Beyond the Pleasure Principle: An Unavoidable Dualism

Beyond the Pleasure Principle presents a text that not only defines, through its originality, the "subsequent" developments of the psychoanalytic field, but also demarcates the radical nature of Freudian psychoanalysis in relation to other fields of knowledge, such as religion and moral philosophies. Since Socrates, the idea that there is a malignant impulse within man, that he can orient himself in a direction other than that of good, has been fought against. Freud touched on the question of human morality when he spoke of the existence of the death drive, of the pure destructiveness that competes with the "constructive" forces of the psychic apparatus. The existence of this drive to destruction would allow us to speak of a kind of constitutive malignancy of the human being. Psychoanalysis was founded on the observation of the good and evil that humans can inflict upon themselves. The axis of the discussion leaves aside metaphysics, religion, and pragmatism to focus on the question of enjoyment and the feeling of guilt. Both come to be seen as the true compasses that guide us toward what man calls his good or evil. In Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Freud questions the very existence of chance and destiny as determining influences on the course of a life. He closely examines cases such as that of a woman who marries and is widowed three times in a row, apparently without having any active role in any of the episodes.