In my essay, _Beyond the Pleasure Principle_, published in 1920,[1] I
began the discussion of a train of thought, my personal attitude towards
which, as I mentioned there, might be described as a sort of benevolent
curiosity; in the following pages this train of thought is developed
further. I have taken up those ideas and brought them into connection
with various facts observed in psycho-analysis and have endeavoured to
draw fresh conclusions from the combination; in the present work,
however, no further contributions are levied from biology, and it
consequently stands in a closer relation to psycho-analysis than does
_Beyond the Pleasure Principle_. The thoughts contained in it are
synthetic rather than speculative in character and their aim appears to
be an ambitious one. I am aware, however, that they do not go beyond the
baldest outlines and I am perfectly content to recognize their
limitations in this respect.
At the same time, the train of thought touches upon things not hitherto
dealt with in the work psycho-analysis has done, and it cannot avoid
concerning itself with a number of theories propounded by non-analysts
or by former analysts on their retreat from analysis. I am as a rule
always ready to acknowledge my debts to other workers, but on this
occasion I feel myself under no such obligation. If there are certain
things to which hitherto psycho-analysis has not given adequate
consideration, that is not because it has overlooked their effects or
wished to deny their significance, but because it pursues a particular
path which had not yet carried it so far. And, moreover, now that these
things have at last been overtaken, they appear to psycho-analysis in a
different shape from that in which they appear to the other people.
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