ABSTRACT
This chapter mainly focuses on Freud's theory. Freud's originality, as he himself indicated in his Introductory Lectures, was exhibited in his discoveries about unconscious mental processes, repression, and infantile sexuality. In these spheres, he was providing exciting answers to relatively limited questions. But he also tried to fit his speculations in these spheres into the framework of an ambitious over-all theory of a type that was neither plausible nor original-what he called 'the pleasure principle'. Freud assumed a framework of correct and purposive behaviour and implied that reference to unconscious mental processes was only relevant when behaviour did not conform to such a framework. As a matter of fact Freud often protested, that psycho-analysis 'has never dreamt of trying to explain everything'. Freud held that unpleasure and pleasure reflect the manner in which the process of mastering stimuli takes place, pleasure reflecting merely the abatement of stimulation.
