall therefore transcend the limits of the concept id. Moreover, in addition to refining theoretical formulations, I shall offer conclusions applicable to problems of psychoanalytic technique, especially in the phase of “working through.”
The obstacles to a reconsideration of our theoretical concepts are especially formidable in a discussion of Freud's use