Beyond the Pleasure Principle
The late essay where Freud concedes something in us pulls the other way from pleasure.
Freud’s 1920 essay begins with the traumatic dreams of shell-shocked soldiers, which stubbornly repeat the trauma rather than fulfilling any wish, and follows the problem to a conclusion that overturned his own system: alongside the drive toward pleasure there is a drive toward return, dissolution, death. It is short, speculative, and openly uncertain of itself, which is part of why it has been argued over ever since.
Recommended by 1 Person
Andrea Long Chu
This is the book that proposed the existence of the death drive, the natural inclination in all of us to die on our own terms. In the process, Freud had to throw out his old system and create a new one. For that kind of intellectual daring alone, a thrilling read.
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