Beyond the Pleasure Principle

Freud argues that The Compulsion for Life and Death offers a compelling way to organize his theories into a singular understanding of motivation. Freud asserts that every living thing, human and nonhuman, has two opposing drives: Eros and Thanatos. Eros is the life drive, seeking connection, reproduction, and pleasure, while Thanatos represents the death drive, pushing toward non-existence and destruction. 

Freud’s ideologies about Trauma and the Unconscious, the pleasure principle versus the reality principle, and the construction of the psyche as having three parts all play a role in the tension between these two forces. While Freud aligns the pleasure principle with the life drive, he also suggests that pleasure plays a role in Thanatos. The search for balance between the pleasure principle and the reality principle are indicative of a great drive toward equilibrium that is the hallmark of interaction between Eros and Thanatos.

The construction of the psyche is an important part in regulating this balance. While the ego manages the desires and traumas housed in the id, it also succumbs to the moral and social pressures of the superego. Therefore, the life drive and death drive must also be regulated in this manner, conforming to the expectations of society while compelling the individual toward both life and destruction simultaneously.

Freud sees these two compulsions as part of the constant, universal search for equilibrium. However, his repeated reminders to his readers to maintain an open mind to new theories and to recognize that his writing in the essay is merely speculation become more frequent as the essay nears its end, perhaps reflecting his decreased confidence. Freud advocates for maintaining an open mind in research and a willingness to admit when an idea is wrong:

We must be patient and await fresh methods and occasions of research. We must be ready, too, to abandon a path that we have followed for a time, if it seems to be leading to no good end. Only believers, who demand that science shall be a substitute for the catechism they have given up, will blame an investigator for developing or even transforming his views. (64)

This marks a diversion for the thinker who, in the first three sections, staunchly asserts that his previous theories should be accepted as a truth central to the field without question. The death drive is difficult to prove or explore empirically, but Freud insists that the existence of the compulsion for repetition reveals the prevalence of Thanatos and an internal drive to return to a state of non-being.

Despite his misgivings, Freud continues to hold tightly to libido and the pleasure principle. He traces the history of his own libido theory, arguing that it continues to be an important pillar of the future of psychoanalysis. His early works, such as Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, offer the first insight into the theory as Freud developed ideas about sexual energy and pleasure-seeking behavior. Freud proposes that sexual libido is the primary energy driving human behavior. He openly criticizes Jung and others who downplay the role of the pleasure principle or who try to argue that the libido is part of a singular, psychic force. His essay challenges this by showing how Thanatos and trauma can often act independently of pleasure, indicating that they belong to a separate drive.

Trauma and the Unconscious interact to create a compulsion to repeat negative experiences that have no tie to pleasure, such as repetitive nightmares of dangerous external stimuli. The repetition compulsion is an unconscious attempt to master trauma. By creating a loop of anxiety, the psyche creates a space where excess energy can be repetitively manifested. Psychoanalytical treatment can help to bring the repressed trauma trapped in the id forward into consciousness, returning the patient to equilibrium. Freud argues that this expresses the death drive’s pull toward statis and its skilled ability to disrupt the pleasure principle by reenacting pain rather than avoiding it.

By returning to his earlier example of a child’s repetitive play, Freud shows how compulsion is really about mastering anxiety. A child plays a game by throwing a toy away from himself, which symbolizes in the psyche his mother’s absence, as she must disappear to retrieve the toy. The act is performed in an effort to seek pleasure in the return of the mother and the toy. However, trauma disengages from the pleasurable outcome, trapping the individual in the feeling of loss and separation. 

Freud connects the tension between these two forces to the tension between Eros (connection) and Thanatos (loss/destruction). Freud draws from August Weismann’s germ-plasm theory to support his argument. Weismann argued that individual organisms are destined to die while reproductive cells are destined for life. The juxtaposition of these two forces informs Freud’s understanding of Eros and Thanatos as part of an individual’s unconscious drive toward an inorganic state of non-being. He proposes that both Eros and Thanatos seek the same thing: equilibrium and immortality. Eros gains immortality through reproduction, while Thanatos achieves it through eternal decay.

While Freud’s dual-drive theory was groundbreaking and marked a considerable shift in his own work and the field of psychoanalysis, it has been criticized by many thinkers, including some of his closest followers. His own acknowledgment of the work as speculative caused individuals like Wilhelm Reich to dismiss his ideas as too conjectural, and to argue that Freud lacks substantial evidence to support his claims. However, his theories continue to impact and shape contemporary understandings of medicine, trauma, and art. His conception of the compulsion to repeat and the innate tension between Eros and Thanatos has been the study of many works of literature and philosophy.