12. The Unpleasure Principle

The concepts pleasure and unpleasure principles, as previously indicated, were formulated by Freud in the context of such genetic hypotheses as the development of the mental apparatus, and more specifically in the context of the discussion of his concepts of wish, instinctual drives, and the primary and secondary processes. I shall try to show that Freud used two main models for both the development of the mental apparatus and his concepts unpleasure and pleasure principles. These models have phylogenetic and ontogenetic implications.

The first model appeared in many of Freud's formulations, starting as early as 1892, and was subsequently restated in various terms throughout his work.1 It is generally assumed to follow Fechner's “principle of constancy.” However, on closer inspection we see that some of Freud's formulations do not quite conform to this principle. Freud quoted the following passage from Fechner in Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920):

Fechner's statement is to be found contained in a small work, Einige Ideen zur Schöpfungs-und Entwicklungsgeschichte der Organismen, 1873 (Part XI, Supplement, 94), and reads as follows: ‘In so far as conscious impulses always have some relation to pleasure or unpleasure, pleas

1. See Strachey's numerous Editor's footnotes; e.g., Standard Edition, V, p. 565; XIV, pp. 119, 121; XVIII, p. 9.

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ure and unpleasure too can be regarded as having a psychophysical relation to conditions of stability and instability. This provides a basis for a hypothesis into which I propose to enter in greater detail elsewhere. According to this hypothesis, every psycho-physical motion rising above the threshold of consciousness is attended by pleasure in proportion as, beyond a certain limit, it approximates to complete stability, and is attended by unpleasure in proportion as, beyond a certain limit, it deviates from complete stability; while between the two limits, which may be described as qualitative thresholds of pleasure and unpleasure, there