“On the other side of the pleasure principle” ( 1920 ) is one of Sigmund Freud ’s key works, which marked a turn in his teaching and a transition from the first topical model of the psychic apparatus ( consciousness / preconscious / unconscious ) to the second ( I / It / Super-I ) , and also for the first time in psychoanalysis raised questions about the nature of obsession, about the inevitable return of psychological trauma , about the existence of a death drive .
Contents
The conclusion about the existence of an unconscious death drive was made by Freud on the basis of an analysis of the behavior of veterans and disabled people of the First World War . Psychologists and humanities traditionally blame Freud for the fact that he sees the causes of all disorders in the human sex life , and considers the principle of pleasure to be the dominant one. If for early Freud this thesis is partially plausible (before he really spoke about the supremacy of the principle of pleasure), then in the 1920 work Freud describes a more fundamental principle that works independently of the principle of pleasure - the principle of obsessive repetition - which provides a mechanism for symbolizing loss and the work of sorrow. A number of important points for this concept have already been prepared by the 1917 work “Sorrow and melancholy”.
Value
“Beyond the pleasure principle” contains a number of important clinical provisions and to this day remains the fundamental work in the treatment of traumatic neuroses, provides clues to understanding the neurosis of obsessive states , melancholy and depression . Nevertheless, most of Freud's followers took the work very cautiously, considering the thesis of the existence of a death drive to be unproven. Of neo-Freudian schools, one way or another, only the followers of Melanie Klein and Jacques Lacan recognize the existence of a death drive - both of them in a very rethought form.
Freud’s work not only painted on the pessimism of the later works of Freud himself and caused fierce debate among adherents of psychoanalysis, but also had a significant impact on the development of modern philosophy. Her analysis is devoted, for example, the book of Jacques Derrida “Passion for Freud”, she had a significant impact on the direction of research by Michel Foucault , Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari .