Feist−Feist: Theories of
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perverted when the sexual aim of erotic pleasure becomes secondary to the destruc-
tive aim (Freud, 1933/1964).
Masochism,like sadism, is a common need, but it becomes a perversion when
Eros becomes subservient to the destructive drive. Masochists experience sexual
pleasure from suffering pain and humiliation inflicted either by themselves or by oth-
ers. Because masochists can provide self-inflicted pain, they do not depend on an-
other person for the satisfaction of masochistic needs. In contrast, sadists must seek
and find another person on whom to inflict pain or humiliation. In this respect, they
are more dependent than masochists on other people.
Aggression
Partially as a result of his unhappy experiences during World War I and partially as
a consequence of the death of his beloved daughter Sophie, Freud (1920/1955a)
wrote Beyond the Pleasure Principle,a book that elevated aggressionto the level of
the sexual drive. As he did with many of his other concepts, Freud set forth his ideas
tentatively and with some caution. With time, however, aggression, like several other
tentatively proposed concepts, became dogma.
The aim of the destructive drive, according to Freud, is to return the organism
to an inorganic state. Because the ultimate inorganic condition is death, the final aim
of the aggressive drive is self-destruction. As with the sexual drive, aggression is
flexible and can take a number of forms, such as teasing, gossip, sarcasm, humilia-
tion. humor, and the enjoyment of other people’s suffering. The aggressive tendency
is present in everyone and is the explanation for wars, atrocities, and religious per-
secution.
The aggressive drive also explains the need for the barriers that people have
erected to check aggression. For example, commandments such as “Love thy neigh-
bor as thyself ” are necessary, Freud believed, to inhibit the strong, though usually
unconscious, drive to inflict injury on others. These precepts are actually reaction
formations.They involve the repression of strong hostile impulses and the overt and
obvious expression of the opposite tendency.
Throughout our lifetime, life and death impulses constantly struggle against
one another for ascendancy, but at the same time, both must bow to the reality prin-
ciple, which represents the claims of the outer world. These demands of the real
world prevent a direct, covert, and unopposed fulfillment of either sex or aggression.
They frequently create anxiety, which relegates many sexual and aggressive desires
to the realm of the unconscious.
Anxiety
Sex and aggression share the center of Freudian dynamic theory with the concept of
anxiety.In defining anxiety, Freud (1933/1964) emphasized that it is a felt, affective,
unpleasant state accompanied by a physical sensation that warns the person against
impending danger. The unpleasantness is often vague and hard to pinpoint, but the
anxiety itself is always felt.
Only the ego can produce or feel anxiety, but the id, superego, and external
world each are involved in one of three kinds of anxiety—neurotic, moral, and real-
istic. The ego’s dependence on the id results in neurotic anxiety; its dependence on
Chapter 2 Freud: Psychoanalysis 33