ABSTRACT
In Beyond the Pleasure Principle Sigmund Freud reformulates his earlier theory of mind. The traumatic neuroses, common in the 1914–1918 war, led Freud to recognize that the pleasure principle could be rendered ineffective and no longer guide the direction of mental life. Freud suggested that the repetitive dreams, the inability to concentrate, the exhaustion followed from attempts to bind the mobile cathexes, restore the secondary process and the protective shield of the mental apparatus. Freud’s assertion that the compulsion to repeat had all the qualities of an instinct required a revision of his theory of instincts. Freud’s concept of a death instinct followed from his perception of the repetition compulsion as instinctual in nature. Freud’s admission that his theory of the death instinct was not based on new clinical observations casts doubt on the value of his decision to separate hatred and the potential for destructiveness from the self-preservative functions of the ego instincts.
