Freud, “The Economic Problem of Masochism” (1924) (V)
I ended the last entry with a lengthy, compact quotation from Freud’s “Economic Problem,” which I promised to examine in greater detail. Here, again, is the quotation:
“[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)
What is Freud saying in this passage? Once again, the ambiguity of important words and formulations raises real theoretical questions for the reader. Let us consider each of Freud’s sentences here in turn.
“[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.”
What, first of all, might it mean to claim that the Nirvana principle “belongs” to the death drive? Freud must be repeating the previous thought that — in its “purity,” at least — the “aim” of this drive “is to conduct the restlessness of life into the stability of of the inorganic state” (414). For the Nirvana principle precisely marks this tendency of mind — to work off, and keep at a minimum, all inner excitations. In a vacuum, that is, this is how things look.
Yet this is not how things look, since, as Freud continues, the Nirvana principle “has undergone a modification in living organisms through which it has become the pleasure principle.” But what could that mean? — What is it, generally speaking, for one principle to “undergo a modification” such that it thence “becomes” a second principle? A reader might initially suppose that, in “becoming” the pleasure principle, the Nirvana principle has effectively given way to it. (An acorn that “becomes” an oak tree no longer exists as an acorn. It has effectively become something else.) If things were this simple, then we wouldn’t need to worry any longer about the Nirvana principle; it would be altogether displaced. Life generally, and the mental apparatus specifically, would now answer exclusively to the pleasure principle. And this is, indeed, what terms like “modification” and “becoming” seem to signify in the quoted lines.
But this impression is surely mistaken. Everything leading up to this passage — in the essay itself, and in Freud’s theoretical development — implies, not that the pleasure principle has displaced the Nirvana principle, but that it has supplemented it, or operates alongside of it. And Freud’s plea, a moment later, to “avoid regarding the two principles as one” strongly indicates a need to keep these principles separate, based on the persisting operation of both. More conclusively, though, in the next paragraph, Freud explicitly confirms that — notwithstanding the introduction of both the “pleasure principle” and its modification, the “reality principle” — the Nirvana principle continues to exert itself. In other words, the latter has precisely not been displaced:
“None of these three principles [i.e. the “Nirvana,” “pleasure,” and “reality” principles] is actually put out of action by another. As a rule they are able to tolerate one another, although conflicts are bound to arise occasionally from the fact of the differing aims that are set for each.” (415)
Hence by “modification” and “become,” Freud can only mean that the Nirvana principle’s (formerly uncontested) reign has now been joined and, more importantly, circumscribed, by another principle, a second “tendency,” representing a distinct force of its own.
In other words, if the Nirvana principle “belongs” [zugehörige] to the death drive, the question naturally arises: to what “power” does the pleasure principle belong? We will learn the latter’s identity by returning to the passage we’ve been trying to grasp:
“It is not difficult, if we care to follow up this line of thought, to guess what power [Macht] 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.”
This “solution,” so plain and definitive on its face, in reality revives a number of those ambiguities we’ve been trying to settle. For here Freud similarly speaks — without elaboration — of a “modification.” Once again, it is as though only one principle, law, or tendency is under review — a principle that, once upon a time, promoted regression to inertia (Nirvana), but that has in the meantime ‘turned into’ some other principle promoting pleasure and the avoidance of pain. Were such a picture viable, we might expect that, corresponding to such a modification, the death drive would itself “become” the life or libidinal drive, that is, Eros.
But Freud’s language towards the end of the passage excludes both that picture of “principles” and its corollary, namely, the notion of a drive, “becoming” another one (say, under an evolutionary pressure of some kind). Again, “the life instinct, the libido…has thus, alongside of the death instinct, seized upon a share in the regulation of the processes of life.” From these reflections we know at least two things:
Most obviously, just as the Nirvana principle “belongs” to the death drive — that is, expresses the sort of regularity or lawfulness a “power” so constituted will evince — likewise, the pleasure principle “belongs” to Eros, the libidinal drive, expressing (to be sure, in an irreducibly first-personal way) the “law” of the latter.
Freud confirms that the “modification” he proposes is one, not of displacement, but of supplementation. Only this way of viewing things will tally with Freud’s descriptions of the subsequent “fusions” in human beings of these separate drives (both in this piece and others, including The Ego and the Id and Civilization and its Discontents). Eros has, in Freud’s words, “alongside of the death instinct, seized upon a share in the regulation of the processes of life” (my italics). The “processes of life” — including, of course, human mentality and behavior — are now subjected to the “regulation” of both powers, in accordance, undoubtedly, with both principles.