Jonah Bossewitch	October 10, 1995

PSY 365	Professor Sugarman

Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1-3)

Freud Begins this essay with the disclaimer that it is not his task to determine how his work fits into the existing philosophical schools of thought. He reiterates his view that his work is that of an empirical scientist attempting "to describe and to account for the facts of daily observation in our field of study". Although Freud claims that priority and originality are not among his aims he then goes on to assert that he has been investigating "the most obscure and inaccessible region of the mind". This characterization of his own work suggests that Freud certainly considered his own work to be highly original, so much so that it refused to be pigeon holed into any preexisting paradigms. Similarly, while he initially claims that "the impressions that underlie the hypothesis of the pleasure principle are so obvious that they can scarcely be overlooked" he is about to embark on a seven chapter explanation of why the obvious assumptions are wrong. Is this language a ploy to throw his critics off track, is Freud exhibiting a false humility to make himself look better, or is he just innocently taking us through the thought processes that brought him to this point? While the answer to this question may be obscure and inaccessible, merely asking it brings the text more alive as we turn the tables on Freud and begin to analyze the analyst.