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A collection of some of Freud's most famous essays, including ON THE INTRODUCTION OF NARCISSISM; REMEMBERING, REPEATING AND WORKING THROUGH; BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE; THE EGO AND THE ID and INHIBITION, SYMPTOM AND FEAR.
Controversial 1920 publication expands Freud's theoretical approach to include the death drive. The philosopher's concept of the ongoing struggle between harmony (Eros) and destruction (Thanatos) influenced his subsequent work.
Beyond the Pleasure Principle is Freud’s most philosophical and speculative work, exploring profound questions of life and death, pleasure and pain. In it Freud introduces the fundamental concepts of the “repetition compulsion” and the “death drive,” according to which a perverse, repetitive, self-destructive impulse opposes and even trumps the creative drive, or Eros. The work is one of Freud’s most intensely debated, and raises important questions that have been discussed by philosophers and psychoanalysts since its first publication in 1920. The text is presented here in a contemporary new translation by Gregory C. Richter. Appendices trace the work’s antecedents and the many responses to it, including texts by Plato, Friedrich Nietzsche, Melanie Klein, Herbert Marcuse, Jacques Derrida, and Judith Butler, among many others.
Freud's Beyond the Pleasure Principle constitutes a major landmark and a real turning point in the evolution of psychoanalytic theory. Pushing aside the primacy of the tension-discharge-gratification model of mental dynamics, this work introduced the notion of a "daemonic force" within all human beings that slowly but insistently seeks psychic inactivity, inertia, and death. Politely dismissed by some as a pseudo-biological speculation and rapturously espoused by others as a bold conceptual advance, "death instinct" became a stepping stone to the latter conceptualizations of mind's attacks on itself, negative narcissism, addiction to near-death, and the utter destruction of meaning in some clinical situations. The concept also served as a bridge between the quintessentially Western psychoanalysis and the Eastern perspectives on life and death. These diverse and rich connotations of the proposal are elucidated in On Freud's "Beyond the Pleasure Principle". Other consequences of Freud's 1920 paper - namely, the marginalization of ego instincts and the "upgrading" of aggression in the scheme of things - are also addressed.
Reprint. Originally published: London, Vienna: The International psycho-analytical press, 1922, in the series: International psycho-analytical library, no. 4.
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1922 edition. Excerpt: ... VII If this attempt to reinstate aji DEGREESearlier--condition really is so universal a characteristic of the instincts, we should not find it surprising that so many processes in the psychic life are performed independently of the pleasure-principle. This characteristic would communicate itself to every part-instinct and would in that case concern a harking back to a definite point on the path of development. But all that the pleasureprinciple has not yet acquired power over is not therefore necessarily in opposition to it, and we have not yet solved the problem of determining the relation of the instinctive repetition processes to the domination of the pleasure-principle. We have recognised that one of the earliest and most important functions of the psychic apparatus is to 'bind' the instreaming instinctive excitations, to substitute the 'secondary process' for the 'primary process' dominating them, and to transform their freely mobile energy-charge into a predominantly quiescent (tonic) charge. During this transformation no attention can be paid to the development of 'pain', but the 80 pleasure-principle is not thereby annulled. On the contrary, the transformation takes place in the service of the pleasure-principle; the binding is an act of preparation, which introduces and secures its sovereignty. Let us distinguish function and tendency more sharply than we have hitherto done. The pleasureprinciple is then a tendency which subserves a certain function--namely, that of rendering the psychic apparatus as a whole free from any excitation, or to keep the amount of excitation constant or as low as possible. We cannot yet decide with certainty for either of these conceptions, but we note that the function so defined would partake of the
Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.
A new translation from the original German manuscript of Freud's famous 1920 Beyond the Pleasure Principle (Jenseits des Lustprinzips) and related wrings on the antinomy of sexuality and morality. Here, Feuerbach's influence on Freud shines through as his Materialistic Epicureanism meets Hume's English Empiricism. This collection combines 4 major works on Sexual Ethics and MetaPsychological concepts into a single volume, containing: In German: 1920 Jenseits des Lustprinzips 1906 Meine Ansichten über die Rolle der Sexualität in der Ätiologie der Neurosen 1908 Der Dichter und das Phantasieren 1924 Der Untergang des Ödipuskomplexes In English: 1920 Beyond the Pleasure Principle 1906 My Views on the Role of Sexuality in the Etiology of the Neuroses 1908 The Poet and Fantasizing 1924 The demise of the Oedipus complex This edition includes an introduction by the translator on the philosophic differences between Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud, a glossary of Freudian Psychological terminology and a timeline of Freud’s life & works. This is Volume XII in the 2023 Complete Works of Sigmund Freud by NL Press. This new translation of Freud's collected systematic works laid out across 14 volumes by topic and contains essays which have never been translated into until now.
