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Results for “PLEASURE-PAIN PRINCIPLE”

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At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources
PubMed1990

Rational suicide: a test of the prescriptions of Epicurus concerning suicide.

The purpose of this research was to test the hypothesis that the individual who believes death is the end and who expects to experience more displeasure than pleasure over the remainder of his life will choose suicide. College students (N = 272) completed questionnaires measuring their beliefs about after-life, expectations of pleasure and displeasure should certain negative events happen to them, and expectations of suicide should these negative events happen to them. Support was not found for the hypothesis. The students who believed that death was the end stated that they would choose to live even if negative events promised them a life of greater displeasure than pleasure.

Adult↗
PubMed1991

A perversion named desire.

Inspired by the title of the work, A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams, the author argues that desire and perversion are equivalent, based on the following. (1) The notion of infanatile sexuality as polymorphously perverse, and whose components constitute the 'core of our unconscious' and the ultimate 'matter' of unconscious desire. (2) The perspective of narcissism, which establishes desire, supported by the theory that maternity implants an illusion of completeness which culture promotes, despite the fact that such an ideal conflicts with the laws governing the foundation of culture. (3) The resulting forms of the oedipal complex and the castration complex, whether man or woman, imply a visible or unapparent violence with regard to the original 'call' of desire. (4) The traditional structures refer to the possibility of the mother imagining herself as completed by the child: the blocking of that illusion is associated with psychosis; the weakness of the desire, once established, demands, in the context of perversion, the presence of the figure of plenitude. Neurosis prefers its absence on the level of the apparent while insuring its permanence on the unconscious level.

Drama↗
PubMed1990

"A dream is the fulfillment of a wish': traumatic dream, repetition compulsion, and the pleasure principle.

This paper describes the case of a battle veteran who suffered from a repetitive traumatic dream and symptoms of a traumatic stress disorder. Psychodynamic exploration revealed the basic wish-fulfilling aspects of both the dream and the fact of its repetition. The patient's obsessional preoccupation with his war experiences was also in significant part determined by unconscious wishes to repeat the infantile experience it represented. It is suggested that the repression of pleasure according to the classic psychoanalytic model is as important a dynamic in the dreams and symptoms associated with specific traumata as with any other neuroses. The question is raised as to whether a repetition compulsion, of normal or pathological intensity, may reflect the wish to repeat a descriptively unconscious pleasurable component of a disturbing experience, as well as to master it.

Adult↗
PubMed1989

[Maximization of pleasure, the answer to a conflict of motivations].

An experiment has been set up to explore the hypothesis according to which behaviour is determined by the trend to maximize pleasure. Twelve subjects were placed individually in a situation of conflict where the pleasure of playing a videogame clashed with the increasing discomfort of a cold environment. The time lapse tolerated could be predicted from the algebraic sum of the rating of displeasure aroused by the cold environment and the rating of pleasure aroused by the videogame, obtained in other sessions. This result supports the working hypothesis and allows to conclude that pleasure is the common currency of tradeoffs among various motivations.

Cold Temperature↗
PubMed1989

The compulsion to repeat the trauma. Re-enactment, revictimization, and masochism.

Trauma can be repeated on behavioral, emotional, physiologic, and neuroendocrinologic levels. Repetition on these different levels causes a large variety of individual and social suffering. Anger directed against the self or others is always a central problem in the lives of people who have been violated and this is itself a repetitive re-enactment of real events from the past. People need a "safe base" for normal social and biologic development. Traumatization occurs when both internal and external resources are inadequate to cope with external threat. Uncontrollable disruptions or distortions of attachment bonds precede the development of post-traumatic stress syndromes. People seek increased attachment in the face of external danger. Adults, as well as children, may develop strong emotional ties with people who intermittently harass, beat, and threaten them. The persistence of these attachment bonds leads to confusion of pain and love. Assaults lead to hyperarousal states for which the memory can be state-dependent or dissociated, and this memory only returns fully during renewed terror. This interferes with good judgment about these relationships and allows longing for attachment to overcome realistic fears. All primates subjected to early abuse and deprivation are vulnerable to engage in violent relationships with peers as adults. Males tend to be hyperaggressive, and females fail to protect themselves and their offspring against danger. Chronic physiologic hyperarousal persists, particularly to stimuli reminiscent of the trauma. Later stresses tend to be experienced as somatic states, rather than as specific events that require specific means of coping. Thus, victims of trauma may respond to contemporary stimuli as a return of the trauma, without conscious awareness that past injury rather than current stress is the basis of their physiologic emergency responses. Hyperarousal interferes with the ability to make rational assessments and prevents resolution and integration of the trauma. Disturbances in the catecholamine, serotonin, and endogenous opioid systems have been implicated in this persistence of all-or-none responses. People who have been exposed to highly stressful stimuli develop long-term potentiation of memory tracts that are reactivated at times of subsequent arousal. This activation explains how current stress is experienced as a return of the trauma; it causes a return to earlier behavior patterns. Ordinarily, people will choose the most pleasant of two alternatives. High arousal causes people to engage in familiar behavior, regardless of the rewards. As novel stimuli are anxiety provoking, under stress, previously traumatized people tend return to familiar patterns, even if they cause pain.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)

Adolescent↗
PubMed1986

[Sophocles' Oedipus. Another reading].

Freud long hesitated on how to understand Sophocle's Oedipus--whether that tragedy was caused by Fate, or whether it was all about a sexual rivalry between the father and the son about the mother, he finally chose the latter interpretation. The clinical facts and scientific observations here related undoubtedly show--not man's longing, but his violent--almost instinctive--repulsion for incest--thus explaining the dramatic intensity of the play. The Freudian explanation must therefore be abandoned and the meaning of Sophocle's drama--unquestionably of the highest importance for the understanding of the dynamic situation involving Father, Mother and Child--must be sought elsewhere. Its philosophical value is nonetheless important and a testimony since ancient times and among very different peoples, of man's anguished and tragic quest for a Moral Law.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1978

Hedonesthesia: the nervous process determining motivated ingestive behavior.

The hedonistic theory of motivated ingestive behavior is discussed against drive-reduction theories, which claim that ingestive motivated behavior is mainly determined by the urge to meet the basic needs of the organism, often ignoring the important role of sensations. Evidence is supplied that mere sensations derived by exteroceptors can play an essential part in motivated behavior. A view is put forward that the reinforcing properties of exteroceptive stimulation in motivated ingestive 'behavior should be related to their ability to generate positive emotional states experienced as pleasure. It was pointed out, however, that the same external gustatory stimulation may possess a different hedonic value, depending on the current nutritional state of the organism. Therefore, the existence of a special nervous process which makes these stimuli emotionally positive, neutral or negative, i.e., pleasant, indifferent or aversive, depending on the given state of need is postulated. We call this nervous process hedonesthesia, and claim that it plays a decisive part in motivated ingestive behavior. The possible mechanism of hedonesthesia is explained on the block model.

Animals↗