THE INTERNATIONAL PSYCHO-ANALYTICAL LIBRARY EDITED BY ERNEST JONES No. 4 BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE BY SIGM. FREUD, M.D., LL.D. AUTHORIZED TRANSLATION FROM THE SECOND GERMAN EDITION BY C. J. M. HUBBACK [Illustration: [Logo]] THE INTERNATIONAL PSYCHO-ANALYTICAL PRESS LONDON MCMXXII VIENNA COPYRIGHT 1911 EDITORIAL PREFACE I have revised this translation, so carefully made by Miss Hubback, several times, but I feel that it calls for special indulgence on the part of the reader. On account, doubtless, of the extreme complexity and remarkable novelty of the ideas which Professor Freud here expounds, comprising as they do his thoughts on the ultimate problems of life, the style is one of exceptional difficulty. As it is more important to render his ideas precisely than to clothe them in another garb, we decided to adhere faithfully to the original even at the expense of some uncouthness as regards the English. The word _Unlust_, as in the phrase pleasure-pain principle, has been translated as ‘pain’; pain without inverted commas signifies _Schmerz_ in the original. The word _Besetzung_ (literally: state of being occupied), as in the expressions _Besetzungsenergie_ and _Energiebesetzung_ has been rendered by the words ‘investment’ or ‘charge’, the latter being taken from the analogy of electricity. These and other technical terms will be discussed in a Glossary which it is intended to publish as a supplement to the _International Journal of Psycho-Analysis_. BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE I In the psycho-analytical theory of the mind we take it for granted that the course of mental processes is automatically regulated by ‘the pleasure-principle’: that is to say, we believe that any given process originates in an unpleasant state of tension and thereupon determines for itself such a path that its ultimate issue coincides with a relaxation of this tension, i. e. with avoidance of ‘pain’ or with production of pleasure. When we consider the psychic processes under observation in reference to such a sequence we are introducing into our work the _economic_ point of view. In our opinion a presentation which seeks to estimate, not only the _topographical_ and _dynamic_, but also the economic element is the most complete that we can at present imagine, and deserves to be distinguished by the term _metapsychological_.