Abstract

CAROPRESO, Fátima  and  MONZANI, Luiz Roberto. Experiences of pain and death instinct in freud´s theory of psychic apparatus and neuroses. Rev.Mal-Estar Subj [online]. 2012, vol.12, n.3-4, pp. 607-638. ISSN 1518-6148.

In Freud's early work, both in his theory of the psychic apparatus and in his theory of neuroses, two experiences are thought of as organizing the normal and the pathological mental functioning: the "experience of satisfaction" and "experience of pain", respectively. In a second phase of this theory, the role of the experience of pain is minimized and the experience of satisfaction becomes the primary foundation from which the development of the psyche emerges. However, from "Beyond the Pleasure Principle" (1920) onwards, the concept of experience of pain returns, in another context and at another level of significance. In fact, it is also brought to the foreground and regarded as the primary experience in the constitution of mind. This resumption of the experience of pain - which is then referred to as "trauma" - is closely related to the formulation of the concepts of repetition compulsion and death instinct. In "Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety" (1926) Freud once again places the trauma at the origins of neuroses and, in "Analysis Terminable and Interminable" (1937), he reflects on the role played by the death instinct both in the etiology of neuroses and in the obstacles faced by psychoanalytic therapy. This paper aims at discussing some of the changes in Freud's hypotheses on the constitution of the psychic apparatus and the etiology of the neuroses, which seem to originate from such resumption of the experience of pain and from the introduction of the concept of death instinct.

Keywords : Freudian psychoanalysis; Metapsychology; Experience of pain; Death instinct; Psychic apparatus.

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