Abstract

ROCHA, Zeferino. Physical and mental pain in freudian metapsychology. Rev. Mal-Estar Subj. [online]. 2011, vol.11, n.2, pp. 591-621. ISSN 1518-6148.

Emphasizing that the pain experience is unique and that, like the Tebas Sphinx, it is found at our existence door commanding the deciphering of her enigma in order to avoid being eaten by her, the author proposes, in the present essay, a discussion of the main stages of the Freudian elaborations in the metapsychological theory of pain, in its physical and psychic dimensions. Firstly, it was studied, on the theory context of the Project for a Scientific Psychology (1895), both, the pleasure experience model and the pain model. Secondly, pain was considered as it appears in the text Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920) articulated with the situations that challenge the rules of the pleasure principle on the psychic happening. Among these situations, the accident neurosis (Unfallneurosen), the Fort Da game, which Freud analyzed when he saw his grandson trying to control a painful and anguish situation caused by his mother absence, and the repetition compulsion of painful situations in the transference were highlighted. Finally, it is emphasized the distinction between physical and psychic pain as it appears in the Apendix C of the book Inhibition, Symptom and Anguish (1926). In the final considerations, the Freudian view of pain is complemented with some recurrent reflexions in tragic thinkers: Aeschylus, of the ancient Greece and Nietzsche of the Modern Age.

Keywords : Metapsychology; pleasure; psychical pain; psychic pain; tragic pain.

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