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War Part 2 - Beyond the Pleasure Principle – Sigmund Freud and Beyond

Vimy

Like in the prior episode, Freud expected that WWI would make people confront death without any magical thinking, and it could also provide vigor for the person who truly accepted death. The war was fearful and traumatic, but it also gave an opportunity for people to achieve eternal glory, and if one could survive, a story to bask in for the rest of one's life. One battle that displayed both sides of terror and victory was Vimy Ridge. It was an example of a big challenge that was tempting to tackle, but not without a lot of casualties. In Vimy: The Battle and the Legend, Tim Cook described how valuable the ridge was to the allies and the sacrifice soldiers made, especially the French, to try and take it. "The 7-kilometre Vimy Ridge protected the coal-rich area around Lens that the Germans occupied and desperately needed to retain to supply their war effort...The ridge was fiercely contested because it was a commanding geographic feature on the Western Front. Whichever army held it had an enormous advantage over the force at its base...When the Canadians arrived at the foot of the western side of the ridge in October 1916, Vimy was a vast desert of shell craters and rotting corpses...There remained thousands of unburied corpses and fragments of bodies. The shell craters were filled with foul, murky water, and many contained the rotting remains of the fallen who had dragged themselves into the depths and never emerged...'Vimy was a huge grey mountainous mass of mud,' recounted Sergeant Robert Kentner. 'It appeared as though nothing had ever or ever could live upon its surface. The absolute negation of beauty, a monument of wickedness, most distorted and repulsive.'" From the vantage point of the Germans, they could see the Canadian trenches and look "straight down on it and [give] hell with artillery and trench-mortar fire everyday...Sachimoro Moro-oka, a Japanese Canadian serving with the 50th Battalion, recounted one grisly sight: 'A shell exploded among a group of men and created a terrible mixture of blood, flesh, and mud. We looked on in horror. There were bodies with no heads. One poor soul was blinded, blood pouring from his eyes.'"

Learning from the mistakes of The Somme the Canadians and British had to come up with more sophisticated methods of attack. These involved the spreading of command to empower "junior officers and non-commissioned officers (NCOs). If officers (majors, captains, and lieutenants) were knocked out in battle, the lower ranks (sergeants, corporals, and privates) were to continue on to their objectives." The new tactics required more grenades and machine guns. Grenades could be used to attack trenches and machine guns. Lewis machine guns were also used on the ground effectively and could also be used to shoot from the hip. "The Lewis gun provided more firepower than a section of riflemen and was used to pin down the enemy and allow comrades to advance and attack positions from a more advantageous location." Within around 200 metres most riflemen could use the Lee Enfield rifles. Grenades could be used within 30 metres with a blast radius of 18 metres and deadly at 5 metres. From close quarters most soldiers preferred to shoot the enemy or throw grenades, but in some cases, a bayonet had to be used. "While statistics from the war reveal a very low casualty rate from bayonets (far less than 1 percent of wounds), many of the bayonet stab wounds, which usually involved a twisting motion to free the bayonet from muscle and bone, were lethal, and under-reported in official combat records."

The airplane also revolutionized war technology to help with artillery accuracy. British planes flew over the trenches and better maps were made. The maps, along with taking into account of "wind, barometric pressure, and rain," were another advancement. Using triangulated microphones to "listen for the bark of enemy guns, the sound of the shell or observing the flash from the muzzle, they could locate the guns' position over time." This allowed for more pinpoint artillery fire to destroy the German guns so the fighters would have less to contend with when they got closer to enemy trenches. Underground caves were also used to setup explosives near trenches. Explosives were detonated near zero-hour to create more chaos before the advancement.

Not only did the Canadians and British have to go up hill at Vimy, but they also had to contend with barbed wire snagging kilts, socks, and the sticky mud was already effective at removing boots from soldiers. One of the advancements of artillery, to deal with this problem, was being able to make shells that were sensitive enough to explode when contacting barbed wire. This helped to clear the way for the Canadians.

How the soldiers moved were in "groups, but the units were trained to advance in more staggered and broken formations, using the ground and rushing ahead when the fire against them shifted to other targets...[also] known as 'fire and movement' tactics." As important as those tactics were, artillery was very crucial in WWI. The early strategies became stale in that enemies knew when the bombardments were completed and the soldiers would naturally advance towards them. The Germans who hid in bunkers during bombardments, had enough time to return to their stations and machine guns, to mow down the advancing enemy. In response to the predictability, improved coordination was needed to create more surprise by using a "creeping barrage...The infantry had to 'lean into the barrage' and stay within 35 to 65 metres of the wall of fire...[They] moved 100 metres every three minutes." When the barrage was complete the Canadians were close enough to attack the trenches, catching many of the Germans off guard. Using rifles, grenades, machine guns, and the odd bayonet, the ridge was eventually won over. Depending on which area the soldiers ended up, some of them had little mopping up to do. "By the time the Albertans of the 31st Battalion arrived at Thélus, little remained but smoking rubble and dismembered corpses...The Germans on the receiving end of the inferno were often killed, wounded, or buried alive..." Some were trapped in their bunkers and asphyxiated. In areas where there were still rifles and machine guns in action, the battle was much more difficult and required more casualties to win. Many were chewed up by bullets. "...An enemy officer of the 261st Prussian Reserve Infantry Regiment reported that the Canadian 'corpses accumulated and formed small hills of khaki.'" WWI tanks increased morale but they were inaccurate and their tread could easily be bombed and made ineffective.

On April 9th and 10th the Canadians had lost 2,967 men. "The entire face of the hill was covered with German green and Canadian khaki. Men lay out there in that blood-soaked field, some dead, some dying." One soldier wrote that "bodies could be seen protruding from shell holes half filled with water stained with human blood. The bodies were in all shapes and shapelessness of sudden death, many on their backs with hands raised and a wild look of terror on their faces from the shell or bayonet that had hurled them to eternity." Many heroes who survived those days would only live long enough to die another day and had to be posthumously be awarded. The ones who survived would be able to bond with the rest of the Canadians who felt the country was distinguished by the battle as can be seen commemorated by the astonishing Vimy Memorial.

Not everyone who survived was psychologically in one piece. From descriptions of soldiers feeling emotionally deadened, there were much more serious nervous cases. At the time it was called "shell-shock." Charges of cowardice, malingering, and the efforts of medical teams and their inventive ways of moving neurologically damaged soldiers to other duties, became a problem for armies. In A Weary Road, by Mark Osborne Humphries, he outlined the PTSD experience in WWI. "Because nervous soldiers were treated alongside other medical and surgical cases, they were sometimes victimized by staff and other patients. For example, Private Cecil G., a thirty-one-year-old civil servant, joined up in 1914 and served two years in the trenches before being knocked unconscious by a shell at Vimy Ridge. When he came to he vomited and was shaking all over. In hospital he began to suffer from terrible nightmares as well as headaches, tremors, and vague pains that came and went. G. was self-conscious and felt that the other patients were always watching him. 'He was unable to remain in one ward because he thought the patients believed he was [malingering],' recorded G.F. Boyer, his neurologist at Granville Special Hospital in England. 'He would break down and cry when he thought of it.'" Shell shock affected motor function as well. "'One poor fellow, a big chap, was crying like a baby with shell-shock,' wrote Lance-Corporal Donald Fraser, a machine-gunner in the 31st Battalion. 'His nerves and control were absolutely gone.'" Many others had a hyper-vigilant Thousand-yard Stare."The war that destroyed bodies with reckless abandon and also shattered souls."

War neuroses

The curious results of the some of these psychologically shattered patients were of interest to Sigmund Freud and early Psychoanalysts. Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, being a complex disorder, it has to be approached from multiple angles. The 1st casualty of Freud's theories was the patterns of psychological behaviour that didn't conform with The Pleasure Principle. Many soldiers with PTSD had dreams and thoughts that obsessed with traumatic memories, worsening their stress. Typically, a normal mind does the opposite and continually searches for pleasure. Setups and payoffs. At the time Freud thought "that these processes are invariably triggered by an unpleasurable tension, and then follow a path such that their ultimate outcome represents a diminution of this tension, and hence a propensity to avoid unpleasure or to generate pleasure." Going back to his Project for a Scientific Psychology (1895), Freud viewed neurons as having different functions. He saw the Ego as conditioned and built up by neurons that provide a constant cathexis [emotional investment ψ] and those that had a less sticky emotional investment, perception Φ. Consciousness for Freud, similar to Buddhism, co-arises with Perception. Perception provides qualities for consciousness, and the ego moves attention towards interesting perceptions and emotionally invests in them to provide satisfaction, "which is of such importance for the whole course of development) and the repetitions of that experience - states of craving which developed into states of wishing and states of expecting." The importance of these functions continued for Freud as a "biological justification of all thought...The craving involves a state of tension in the ego; and as a result of it the idea of the loved object (the 'wishful idea') is [invested with emotion.]" The wishful idea has to be a little hazy and dreamy so that it doesn't become "confused with a perception.." The emotional investment requires a payoff/discharge, "and...its discharge must be postponed till conditions of quality arise from it which prove that it's real [in perception]." As reality matches with the dreamy image of the wish, with the effort of thought, there is satisfaction, release or an identity. This is similar to what he wrote later in The Interpretation of Dreams, about a "'perceptual identity' - a repetition of the perception which was linked with the satisfaction of the need." The repetition of the same perceptions helps to build memory identities in the mind and the human personality. For example, we remember where all the "goodies" are in the environment, and create a personal identity around them. This is often why people have names that they've inherited from ancestors who were named for their jobs, or the products they were able to produce. Those higher up on a hierarchy would need to be able to label people based on their uses. The conditioned mind is utilitarian by how it labels objects and people. Tools for gratification and release.

Further, like in the noting meditation method, these thought objects are given a reality just like perceptions and can be labeled with word associations. "....Facilitations produced by thought leave only their result behind them and not a memory....Indications of discharge by way of speech help to make good this lack. They put thought-processes on a level with perceptual processes; they lend them reality and make it possible to remember them." This allows us to be aware of our thinking processes and the thinking processes of others. The brain can then make copies of important objects and people and imitate them into the mind.

Mental Noting - Mahasi Sayadaw & Daniel Ingram: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9781911597100/

In Psycho-analysis and the War Neuroses, Freud focused on excessive repression and how it can come from external sources of fright and internal sources in peace-time, where desire is considered a foe and threatening to the super-ego of social standards. Of course developments in psychology on the topic of Posttraumatic stress disorder moved beyond early theories, but studies do match his hypotheses of internal battles and repression. Our mind really does want to avoid thinking about stressful topics, obsess about what others think, but there is more relief in processing these stressful thoughts than avoiding them. Freud found that in many cases, people who were injured in fact exhibited less signs of shell shock than those who were simply close to the danger. "In the case of ordinary traumatic neurosis, two features stand out very clearly, and have proved a useful starting point for further thought: first, the fact that the key causative element appeared to lie in the surprise factor, the fright experienced by the victim; and second, the fact that if any physical wound or injury was suffered at the same time, this generally inhibited the development of the neurosis." In Coping with PTSD in Returning Troops, they elaborate some of the social reasons for this phenomenon. "Physical injury reduces the chance for development of anxiety or conflictive feelings related to the traumatic event, because unlike psychic traumas, physical injuries cause much more sympathy and affection in the environment." There are also studies that hint at developmental preexisting vulnerabilities, as Freud pointed out before but was only able to sketch. "It is known that early life environmental events have persisting effects on central nervous tissue structure and function, a phenomenon called 'developmental programming.'" There are also signs of genetic predisposition, on top of early life stresses, that increase the likelihood of adult PTSD. Another sign of PTSD is the presence of persistent anger, and any treatments have to acknowledge the anger and outbursts that accompany it. Some of the methods of treatment include group therapy where they "[work] through deeply traumatic memories" and explore "deeply repressed and emotionally invested experiences." In a study on possible treatments for PTSD in the book, they allowed for "gradual completion of the pathological mourning process, [and it] enabled [a] reduction of depression." Another method that showed effectiveness was exposure therapy, and behaviour activation, where token rewards are given for successful attempts at moving through triggering activities. Whatever method a patient pursues, they must satisfy the mind's need to understand and process trauma.

Beyond the Pleasure Principle

I have trod the upward and the downward slope; I have endured and done in days before; I have longed for all, and bid farewell to hope; And I have lived and loved, and closed the door. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

I have trod the upward and the downward slope - Ralph Vaughan Williams - Bryn Terfel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sl-sbL-KpB0

In Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Freud tackled the problem of a Repetition Compulsion, where the mind would constantly return to traumatic thoughts in contradistinction to what he normally observed in people, which is to dwell in thoughts of anticipated pleasure and relief. It was a kind of "going back to the drawing board" situation he found himself in. Both pleasure and stress had to be reviewed along with the quantity of intensity, which was hard to measure at the time, and could only be described as a larger or smaller pressure or swelling, requiring a release. Either the Ego finds replacement activities to drain some of that libido as a setup and payoff in chosen targets for release, sublimation, or the unconscious would take over and force a release in an uncontrolled way at targets that the ego and parental super-ego were trying to avoid.

"After much consideration we are minded to posit a connection between pleasure/unpleasure and the quantity of excitation present - yet not [bound] in any way - within the psyche; a connection whereby unpleasure corresponds to an increase in that quantity, and the pleasure to a decrease....The key determining factor so far as the sensation is concerned is probably the intensity of the decrease or increase over a particular period of time." For example, in a war, there must be an enormous increase in intensity as soldiers see the reality of the danger to their own survival, and attention moves towards wishes to defeat an enemy, achieve a military goal, and the release that happens every time a goal is finally achieved. The intensity of the pain continues and increases when there is failure and low morale. This can happen in less intense situations when smaller preferences are not met. Some examples are: waiting for a loved one for an appointment and they don't show up. Waiting for an important exam result, and it's negative. As experiences repeat, with constant intense stimuli, the mind can become jaded with some people, or overload and breakdown with others.

How the mind views the world in terms of where it wants to be is described by Freud with a quote by G.T. Fechner on his Constancy Principle. "'Inasmuch as conscious impulses are always associated with pleasure or unpleasure, we may suppose that pleasure and unpleasure, too, are linked psycho-physically to conditions of stability and instability; Every psycho-physical motion that passes the threshold of consciousness involves pleasure to the degree that it moves beyond a certain point towards complete stability, and unpleasure to the degree that it moves beyond a certain point away from that stability; whilst between these two points - which may be defined as the qualitative thresholds of pleasure and unpleasure...The psychic apparatus is geared to keep the quantity of excitation present within it at the lowest possible level, or at least to keep it constant." In other words, we really like it when chaos moves towards order according to our preferences and really hate it when the stability of our preferences breaks down and moves back into chaos. Of course this is also true when other people do things for us, starting with our parents and eventually powerful authority figures who are responsible for things we cannot control.

Of course achieving goals is not a constant thing and the world is a dangerous place. Looking purely for pleasure, has to give way to something that allows for us to survive long enough to gain pleasure later. "[The Pleasure Principle], as far as self-preservation is concerned, is never anything but useless, indeed highly dangerous, given the challenges posed by the external world. Thanks to the influence of the ego's self-preservation drive it is displaced by the reality principle, which, without abandoning the aim of ultimately achieving pleasure, none the less demands and procures the postponement of gratification." Of course pleasure can take back it's power from the reality principle at times. "...There are countless occasions where the pleasure principle overwhelms the reality principle, to the detriment of the entire organism." The ego's response with the reality principle provides a form of unpleasure when unacceptable desires are repressed. "...There are numerous occasions where individual drives, prove to be incompatible in their aims and demands with...the ego. They are therefore separated off from this unified whole through the process of repression; they are restricted to lower levels of psychic development and, for the time being at least, cut off from any possibility of gratification...Most of the unpleasure we feel is perceptual unpleasure, involving perception of the [swelling] pressure of ungratified inner drives, or perception of external [dangerous] things." We can see here already a need for self-development so some of that pressure can find different objects and skills to discharge on. Freud viewed it as sublimation, and Carl Jung looked at this energy as something that could develop the human personality further.

Now the problem of the Pleasure Principle is this binding of perceptions into memory and how it can go into areas of unpleasure in a way that is self-destructive. As Freud encountered more patients they didn't always follow the pattern of avoiding pain and pursuing pleasure. In situations of traumatic flashbacks, the mind of patients often returned to the trauma, instead of focusing on pleasure. The experience of survivors of the war didn't add up with the pleasure principle. "The terrible war that has only just ended gave rise to many [traumatic neuroses]." Freud then lists a variety of traumas and their impact, and highlights the most damaging one. "'Fear' represents a certain kind of inner state amounting to expectation of, and preparation for, danger of some kind, even though the nature of the danger may well be unknown. 'Dread' requires a specific object of which we are afraid. 'Fright', however, emphasizes the element of surprise; it describes the state that possesses us when we find ourselves plunged into danger without being prepared for it."

This type of surprise, especially when the fear is treated as real in the mind, overloads the mind. This isn't like a scary movie, though movies like Jaws, that create a primal fear of being eaten and annihilated, go closest to that feeling. In real conflicts, wars and domestic abuse, the mind has the tendency to go over those memories, even if the individual is recreating lots of unpleasure in the process of doing so. "...It is the distinctive feature of the dream-life of patients with traumatic neurosis that it repeatedly takes them back to the situation of their original misadventure, from which they awake with a renewed sense of fright...It would be rather more in the nature of dreams to conjure up pictures from the time when the patient was healthy, or else pictures of the return to health that is hoped for in the future...."

Jaws: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1fu_sA7XhE

IT: Chapter 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqUopiAYdRg

Hereditary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6wWKNij_1M

Child's Play

As Freud always did, he went back to childhood experiences to help explain adult phenomenon. In Beyond the Pleasure Principle, he explored a child's response to his mother going away. This child he studied had a strong attachment to his mother who took good care of him. In response to his mother leaving him for hours at a time, he would play a game, as Freud hypothesized, of "[throwing a] reel over the edge of his curtained cot so that it disappeared inside, all the while making his expressive 'o-o-o-o' sound, then used the string to pull the reel out of the cot again, but this time greeting its reappearance with a joyful Da!" Freud's conclusion was that it was a coping mechanism to control and master the feelings associated with his mother's disappearance and reappearance. It was a re-enactment, rehearsal, or a practice to deal with trauma. By turning the unpleasant experience of his mother's disappearance into a game he took his passive role and made it into an active one to give him a sense of control and mastery. There was also another possibility based on Freud's observations when the child flung an object away to "take revenge on his mother for having gone away from him." Taking aim at the Oedipus Complex, Freud interpreted this child's feeling towards his absent father. "This same child whose game I had observed when he was one and a half had the habit a year later of flinging down any toy that had made him cross and saying 'Go in war!' At the time he had been told that his absent father was away in the war, and he didn't miss his father in the least, instead giving out the clearest indications that he did not want his exclusive possession of his mother to be disrupted...It is plainly the case that children repeat everything in their play that has made a powerful impression on them, and that in so doing they [discharge] the intensity of the experience and make themselves so to speak master of the situation." Freud then connects it to the traumatized adult example, and the need to avoid surprise and fright. "These dreams seek to assert control over the stimuli retrospectively by generating fear - the absence of which was the cause of the traumatic neurosis in the first place." It's a way for the mind to remind oneself of a lesson that has to be learned to avoid traumatic situations like these in the future, or to master them.

In the case of the child, hostility that appears is a form of motivation to search for a reward that helps him or her, and eventually the adult, to replace passivity with activity towards domination and safety. Children's games that get too intense can also predict adult competition where there's escalation and envy, revenge and sabotage that become tempting. If something bad happens to a child, they can often repeat it onto another victim, and it can become contagious where abuse spreads with mimetics/imitation, and often it's spread to an innocent target that is easier to access. Freud gives an example of a scary experience with a doctor. "If a doctor examines a child's throat or performs some minor operation on him, we can be quite sure that this frightening experience will become the content of his next game - but the gain in pleasure from a different source is plain to see. Exchanging his passive role in the actual experience for an active role within the game, he inflicts on his playmate whatever nasty things were inflicted on him, and thus takes his revenge by proxy." This becomes another precursor to René Girard's scapegoating mechanism. The revenge is most often not enacted on a powerful person with strong boundaries but a person in a weak passive position: An easy target.

People who are also in a powerless position find verbal versions of power and control where perception is constantly on one's weaknesses, to keep people with a masochistic self-esteem. Masochists are easier to control. As people gain strength they often find more insults, more envy, more jealousy, and it's all about maintaining power and control. It's as if the they don't want you to improve yourself and "get away." The irony is that some of these people who were in a powerless position and now after they've moved to a powerful position, and turned the tables, so to speak, they forget how it was for them in the weaker position and identify with the controller. For René Girard, how we remind ourselves is realizing that "what we call conversion is, finally, the experience of the scapegoat becoming the subjective experience of the persecutor." This sounds like an easy enough process, but it's so hard for all of us to be honest about it. Girard says that, "we see scapegoats everywhere, we loudly denounce their oppressors. But we don't feel that we are personally implicated in the scapegoat mechanism. The scapegoat phenomenon is universal as an objective experience, and exceptional as a subjective experience. No one says: 'Sorry, I didn't realize it, but now I see that I'm a persecutor.' It would appear that everyone participates in this phenomenon, except each one of us." This can be readily seen in politics where everybody sees themselves as the hero and opponents are the enemy. When we switch from a powerless position to a powerful one, the best leaders remain vigilant and constantly try to see things from the point of view of the powerless. In most cases we fail to do this and just imitate the powerful and their scandals. We become the monster we want to defeat, and partially because sadism feels good and we lose perspective. Like Jesus pointed out, "why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?" Matthew 7:3. The new habit is to look at ourselves first if something is wrong and try to change that before we move onto someone else.

There is also another hint that imitation is connected with pleasure. Sadism is a form of pleasure. We get pleasure when we defeat animals, kill animals for food, and we also get the same pleasure when we defeat human enemies. We can imitate higher and lower forms of pleasure. As long as a person has low enough empathy, it's quite possible to imitate evil things. A later researcher of imitation, Vittorio Gallese called it "intentional attunement" for the way minds can map out the intentions of others with mirror neurons. The key to it in his studies was that this mapping of intentions happened only when the imitated actions were goal-directed. Of course it doesn't take much of a leap to discover what these goals are about. They are about increasing pleasure and reducing pain, the Pleasure Principle again, and in some cases the Reality Principle. There are some kinds of pleasures, advantages, treatments, cures, or benefits that the mind is motivated to imitate. Violence and hostility with an aim at winning is another source of pleasure, and it makes sense since a lot of our ancestors had to hunt and fight wars in order to survive. We had to fight for everything we had. If the child can map out how the pleasure works with hostility in an adult, and depending on hereditary influences, an identification with an abuser can be developed. The danger of course is the destruction of healthy human relationships, and why this form of pleasure is a lower pleasure, because of the damage that goes along with it. For example, people who are addicted to aggression end up with obsessive thoughts over rivals and conditioned reactivity so that mental peace becomes virtually impossible. There are differing levels of pleasure and some are better than others as most religions affirm. The higher ones provide pleasure that doesn't hurt others, essentially more peaceful, and the lower ones almost certainly hurt others and oneself. For Freud, the Pleasure Principle was supported by a Life Drive, and all he could posit for the self-destructive behaviours he witnessed was a Death Drive.

Freud's theoretical exploration of the dark side influenced later Neo-Freudians including Otto Kernberg. He found patients that were very self-destructive and obviously not following a pleasure principle. Similar to Freud's description of ambivalence between love and hate, or libido and aggression, people can slide between the two. They can attack others but also attack themselves. Kernberg found that certain destructive drives helped one to fight off predators and compete for mates. In some cases of PTSD there is a need to master a past traumatic situation in one's mind so that it can be avoided in the future, or how the unconscious see this problem. In all these examples there is an element of self-preservation in the conflict between the pleasure and reality principles, but there is an even more destructive aim that damages self-preservation. A form of Pyrrhic Victory where one wins and loses at the same time, much like a lot of battles in WWI. Here Kernberg describes some examples of a more adult version of what Freud was describing above. Instead of what other psychologists call a "duping-delight", for certain behaviours of personality disorders and their destructive attempts to attain mastery, Kernberg called it a triumph against. "...The repetition compulsion may reflect an effort to overcome the traumatic situation by an unconscious identification with the source of the trauma. Here the patient identifies with the perpetrator of the trauma while projecting on somebody else the function of victim. It is as if the world had become exclusively a relationship between perpetrators and victims, and the patient repeats, unconsciously, the traumatic situation in an effort to reverse the roles and place somebody else in the role of victim. The unconscious triumph that such a reversal may provide the patient then maintains repetition compulsion endlessly."

So here it becomes an addiction to sadism because it is now a reliable habit of gaining pleasure. Unfortunately this teeters into self-destruction when aggressors attack what is helpful. "There are still more malignant cases of repetition compulsion, such as the unconscious effort to destroy a potentially helpful relationship out of an unconscious sense of triumph over the person who tries to help, who is envied for not having suffered what the patient, in his mind, has suffered. It is an unconscious triumph that coincides, of course, at the same time, with the defeat of the patient himself." There is a sense that imitation can find lower levels of pleasure to identify with, as if role models are modeling for us the world and "how things are....This is how the world is." It's like a limitation where only certain modes of identification are available and real to the child. Even if healthier role-models exist in the world, unless the child has close access to those models, to imitate their healthy behaviours, it is out of sight and out of mind. Their limited and conditioned world becomes their adult perspective, narrowing their personality. Kernberg quotes André Green's example of an identification that is destructive and hard to connect with a pleasure principle. "[He] described the unconscious identification with a 'dead mother'- that is, a severely depressed mother who had chronically frustrated the needs for love and dependency of her infant child. At the same time, such a mother, desperately needed, cannot be abandoned. The patient, in unconscious identification with a fantasied 'dead mother', denies the existence of all live relationships in reality as if he himself were dead to the world." Another example is a common one that therapists deal with if they have narcissistic patients and their attempts at "triumphant destruction of the work of the envied therapist," that also destroys the therapy that could benefit the patient. The self-destruction can be even more intense. Examples of Borderline Personality Disorder can involve "self-mutilation, cutting, burning, and, in the most severe cases, self-mutilation leading to the loss of limbs as a relentless drive that, at times, causes all therapeutic efforts to fail." The ultimate form of destruction includes those who commit murder-suicides as pathological last ditches to maintain control.

Stalking: https://rumble.com/v1gvhk1-stalking-world-narcissistic-abuse-awareness-day.html

Treatment of Narcissistic Personality Disorder: https://rumble.com/v1gtj2d-treatment-of-narcissistic-personality-disorder-narcissism-part-4-of-4.html

Masochism

This sadism against oneself, or Masochism, as Freud calls it, is described very well in both Beyond the Pleasure Principle, and The Economic Problem of Masochism. As the child imitates authority figures, especially parents, there are many suggestions of inferiority and experiences of failure as a child grows up. It develops a chronic feeling of inferiority. "The early fluorescence of infantile sexuality is doomed to come to nothing, because the child's desires are incompatible with reality...The ever-diminishing affection shown to the child, the ever-increasing demands of his upbringing, the reprimands, the occasional punishments - all ultimately reveal to him the full measure of the rejection that it has fallen to him to suffer." The child then learns to lose trust in him or herself. Again Freud returns to childhood development and regression. He finds that adulthood is a set of skills that are very fragile and they can easily regress to lower modes of living. Using examples of biological cells that can self-destruct, he expands that to the entire human organism. "A drive might accordingly be seen as a powerful tendency inherent in every living organism to restore a prior state." With enough tragedy, obstacles, failure and incompetence, depression can lead to self-attacking psychologically, and in more extreme scenarios, self-harm, like in suicide. It's like the person feels they deserve it, like their internal tormentor is getting satisfaction as if it was an external tormentor punishing them. Freud terms it an "unconscious guilt", "a need for punishment", and a "tension between the ego and super-ego" (internal parent), or a "conscience anxiety." The regression goes all the way towards death. Freud connects this behaviour to an underlying Death Instinct. From the materialistic stand point, life came from non-life, and now wants to return to it. Ironically it sounds similar to the Christian understanding of Ashes to Ashes. There is also another Christian example of sin, like in the phrase "idleness breeds sin." When people are inactive, and are not actively pursuing self-development, the tendency is to regress to older habits and tendencies. Like forgetting an abandoned skill, the mind forgets and returns to a more primitive way of being, partially because it's less complex and easier. For people who like pleasure, it's hard to fathom how these scenarios would satisfy. For Freud, the peace of non-existence coincides with his theory that people want to "reduce inner stimulative tension, to maintain it at a steady level, [or] to resolve it completely." Freud uses the term the Nirvana Principle, borrowed from Psychoanalyst Barbara Low. All people, including the suicidal, just want the pain to go away. There is pain in a complex life that is chaotic and death ultimately relieves that problem.

Like a wave, the world goes from inanimate, to animate, and back to inanimate. How Freud resolves how the wave of Nirvana to Pleasure to Reality and back to Nirvana principles works, he wasn't able to prove, but later clinicians still can't disprove it completely due to the fact that humans are capable of so much self-destruction. It's an eternal chicken and egg conundrum. Which comes first, a death instinct or a life instinct? Clinicians either posit a stronger pleasure principle, a stronger nirvana principle, or a balance between development and decay. Similarly, scientists look at entropy throughout the entire universe, and how it ultimately breaks down, but others see increasing complexity happening at the same time. "...We can only assume that a very extensive fusion and amalgamation, in varying proportions, of the two classes of instincts takes place, so that we never have to deal with pure life instincts or pure death instincts but only with mixtures of them in different amounts." What Freud ultimately saw was that a lot of patients didn't get better or if they got better, they would often regress at a later date when they found another disappoint, failure or obstacle. At some point, there is something going on biologically, and unconsciously to prevent full recovery. Even today, therapists have to work with the tools they have and be prepared for repeated failure. Temporary therapeutic results may change into a situation where "one form of suffering has been replaced by another." In the realm of severe Masochism, new forms of self-attacking and punishment replace old ones.

Meditative insights

All this phenomenological study for meditators leads to a lot of challenges. One of them Freud alludes to above in his Project, where pleasure is a perception matching a wish, and pain, plus a lot of thinking, is the perception of instability, and wishes not matching perception. Meditation is a great skill for not only religious people, but also those who want to study their own phenomenology. One of the methods of meditation is to look at preferences and interrupt the thinking by being aware of how painful many preferences are, because of their inherent sense of lack. A good comparison to make clear is of how attention searches perception for satisfaction. Thich Nhat Hanh's advice is to "...reflect whatever you see just as it is, without distorting anything." Freud calls it Pcpt-Cs. It seems like an easy practice, but it's hard to maintain. The Chan Master Seng T'san shows the way, but he goes towards a perfectionism that is impractical and difficult to achieve. One has to find "a way beyond language/[concept]" and to let go of "the smallest distinction" between "love and hate", or preferences. This means you have to put attention on vibrating senses and to fit it in between thoughts to slowly make it a habit of consciousness to reside there. One can quickly see the difficulty of maintaining equanimity all the time at the level of perception. There is so much rebellion. For most people it's a healthy way of letting go to maintain well-being, but eventually one has to alter the environment in many different ways to prevent being preyed upon by predators and to build a nest. Essentially we have to get on with our lives.

How to See - Thich Naht Hanh: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9781946764331/

The Third Patriarch of Zen Verses on the Faith Mind: https://www.age-of-the-sage.org/buddhism/third_patriarch_zen.html

Psychopathology of Everyday Life - Sigmund Freud: https://rumble.com/v1gtl55-the-psychopathology-of-everyday-life-sigmund-freud.html

The Jhanas - Jhana vs. Narrative 1:19: https://rumble.com/v1gqznl-the-jhanas.html

Once the mind is rested in meditation, away from constant irritation of chasing preferences, the opportunity to get into Flow states returns. A depressed person instead has the habit of returning to thoughts of obstacles, worries and ruminations. But the sooner a person creates a new goal that is attainable, the sooner they feel better and get a sense of progress. Like Csikszentmihalyi's Flow system, this adjustment has to be constant throughout life but it is more accessible to people than trying to dwell in Pcpt-Cs, while trying to satisfy preferences. An expert meditator would have to satisfy biological needs with rationality instead of using the sense of lack as a guide. Most people like a small dose of lack in order to motivate action towards goals, as long as they are easy enough to achieve. When skills and challenges are balanced, people feel a healthy sense of zest, excitement and Flow. Most people will find a faster relief if they can let go of the masochism described above and repeatedly choose new goals, maintaining the "balance between challenge and skills." Part of the healing is realizing that one may have an imitated tormentor inside the mind and it is unduly repressing healthy zest. Healthier attitudes include a purposeful search for new attainable goals. This would be developing an ego and not over-developing a super-ego, in a state of masochism. Yet the super-ego isn't all bad, because it creates social standards to follow, but it becomes pathological when the standards are robotic, inhuman and unattainable. Freud references Kant's Categorical Imperative where one must act with responsibility in areas where one expects everyone else to behave responsibly. The unhealthy super-ego assumes responsibility beyond what is human. The Ego is on the frontline and can see the obstacles that an ill developed super-ego ignores. It has to point this out to the super-ego by being present and serve as a reality check. It can create a sense of poverty with the extreme expectations of the super-ego, but the ego knows that skills can be poor and need development. For example, one cannot run a marathon without practice. The solution is not self-bashing, but skill development.

Flow in 7 steps - Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi: https://rumble.com/v1gvked-how-to-gain-flow-in-7-steps.html

As skills increase to handle complex problems, then the psyche develops more complexity, despite all the entropy and chaos in the environment. If things get too difficult then instead of being lost, the individual can look for "opportunities to act" that match the individual's "ability to act." Mihaly says that "negative emotions are not necessarily bad. Many great paintings were created, many great books were written, in order to escape depression. Anger has led revolutionaries to build more just social institutions...But while negative feelings last, they take over consciousness and make it difficult to control thought and action." This he calls "psychic entropy" a kind of self-destructiveness and chaos. Concentration helps to create order in the mind, including meditation, but it takes constant practice. "The other way to achieve order is to develop an internal discipline that makes it possible to concentrate at will. This is much more difficult, and it takes meditators, yogis, artists, and scholars many years to learn how to do it." Like Freud's analysis of surprise, distractions can also be a form of stress, which was also found in recent studies of people who were distracted by social media at work. Distractions interfere with skill, and when skills are poorer then stress naturally increases under the Flow system.

Stony Brooks Does personal social media usage affect efficiency and well-being?, Computers in Human Behavior, Volume 46, 2015, Pages 26-37, ISSN 0747-5632, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2014.12.053.

Yet, for most people, meditation will be reserved for periods of powering-down and for deeper rest, not the priority of one's life. If they do concentrate, it will be on their life goals. Also many people enjoy the zest of looking forward to activities, and this is facilitated by the right level of challenge so that it's not too easy or too hard. When people are feeling down after a failure, they can pick themselves up by finding something they know they can do.

Beyond the Pleasure Principle - Sigmund Freud: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780141184050/

The Pleasure Principle - Sigmund Freud: https://rumble.com/v1gurqv-the-pleasure-principle-sigmund-freud.html

Vimy: The Battle and the Legend - Tim Cook: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780735233164/

On Metapsychology - Sigmund Freud: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780140138016/

The Evolving Self - Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780062842589/

Psychoanalysis and the War Neuroses - Sandor Ferenczi, Karl Abraham, S. Freud (Introduction): https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9781498177337/

Coping with Posttraumatic Stress Disorder in Returning Troops - Brenda K. Widerhold: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9781607505709/

Gallese, V., Fadiga, L., Fogassi, L., & Rizzolatti, G. (1996). Action recognition in the premotor cortex. Brain, 119, 593-609.

Gallese, V. (2006). Intentional attunement: NA neurophysiological perspective on social cognition and its disruption in autism. Brain Research, 1079(I), 15-24.

Pain and deliberate self-harm: https://web.archive.org/web/20080916095230/http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/en/pain/microsite/culture4.html

The One by Whom Scandal comes - René Girard: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9781611861099/

Psychology: http://psychreviews.org/category/psychology01/

#war #beyondthepleasureprinciple #sigmund freud #death drive #life drive #realityprinciple #pleasure principle #nirvanaprinciple #ptsd #repetition compulsion #war neurosis #vimy ridge

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total-derangement-of-the-senses · 3 months

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Song of the Day

3 Feb., ‘24

#Song of the Day #Parlet #Pleasure Principle #Mr Melody Man #music #Spotify

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polyanthea · 1 year

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Cat, enough of your greedy whining and your small pink bumhole. Off my face! You’re the life principle, more or less, so get going on a little optimism around here. Get rid of death. Celebrate increase. Make it be spring.

-Margaret Atwood, “February”

#margaret atwood #february #winter #spring #life principle #death drive #pleasure principle #life #death #cat #pet #canada #bed #sleeping in #poem #poetry

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nerdieforpedro · 4 months

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Chapter 5: Dissonance

Pleasure Principle Series

Main Masterlist/ Dave York Masterlist

Dave York x Kiara (plus size OFC)

This Fanfiction is 18+

Summary: Dave and Kiara can't seem to agree on anything that's not physical. A separation occurs and reflection is had by both parties.

Warnings: cursing, mentions of sexual activity, a little blood, poor communication, Kiara's mom, implied domestic Dave?

Word Count: approx 4k (feelings are big 🫢)

Notes: This chapter is pretty tame actually. We're setting up for the next one. Context and all that jazz. I pinkie swear more smut is coming. Can't leave you high and dry? 😜 Plus I do smut with feelings now, sometimes.

Kiara called Dave ‘David,’ he didn't like that at all. She did it on purpose to piss him off. Tired of being led on and tired of not being fucked. Tired of wondering if they were going anywhere together or if they were just filling each other's needs for a time. After putting the medical supplies away, she leaned her forehead against her bedroom wall. She might be fine if it was just sex, but it’s not. He’s invaded her space since the first night. Granted she thoroughly enjoyed him doing so, but she thought there would be a separation. It also begged the question: did she want him to stay? Is that why she’s reacting like this?

Dave barrels upstairs, anger on his face but his tone is measured when he speaks.

“Call me by my name Kiara.”

“I’ll call you Dave when you tell me how long this is going to go on.. I’m not good with this ambiguous shit.” She does not turn to face him. If she does, he may see her eyes. They’ll rat her out. Dave’s nothing if not observant, much more than she is. He knew when all her shifts were, about how long it took her to get home. The shows she liked to watch, music she likes, what did she know about him? He’s at the very least some type of ex-military something. What exactly, she didn’t know. The man exudes confidence and can back it up though his speech, never using more words that needed but can be deviously charming when the need arises. God his mouth… even while she was pissed, the memory of it causes her to move her feet a bit closer so her large thighs press together. Damn him…

“You’re not? News to me, the last few weeks you’ve been fine with me buried in your soaked pussy while you attempted to suck the skin off my dick. We didn’t need to say anything else.” The assassin places his hands on her shoulders and turns her around to face him then, an arm at either side of her body to box her in against the wall, but doesn’t touch her again.

“But you also stay the night. Eat out with me-“ Dave laughs. Fucking smile, arrogant ass grin. Kiara can’t look at him in the face, she needs to stay mad. Confronting him is the only way to get an answer out of him. He always tells her she’s not ready, but for what?

“Just…you’re becoming…” The nurse is nervous that she’s admitting it. Saying it aloud is worse than just running it through her mind. It will be out and she won’t be able to take it back. Dave sighs, his broad shoulders slump slightly.

“Important is what you mean Peach. I know.” Her face snaps back to his. He knows?!

“If you know then why? Do you like fucking with me emotionally as well? I get sexually and I enjoy that about you…” She’s losing composure. She wants to grab hold of him, but he’s not that type of man. Casually in front of a TV or out and about is different then this type of intimacy, craving a comforting touch. Dave is much too hardened for that and she had no idea why. Her lips are quivering as she focuses on him. His face tells her nothing, gives nothing. How can he not react at all?

“Kiara you’re the one who hooked me in with emotions. I really was just going to fuck you and make it a few times a week. You being so open with what you wanted and letting me mark you. Use you, such a damn juicy and sweet Peach for me… It had me think about feelings I haven’t had since before I became the man I am now.” Dave peered into her honey eyes. It was something he had thought about since the first night. He had the idea and it was nagging at him, always on the edge of his thoughts.

“What…What feelings are you talking about Dave?” He doesn’t answer but keeps eye contact. She touches his face. “Are you saying you…what kind of feelings do you have for me? What do you want from me?” He could just tell her, but that required him to be honest. Something he has not been for years, it’s been a requirement not to be. He survived because he wasn’t. Deception, misdirection and backstabbing had kept him alive and his family fed and clothed since his military unit was disbanded, thanking him and his colleagues for their service to the Government.

“Don’t put it like that. You’re mine. I’m as unbridled in my desires as you are. It’s why we’re good together. You and I.” The confidant smirk on his face. The indignation returned. How dare he? Claim her while dismissing her at the same time. The gall of this man. Kiara wrapped her arms around his neck and leaned up to his cheek, giving it a small peck.

“Is that why you won’t fuck me Dave? Because we’re so good together?” A smirk for a smirk. If he’s going to say something as off the wall as ‘you’re the one who hooked me in with emotions,’ then he’s about to learn how petty she can be.

His lips tighten as he backs away. Still staring at her. His hands tighten into fists, his right hand turning crimson again from the pressure to his laceration. “I don’t need to tell you why I won’t fuck you. I told you you’re not ready.”

“You never said why I’m not ready. Is there a way I should be preparing for you Dave?” Kiara can see his face change now, he’s seething, jaw clenched. Normally this would be a moment where the nurse would see if she can either get another barrier between herself and whoever was angry at her or haul ass to the nearest exit. She knew. This was what she wanted. She was always the one who came undone, crying, overstimulated from his hands, lips, chest, toys, anything he felt like using on her. She wasn’t able to do the same, but she could break him by appealing to his pathos which he despised, more intensely then even she thought.

“You’re really going to be pushing this aren’t you? Just follow my-” Dave released his fists upon feeling wetness in his right hand, he likely had messed up the wrap she had put on it. Kiara was being entirely too bold. She apparently had forgotten that she’s supposed to adjust to him. Why wasn’t he fighting her so much on it then? Was he tired of not admitting it? No, he had told himself downstairs already what would happen if he did what he originally planned.

“Dave your hand,” Kiara’s eyes darted to her right and saw the blood, “Dave. Let me look at it.” The fingers from his right hand touched her cheek, smearing a few drops on her cheek. She looked beautiful in red, did he want to draw her into this world? He’s been able to keep them separate with his previous marriage, so much so that his ex-wife really still thinks he’s a contractor for the FBI. Kiara knows, not everything but enough to where she’d put some pieces together.

“No. Not right now. Just let me…Fuck.” Dave whispered to himself. Her concern and confusion were understandable, but he didn’t care. “You want to know how I really feel about you. What I really think Peach? Fine.” He placed his bloody hand on the back of her neck, pulling her in for a kiss. She didn’t react at first, but her fingers found their way into the loops of his cargo pants. It could have been the frustration at not really saying what they meant or that they had just been arguing but as their tongues danced, they crept toward the bed falling onto it and laughing at how absurd the situation was.

It was then that Kiara initiated the kiss this time, grabbing Dave’s shoulders and pinning him under her. But after a few more make out sessions they both fell asleep in their clothes. Blood smeared on the pillows sheets and their clothes.

The pair were greeted by the sunlight of a new day.

Dave was awakened first. He cleaned and re-wrapped his hand, leaving a note for Kiara that he’d be back in a few days without injuries and an actual explanation. He watched her sleeping form, the blood he’d wiped on the back of her neck and smeared on the pillow and from where his hands had roamed, the stains may not come out of her robe or her sleep shirt. Staying would be good. It would actually be the correct thing to do, have another breakfast, sit and talk. But he did actually have an assignment that he needed to do. Could he commit to another woman? Did he want to?

“Peach, I’m not going to let you go, even if you’re pissed at me.” He walked back over to the bed and sat on the edge, Kiara rolled over toward the warmth but didn’t wake. His fingers ran across her cheek, heard a soft sigh. “So responsive, Kiara. When I come back, I’ll tell you why. You’ll think I’m an idiot but...” He chuckled to himself before standing and making his way to the bedroom door. He looked back one more time at her sleeping form, “I just can’t help the way you make me feel. I thought I hated it. I don’t. You’re also not getting away with calling me David.” The assassin exited out of the house, making sure to lock the door.

Dave and Kiara communicated via text mainly over the next month. The independent contractor couldn’t go into details but he said that the assignment had evolved into a large project, one that was becoming more and more tedious according to Dave. He only gave her the broad strokes, details involved that two of the targets were already down and their hard drives were wiped. Their homes and offices were ransacked, making it look like Corporate espionage and pinned the frame job on an opposing company so it would look like the two were instigating and fighting each other. Initially, it was just supposed to be the murder of the two targets, but more money was offered for the hardrives and the ransacking. Dave put his foot down after the frame job. It was becoming way too involved for his taste so he bowed him and his team out. More money was offered but it wasn’t worth getting that involved.

York also had a more pressing matter to attend to. He needed to see her. He told her that he’d explain via his three burner phones when he saw Kiara again, but he could tell even over text that she was getting frustrated again. And that was a week ago when he last texted her. York didn’t recall who stopped replying first. It didn’t really matter, he wasn’t going to play into it this time though. She’s fine to stew for a bit and the real lesson will take place when I get back… Dave rubbed his temples. Looking around the hotel he was put up in, it was fine. He’s been in better, but it’s only for tonight. He just needed a place to sleep though he wasn’t sleeping as well as he had been. Rubbing his neck, he took a shower to try and relieve some tension, it only helped slightly. Drying off and plopping down on the bed, it still lingered. I was going to say home. It didn’t take long. I haven’t gone soft have I? No, I just…fucking care dammit. He checked in with his team, who were in a few different hotels, and they were preparing to depart tomorrow morning as well. They’d separate for two weeks then meet up for their pay out and debrief. Dave shook his head and dozed off a few times during the night.

Kiara on the other hand, was not taking the lack of communication well. She was aware that he couldn’t go into detail about his work. It was better for her that he didn’t. However they had managed to sort of not be mad at each other through their intense and bloody make out session, it didn’t resolve anything. His note was still on her bedside table and she was angry with herself for looking at it when she woke up each morning. Maybe she was more frustrated than anything, despite her attempt, Dave still had the upper hand and he wasn’t here. It was then that she decided to pack a weekend bag and visit her family. She had stopped texting him when he mentioned that he had to ‘step away for a bit.’ It meant that he was about to go do, well whatever dangerous shit he was doing. The nurse knew she should have reached back out, but picked up an extra shift to distract herself from typing the same message repeatedly and not sending it.

The drive to her parents’ home was good, a few hours to listen to her playlists and zone out. Kiara found that she should have called ahead first though. There were too many cars out front…was something going on?

“Hey baby! You were able to make it! Your brother is visiting from Tennessee. Come on in!” Her mother had seen her from the window and came out of the house in her husband's oversized flip-flops. It was quite a funny sight and Kiara laughed when getting out of the car with her bag and purse.

“Hey Mom. I didn’t know they were coming in this weekend. Are they staying?” She asked on the way into the house, removing her hoses and taking out her slippers to put on. No shoes past the foyer.

“Socks, barefoot or slippers only. Lest you’re gonna start sweeping young lady.” Kiara recalled from her childhood. There were so many happy memories in this home, it was then that her mother said something odd.

“I thought your handsome friend would have told you. Your brother and his wife are stopping by before driving to see some friends outside of New York, then they’re going to come back and stay for a few days. They may be back in the middle of next week.” Her mother explained as Kiara sat down in the living room. Everyone else was in the den, laughter could be heard even with the door closed.

“Wait…what handsome friend?” The nurse asked her mother, holding her hand as her mother went to put on her purple sweater she wore around the house. Even after ten years, that sweater was still in pretty good shape. She laughed and kissed Kiara’s cheek, flicking her hand off, put on her sweater and sat on the couch, patting the seat on the couch next to her.

“He was tall, wearing a gorgeous dark gray suit. You can always tell a lot about a man and how he wears a suit. It was tailored and fit him quite well. No wedding ring and a nice full head of hair. I mean do prefer my men bald like your father, but his hair looked very soft. He seemed very nice. We had a light lunch while you were at work and chatted a bit. Dave I believe his name is. Why haven’t you told me about him? I hope it’s not one of those…what’s it called…situationships or whatever… He seems like a good man. He brought groceries and was putting them away.” After the initial shock of what her mother was saying, Kiara was forced to think. As pissed as she was at Dave, she couldn’t recall over the last few months, when she’d last gone to the grocery store or picked up her medications. She knew she did her laundry, but not as often as before maybe…so wait…is Dave really doing all this stuff? He is isn’t he…but then why won’t he just have sex with her? Is it a game? But then why be chummy with her mom?

“I was coming to check on you and see if you needed anything but it looks like you’re in excellent hands. I picked his brain about a few things while lunch settled and he walked me to my car. I didn’t tell your father about him yet though, he’d want to talk his ear off about the Marines and how it’s different from when he served. No one wants that.” She chuckled and patted Kiara’s knee. “I see you panicking, baby. Whatever it is, you should talk to him calmly. I know you can get loud and hold a grudge. Come on, let’s go see your brother and his wife. They can see you and then get out of my house. You know what they brought?! They brought your father a damn ten gallon hat and me one of those confounded jean skirts. What the hell do I look like wearing one of those?!” Kiara leaned on the door frame of the den after her mother opened the door. The woman’s face changed from that of annoyance to glee as she saw her grandchild and the little girl ran up to her.

Her brother’s visit listed a few more hours and then they hit the road. Kiara’s father strutted about the house in his new hat and wore it while watching his Gunsmoke DVDs but her mother folded the shirt and put it in the winter clothes bin never to be seen again, huffing that her daughter in law should have just got her a target gift card. Her parents fixed dinner and they ate together, laughing and reminiscing. It was a good escape for her, though when she went to bed that night, she was left with more questions. Kiara decided she would reach out first. She had checked her phone and didn’t see any new messages from any unknown numbers, though she wasn’t sure if he needed to switch phones again. She decided to send it to what she called his ‘off-duty’ phone, though she maybe shouldn’t have done it at 3am while she was still awake and pissed, why wouldn’t he mention meeting her mom? Has he gone through all the stuff in her house? What has he seen in her house?

So I visited my parents’ house and you didn’t mention that you met my mom, made her lunch and hung out with her. The more I think about things, the more ingrained you are in my life Dave. And I’m not entirely sure how you did it, but you did, like everything I guess. So are you just keeping me focused on work and doing kinky shit with you?

What does this all amount to? What do I mean to you?

You’d better explain like your note said. It’s still on my nightstand.

I had some holiday days to use up so I’ll be off for the upcoming week, if you don’t come home yet, then I’ll move some stuff around and see if you can find it while I’m at work since you know where everything is.

Kiara read over what she had sent him and realized a fatal error - she had referenced him coming home. That’s not weird right, he had been sleeping in her bed every night that he wasn’t on his ‘assignments’ but it’s her home. “He probably knows where my damn pads and razors are for goodness’ sake. It’s become more of his house and he didn’t even have to change any decor.” She decided to type out a follow-up before laying back down and sighing,

Do you want it to be your home too Dave? Is it already? It is weird when you’re not there. I’m insane, what am I even saying

Kiara decided to set her phone on the charger and send it, unaware that Dave was home and watching his phone flicker with the three little dots before they disappeared. She figured he wouldn’t see it for at least a few more days.

He had been reading along as she had been sending the texts after he’d got in. The plane ride back was shorter than expected and he came straight to her house. Dave had been in the kitchen when the first text came in and he silently cursed himself. He was going to mention meeting her mother but then he had a job that evening and had been injured, then they argued after she patched him up. Didn’t really leave much of a discussion after since he had to leave again.

Meeting Kiara’s mother was unexpected, but not unpleasant. She was actually funny and he learned a bit more about his peach and her family life. It seems that what he had found in his research was correct, it was a fairly stable childhood with a two parent household and she was indeed the only girl of a blended family. He did appreciate that her mother didn't distinguish between any of the children by calling them step-sons or daughter in laws. They were all her sons and daughters. Her mother did surprise him though, she told him that if he made her daughter cry or hurt her, she would cut him from ear to ear and removed a switchblade from her purse and smiled at Dave. Nodding he understood her intent and had even more respect for her in that he didn’t see it coming. He had assumed her arthritic hands wouldn’t be able to move so agility, but Kiara had mentioned that she recently had to discourage her mother from working on the roof herself. While walking the woman to the car, she gave him a hug and told him that, “we’ll see how things how things go between you two and I may call you son too Dave. Have a good afternoon.” She hopped in her car and drove off.

Dave was much more comfortable in Kiara’s bed then he had been the last month, her scent calmed him and he started at the ceiling. “It’s also weird when you’re not here Kiara.” He did chuckle at how she hadn’t noticed what exactly he had been doing for her this whole time, it meant that he was keeping her sufficiently distracted. He’d been slowly learning her home and maybe before this latest assignment, he was moving his belongings in, not that he had much in his condo anyway. He could sell the place and have one less end to tie up if need be. The money can go toward and trust for his daughters and take Kiara on a small trip to start.

“I’m planning a damn life with her for fuck’s sake. It’s a horrible idea. Didn’t work the first time.” Dave recalled what he thought one evening when they were watching some British baking show. There was an older woman with bright pink lipstick talking about someone’s ‘great bake’ that maybe was a squirrel? And there was a man with white hair, maybe it once was platinum blonde, but that’s white, he dyed it white. Kiara was watching intently, her large legs draped over Dave’s lap where he rubbed her skin, slowly, pressing into her flesh, he found it relaxing with the repeated motion and the weight of her legs made him feel grounded. He looked over at her with a small smile, shaking his head slowly. He’s watching this crazy ass show because he knows she’ll watch it for hours at a time and that means he gets to sit like this for those same hours. Under her weight, pressing into her skin and feeling content, hearing her laugh and talk at the TV, asking him if he saw what one of the bakers dropped, could it ruin their bake. Despite refuting it for years, the former marine still longed to hold onto something or someone.

“You’re not the only insane one Peach.” Dave muttered to himself as he drifted off to sleep, he’d tell her when she came home, well to their home now.

Dave York apologists: @yorksgirl @ramblers-lets-get-ramblin @goodwithcheese @musings-of-a-rose @iamasaddie @legendary-pink-dot @morallyinept @for-a-longlongtime @angelofsmalldeath-codeine @megamindsecretlair @daddy-dins-girl

#pedro pascal characters #fanfiction #pedro pascal fanfiction #pedro pascal #dave york x plus size reader #Pleasure Principle #The York Pit #Getting deeper with feelings #dave york #dave york x female reader

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scottheim · 1 year

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#gary numan #pleasure principle #doug henning #prisms #magic

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musiquizzz · 2 years

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The Funniest Janet Jackson Music Quiz Ever! Guess The Song! Question Two...

#youtube #janet #janet jackson #control #rhythm nation 1814 #pleasure principle #nasty #what have you done for me lately #let's wait a while #miss you much #humor #humour #80s music #eighties music

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oooklathemok · 2 years

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Metal (Remastered 2009)

#youtube #Metal #pleasure principle #gary numan

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quitecontraryy · 2 years

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You might think I'm crazy, but I'm serious

It's better you know now

What I thought was happiness was only part-time bliss

You can take a bow

#janet jackson #pleasure principle #control #1986 #Spotify

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laku-incarnate · 2 years

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In 1876, as a young scientist, Sigmund Freud travelled to Trieste in Italy where he dissected four hundred eels to locate their testes. In this he was unsuccessful: “My histological examination of the lobe-shaped organs will not permit me defintely to state the opinion that they are the testicles of the eel, nor does it give me substantial reason to reject it.”

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psychreviews2 · 1 month

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The Pleasure Principle – Sigmund Freud

Heuristics

By the time Freud was reaching 1910, certain patterns were emerging from his patients, and with competing contributions from his followers, especially Carl Jung, there was some pressure to provide a heuristic, or a method of investigation to solve these psychological problems. Freud's contribution found that "every neurosis has an effect...of forcing the patient out of real life, of alienating him from reality. The neurotic turns away from reality because he finds either the whole or parts of it unbearable. The most extreme type of this turning away from reality is exhibited in certain cases of hallucinatory psychosis where the patient attempts to deny the event that has triggered his insanity. Actually, though, every neurotic does the same thing with some fragment of reality. Thus we are presented with the task of studying the development of the relationship of neurotics - and mankind in general - to reality, and so of assimilating the psychological significance of the real outside world into the framework of our theories."

The Pleasure Principle

Depending on the translation, Freud's theory focuses on how "lust" or "unlust" manifests in our day to day thinking processes. "These processes strive to gain pleasure; our psychic activity draws back from any action that might arouse unpleasure (repression). Our dreams at night, our tendency when awake to recoil from painful impressions, these are vestiges of the rule of this principle and evidence of its power."

At the time Freud was worried about being accused of plagiarism, as Carl Jung was also developing two modes of thinking, associative, and directed thinking in his Symbols of Transformation. As usual, when you think something is new in psychology, philosophy had something to say about it much earlier.

"Let it be assumed by us that pleasure is a certain movement of the soul, a sudden and perceptible settling down into its natural state, and pain the opposite. If such is the nature of pleasure, it is evident that which produces the disposition we have just mentioned is pleasant, and that which destroys it or produces the contrary settling down is painful. Necessarily, therefore, it must be generally pleasant to enter into a normal state." ~ Rhetoric - Aristotle - Book I, Chapter 11. (350 BC).

As rational as this principle is, there is a problem with it: Humanity must face many situations that call for some pain first to gain a greater pleasure later. In the ancient world, if we wanted to achieve the most basic goal, to eat enough to survive, we had to hunt first, or cultivate plants, before we could gratify ourselves.

The Reality Principle

As our mind searches for pleasure, and thinks of ideas of pleasure, there comes inevitably a conflict with reality, and an attempt to assimilate it. Freud says that, "whatever was thought of (wished for) was simply hallucinated, as still happens every night with our dream thoughts. It was due only to the failure of the anticipated satisfaction, the disillusionment as it were, that this attempt at satisfaction by means of hallucination was abandoned. Instead, the psychic apparatus had to resolve to form an idea of the real circumstances in the outside world and to endeavour actually to change them. With this, a new principle of psychic activity was initiated; now ideas were formed no longer of what was pleasant, but of what was real, even if this happened to be unpleasant."

Consciousness, Attention, Memory, and Action

As a way to explain this behaviour Freud developed the topography of the mind further. "The increased significance of external reality heightened in turn the significance of the sense organs directed towards that outside world, and also of the consciousness attached to these, which now learnt how to discern sensory qualities in addition to the qualities of pleasure and unpleasure, previously its only concern. A specific function of attention was setup with the task of periodically scanning the outside world in order to assimilate its data in advance, should an urgent inner need arise. This activity seeks out sensory impressions rather than waiting for them to occur. Probably at the same time, a system of retention was set up with the task of storing the results of this periodic activity of consciousness, an element of what we call memory."

Freud then explains how this ability could be used to assess the world. "In place of repression, which excluded certain of the emerging ideas - those deemed unpleasurable - from being invested with energy, there arose a process of impartial judgement, whose task it was to decide if a particular idea was true or false - that is, corresponded with reality or not - a decision reached via comparisons made with memory traces of reality."

Once the judgement is made about the environment, Freud defines motivation by how the "motor discharge, which under the rule of the pleasure principle had served to relieve the psychic apparatus from increases in stimulation by means of innervations sent inside the body (physical gestures, expressions of emotion), was now given a new function, being deployed to make expedient alterations to external reality. It was transformed into action."

With these phenomenological descriptions of the mind, it's easy to see how hard it is to remove stress when pleasure and stress are used as a constant radar to assess the environment. Comparisons of what is good and bad are made in the perceptions of present moment experience, and also in comparisons with memory.

Fantasy

Yet from our experience, it's possible to escape reality, to enjoy arts and entertainment, and to also entertain ourselves with our thoughts. Freud says the "economic principle of conserving expenditure, seems to manifest itself in the tenacity with which we cling to existing sources of pleasure and the difficulty we have in giving these up. At the inception of the reality principle, one kind of thought activity split away, remaining exempt from reality-testing and continuing to obey only the pleasure principle. This is fantasizing, which begins with children's play then later, as daydreaming." All of us can remember examples from our own lives. Have you dreamed of winning a particular lottery but never bought the ticket? Have you thought about asking someone out, but you didn't? Have you seen a stock do well in the market and imagined that you could go into a time machine and buy the stock when it was 5% of its current price? These are all fantasies that provide an imagined gratification in place of the real thing. Like enjoying a good movie, the story wasn't real, but the emotions you felt were real.

The principles in childhood sexual development

The need to develop a Reality Principle shows up early on in an individual's life, with the need to develop sexually and to find a mate. "While the ego drives are undergoing this development, the sexual drives diverge in a highly significant way. The sexual drives initially behave auto-erotically, finding their satisfaction in the subject's own body and therefore never experiencing the state of frustration that necessitated the introduction of the reality principle. Later, when they do begin the process of finding an object, this is promptly interrupted by the long latency period that delay's sexual development until puberty. As a result of these two factors - auto-eroticism and latency - the sexual drive is arrested in its psychic development and continues to be ruled for much longer by the pleasure principle, in many people never managing to free itself from this at all." Freud's hint at the possibility of arrested development into adulthood. The way out for them is to take the wish and make it real. "As the ego undergoes the transformation from pleasure-ego into reality-ego, the sexual drives undergo the changes that lead from initial auto-eroticism, through various intermediate phases, to object-love in the service of the reproductive function."

A weak spot found

Unfortunately this educational period for children and adolescents is so long that it becomes a challenge to venture out of fantasy into the reality of taking risks. "The continuing effects of auto-eroticism make it possible for the easier, instantaneous satisfaction of fantasizing about the sexual object to be retained for so long in place of real satisfaction, which involves making efforts and tolerating delays. Repression remains all-powerful in the realm of fantasy; it is able to inhibit ideas...before they reach consciousness - if their being invested with energy could cause a release of unpleasure. This is a weak spot in our psychic organization that can be used to bring already rational thought processes back under the sway of the pleasure principle. Thus an essential element in the psyche's predisposition to neurosis results from the delay in educating the sexual drive to take account of reality, and from the conditions that make this delay possible."

Delay of gratification

Despite the need for the pleasure principle to be replaced by the reality principle, Freud cautions against the interpretation that it is a complete replacement. "Just as the pleasure-ego can do nothing but wish, pursue pleasure and avoid unpleasure, so the reality-ego has no other task than to strive for what is useful and to protect itself from what is harmful. By taking over from the pleasure principle, the reality principle is really just safeguarding it, not deposing it, a momentary pleasure with uncertain consequences is given up, but only in order to obtain, by the new approach, a more secure pleasure later on." An opening for development arises where the subject can now choose to be lost in wishes, or to take action with what is available instead. One can imagine a Freudian patient that now realizes that life is up to them and they must repeatedly act in new directions, take risks, and persist in altering their lives.

The principles in our institutions

Freud views much of our institutions as forms of delay of gratification. "The doctrine that the - voluntary or enforced - renunciation of earthly pleasures will be rewarded in the afterlife is simply a mythopoetic projection of this psychic transformation. Following this principle to its logical conclusion, religions have been able to bring about the absolute renunciation of pleasure in this life in return for the promise of recompense in a future existence; by so doing they have not conquered the pleasure principle. Science comes closest to achieving this conquest, but scientific work, too, provides intellectual pleasure and promises practical gain eventually."

A natural connection to this thinking process is how our learning institutions work. "Education can without question be described as an impetus to overcoming the pleasure principle and replacing it with the reality principle." This reminds me of the self-help book industry where people have a desire to improve themselves, but depending on the quality of the book, and the action or inaction of the reader, it may foster more daydreaming. The knowledge must be acted upon, and results gained in real life, to achieve psychological release.

Art

For Freud, artists and their contributions don't escape his principles. He described how the neurotic perception of the artist can be used as a way to face reality, by making artworks in the real world, especially if others resonate with the artist's messages. You can see this in the below link to my review of Csikszentmihalyi's, and Robinson's, The Art of Seeing: https://rumble.com/v1gvlhb-how-to-appreciate-art-psychology-of-things-22.html

Psychosis and Paranoia

Venturing into more complex territory, Freud uses his principles to describe deeper disconnections with reality. He says, "...(the choice of neurosis) will depend on which phase of ego or libido development the predisposing arrest occurred in." Our emotions react not just to reality but also to our dreams, wishes, and ideas. This can cause enough conflict in the mind where the grip of reality slips away from the subject leading to pathology, such as false memories, or in more serious cases, psychosis, or paranoia.

"The strangest characteristic of unconscious (repressed) processes...results from their total disregard for reality-testing; thought-reality is equated with external reality, the wish with its fulfillment, just as occurs spontaneously under the rule of the old pleasure principle. For this reason it is extremely difficult to distinguish between unconscious fantasies and memories that have become unconscious. But we should never be tempted to [underestimate] the role played by fantasies in the creation of symptoms just because they are not real, or by attributing a neurotic feeling of guilt to some other source because no actual crime can be ascertained. We have to use the currency that prevails in the country we are exploring - in our case, the neurotic currency." For Freud, the neurotic currency involves wishes that are in conflict with reality. For example, guilt over socially unacceptable wishes, or the frustration of wishes by obstacles in the way.

Future influences

The principles would also guide Freud in his controversial review of Daniel Paul Schreber's book, Memoirs of My Nervous Illness, one of the most analyzed cases studies in psychology. [See: Daniel Paul Schreber: https://rumble.com/v1gu84v-case-studies-daniel-paul-schreber-freud-and-beyond.html]. With less understanding, in Freud's time, of psycho-biological breaks with reality, biological problems and thinking errors have yet to be separated.

Freud's small paper became a foundation for Psychoanalysis, but it still required updating, by Freud himself no less. The upcoming disbanding from some of his followers, and a World War, would be the motivation for Freud to write the influential Beyond the Pleasure Principle, which tackles the problem of why people in many instances actually desire and seek out displeasure.

Formulations on the Two Principles of Mental Functioning - Sigmund Freud: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9781782203025/

Beyond the Pleasure Principle - Sigmund Freud & Beyond: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780141184050/

The Unconscious - Sigmund Freud: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780141915487/

The Art of Seeing: An Interpretation of the Aesthetic Encounter ~ Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Rick E. Robinson: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780892361564/

Rhetoric - Aristotle - Book I, Chapter 11.: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0060%3Abook%3D1%3Achapter%3D11

Harold P. Blum (2004) Beneath and Beyond the “Formulations on the Two Principles of Mental Functioning”, The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, 59:1, 240-257, DOI: 10.1080/00797308.2004.11800740

Psychology: http://psychreviews.org/category/psychology01/

#pleasure principle #realityprinciple #nirvanaprinciple #beyondthepleasureprinciple #sigmund freud #psychoanalysis #psychology #psychosis

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