A constituição do princípio do prazer na obra de Freud (1895-1911)

Abstract

This work examines the notion of pleasure principle in three stages of Freud's work: in the 1895 text Project for a scientific psychology; in Chapter VII of the 1900 text The interpretation of dreams; and in the 1911 text Formulations on the two principles of mental functioning. The first explicit mention of the pleasure principle concept appears in the 1911 text, but Freud would already think of something that would regulate the activity of mind long before that. In 1895, in Project for a scientific psychology, Freud calls principle of inertia and principle of constancy that which would regulate the operation of a neuronic system. In 1900, Chapter VII of The interpretation of dreams, Freud presents the principle of unpleasure as the responsible for the functioning of the psychic apparatus. The dissertation aims to clarify the postulates set out by Freud in works previous to the 1911 text to support the pleasure principle. Freud uses different languages and changes the presentation of his cases on a regulatory principle in 1895, 1900 and 1911, but the functions remain unchanged. With these changes in the presentation of his contents of the psychic apparatus, it is understood that his hypothesis went through elaborations until culminating in the enunciation of the pleasure principle concept in 1911.