Freud, “The Economic Problem of Masochism” (1924) (IV)
We have seen that, by the time of “Economic Problem,” the “Nirvana” and “pleasure” principles are no longer equivalent. For this reason, the “aims” urged by these principles do not always coincide, though Freud does not exclude the possibility, even the probability, of such a coincidence. In the final analysis, these principles legislate distinct aims, which can and do draw the organism in different directions.
While as a rule, in other words, we can perhaps assume a “coincidence” between the pleasure principle and Nirvana principle, there are situations in which they deviate from one another and come into conflict. In fact, there seem to be a few possibilities which Freud does not take much care to differentiate. Consider the following:
We may imagine a situation in which the pleasure principle and the Nirvana principle, though distinct, are both operative and “determinant” of mental life: one pursues experiences that yield pleasure and, at the same time, reduce tension.
We may likewise imagine situations where abiding by one of these principles appears to exclude — or at least weakens the hegemony of — the other. For instance, one may pursue pleasures that involve a heightening of stimulation. Or — while Freud doesn’t cite any such scenario — one may be compelled towards some tension-reducing behavior or act that is nonetheless felt as unpleasurable.
Finally, we are invited to consider phenomena, among which masochism might be counted, that potentially violate both. On its face, after all, masochism may conform neither to the pleasure principle nor to the constancy principle.
To compound this complexity, let me reiterate what I have suggested in the last couple of entries: it seems that the pleasure principle is irreducibly first-personal. The items “pleasure” and “unpleasure” depend essentially upon our experiencing, that is, our feeling them to be so. To be sure, these feelings must, for Freud, bear some kind of regular connection to the “objective” state of affairs within the organism: the “economic” (as well as the “dynamic” and “topographic”) situation. But beyond this hypothesized “regularity” we cannot say much. To repeat Freud’s words: although “the series of feelings of tension” provide “a direct sense of the increase and decrease of amounts of stimulus” (414), “pleasure” and “unpleasure” themselves “cannot be referred to an increase or decrease of a quantity (which we describe as ‘tension due to stimulus’), although they obviously have a great deal to do with that factor” (414). The pleasure principle, then, is nothing immediately economic, but rather marks the (unknown) manner in which these economics are apprehended.
In any case, let us bracket for now our suspicions and reservations about Freud’s apparent category confusion between first- and third-personal levels. For the most part, I think, Freud himself is scarcely aware of such confusion; for him, the pleasure principle is as fully “objective” as the Nirvana principle.
Principles and Drives
Freud now indicates that, in its “pure" form, the Nirvana principle represents the aim of dissolution or decomposition — drawing backward what is organically “developed” to its less developed, and ultimately inert condition. In other words, the principle is inseparable from Thanatos, the death drive, “whose aim is to conduct the restlessness of life into the stability of the inorganic state” (414).
But in point of fact, neither the Nirvana principle, nor the death drive it expresses, are ever encountered in their “purity.” With the transition from inorganic to organic reality, at any rate, the Nirvana principle’s reign — formerly uncontested — is complicated by its sequel, Eros, as Freud continues:
“[W]e must perceive that the Nirvana principle, belonging as it does to the death instinct, has undergone a modification in living organisms through which it has become the pleasure principle; and we shall henceforward avoid regarding the two principles as one. It is not difficult, if we care to follow up this line of thought, to guess what power was the source of the modification. It can only be the life instinct, the libido, which has thus, alongside of the death instinct, seized upon a share in the regulation of the processes of life. In this way we obtain a small but interesting set of connections. The Nirvana principle expresses the trend of the death instinct; the pleasure principle represents the demands of the libido; and the modification of the latter principle, the reality principle, represents the influence of the external world” (414-415)
In the next entries, I will provide a running commentary to this compact and evocative passage.