Beyond the Pleasure Principle

About “Beyond the Pleasure Principle”

Beyond the Pleasure Principle is a 1920 essay by Sigmund Freud that marks a major turning point in his drive theory. Freud had previously attributed self-preservation to the drives of Eros and libido regulation, governed by the pleasure principle. Revising this, he theorized the death drives, a tendency toward destruction and annihilation expressed through aggression, repetition compulsion, and self-destructiveness. (Summary adapted from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0.)