Here I am revisiting Sigmund Freud’s Beyond the Pleasure Principle.
Here I am looking for death again — Thanatos, my old friend.
Does this mean that I will go back to reading books like Ernest Becker’s The Denial of Death, Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal, Paul Kalanithi’s When Breath Becomes Air, etc.?
Does this mean that I will go back to saying that life is driven by death?
We shall see.
Maybe I’ll say, We are nothing but instances of self-conscious Death.
Later.
For now, I’ll be saving the quotes I like in a blog post and call it a day.
Outside, the birds are singing, and that’s where I need to be.

Quotes from Sigmund Freud’s Beyond the Pleasure Principle

It must be pointed out, however, that strictly speaking it is incorrect to talk of the dominance of the pleasure principle over the course of mental processes. If such a dominance existed, the immense majority of our mental processes would have to be accompanied by pleasure or to lead to pleasure, whereas universal experience completely contradicts any such conclusion.

Sigmund Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle

Most of the unpleasure we experience is perceptual unpleasure.

Sigmund Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle

“Anxiety” describes a particular state of expecting the danger or preparing for it, even though it may be an unknown one. “Fear” requires a definite object of which to be afraid. “Fright”, however, is the name we give to the state a person gets into when he has run into danger without being prepared for it; it emphasizes the factor of surprise.

Sigmund Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle

In this way the first instinct came into being: the instinct to return to the inanimate state.

Sigmund Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle

What we are left with is the fact that the organism wishes to die only in its own fashion.

Sigmund Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle

We shall find courage to assume that there really does exist in the mind a compulsion to repeat which overrides the pleasure principle.

Sigmund Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle

The pleasure principle seems actually to serve the death instincts.

Sigmund Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle