Freud did not restrict himself to the consideration of the two principles of mental activity – the pleasure principle and the reality principle. He tried to look beyond the pleasure principle, in order to understand what forces are at work in the depths of the human psyche. Such an attempt has led to the fact that the founder of psychoanalysis recognized striving for the preservation of peace as the dominant tendency of mental life, and even of the entire nervous activity, that is, put forward the third principle – the principle of the constancy (peace, nirvana). Considering that the striving for preservation of peace, the cessation of internal irritant tension finds its expression in the pleasure principle, he has come to the conclusion that this is one of the strongest motives for confidence “in the existence of attraction to death”.
Probably, the presence of the “peace principle” predetermines the presence of its alternative – the principle of vibration (oscillation) as the basic principle of the brain life activity proved by the data of EEG. Cessation of the brain wave activity on the electroencephalograph monitor is the basis to certify person’s death in reanimation. It may make sense to speak about two primary principles, existence of two dominant tendencies of mental life: striving for vibration (“oscillations”) as a neurophysiological principle of the brain activity, deadaptation, according to Selye and striving for preservation of peace – the nirvana principle, which was acknowledged by the founder of psychoanalysis S. Freud. The interaction of these two opposite principles is carried out through the pleasure principle.
If adhere to the psychodynamic approach, the mental world of a male develops through the brain constant need to sensor stimulation recorded by EEG in the form of wave activity. Any constancy and duration of the situation, which is passionately desirable from the point of view of the principle of pleasure and the principle of peace, causes only a feeling of indifferent content.
The psyche is set up so that it is able to enjoy only in the presence of contrast, which can be attributed to the novelty principle. Freud and his followers tried to unify the active principle of the psyche by discovering the pleasure principle and eliminating all discrepancies through discovery of unconscious. But at the later stages, Freud introduced the concept of the reality principle, then of nirvana, later on – intrusive memories, thus proving that the psyche is virtually not subjected to unification, because different laws operate in the biological and mental worlds.
Probably, it is necessary to recognize the existence of the following principles underlying the formation of the structure of the mental world: the principle of vibration, the principle of novelty, the principle of peace – nirvana, the principle of pleasure, the principle of obsessive repetition; and the irritations of the three modalities – tactile, painful and kinetic.
Reflecting on the structure of the mental apparatus, Freud insisted that it consisted of the conscious, preconscious and unconscious phases of the mental process. Preconscious-Consciousness are sensitive to any qualitative difference in impressions from the outside world; from the inside they perceive only the growth and weakening of tension, which on the scale of pleasure – displeasure are expressed by a whole range of mental qualities. Freud realized the difficulty that he faced in the search for a simple answer to this question. At first, he marked equality sign between pleasure and weakening of tension, between dissatisfaction and its increase, but soon this relationship ceased to be simple and clear for him: “… pay attention to the fact that this hypothesis suffers uncertainty, because we were unable to determine the essence of the relationships between pleasure and displeasure through a change in the strength of mental excitations. One thing is clear: these relationships can be quite different and certainly in any case may not be easy”, he wrote. As for the mechanism operating here, we find in Freud several approaches to this problem. In the work “Beyond the Pleasure Principle” (Jenseits des Lustprinzips, 1920) Freud called to distinguish displeasure and the feeling of tension (distress by H. Selye) because pleasant tensions also exist (eustress by H. Selye).
Psychologists and humanists traditionally blame Freud for seeing the cause of all disorders in human sexuality and considering the principle of pleasure overriding. If this thesis is partly believable for the early Freud (before he actually talked about the primacy of the pleasure principle), then in 1920, Freud described a more fundamental principle that worked regardless of the principle of pleasure – the principle of obsessive repetition, which gave the mechanism for symbolizing the loss and work of mourning. In all cases, peace is restored by the objective physical activity. According to recent data, the latter implies an objective movement – a movement that meets certain vital need rigidly defined by this need, unfolding in the outside world. In order to be successful it should correspond by its structure to the characteristics of the external world. Such characteristic as the objectivity of movement is very important because the relationship of the subject with the outside world is carried out through the behavioral act and through this relation it becomes possible to form all human mental functions as they provide man’s adaptation to the outside world. Thus, we can say that along with such a characteristic of the movement as its temporal development, there is one more important feature – space-time or subject-time characteristic of the motor act. Motor acts are means of restoring homeostasis, means of obtaining pleasure and stress relief. Subjected to the evolution, kinetics in itself has become a source of pleasure in modern man (fitness classes, running, body building, climbing, all kinds of extreme sports). Gustav Fechner – German physicist, psychologist, one of the first experimental psychologists, founder of psychophysiology and psychophysics substantiated “the pleasure principle of action”. Unlike conventional hedonistic doctrines, he was not referring to the pleasure as the goal of human action, but as the conditionality of our current actions by pleasure or displeasure of committed actions.
SEXUALITY. LIBIDO
As Otto Kernberg wrote, it takes many years for a person to reach the phase of mature sexual love. Experiencing it occupies one of the leading places on the Olympus of human presence on the earth. All the more, to come to an understanding of the mental world of male, a researcher needs to live a long life without losing interest to constantly observe and study the question he is interested in.
Brief etymology of the main concepts: sex, sexuality, libido
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In the last century Berdyaev wrote: “Only our era allowed the exposure of sex life. And the man was laid out on the sections. This is Freud and psychoanalysis, this is the modern novel. This is the shamelessness of the modern era but also a great enrichment of knowledge about human”. Freud, so that to less shock the Puritan society of his time, used to tell that the accurate scientific study did not imply moral categories or an appeal to the idea of human integrity, because scientific study always led to a partial (model) representation of the object. The purpose of science is not to frighten or to console.
Today one can smile remembering the flow of profanity showered on television, and the Internet is the fount of readable, audible and visible “shamelessness”. Strong language is bravado of emancipation from morality and virtue. But this is at one terminal, at the other one – are the past centuries, in communion between man and woman. And between them is the largest cluster of people, who preserve a reasonable balance of word usage and action.
Sex. Translated from the French (“sexe”) and English (“sex”) it means no more than – “gender”. This word appeared in Latin (“sexus”), indicating human activity in order to obtain a set of mental and physiological reactions, feelings and actions related to the manifestation and satisfaction of a sexual desire or a desire to continue the race. The word “Sex” (Lat. “sexus” – “gender, male or female) comes from the word “seccare”, which means to “cut, split”, because according to the ancient myth, the gods divided the first people on the two halves, which must seek each other around the world. Oddly enough, but the word “sex” in the sense of “sexual intercourse” came into wide usage only recently. Sexual intercourse predetermines female sex organ (vagina) and that of male (penis) (“pistil and stamen”). Sex is an act, action aimed at discharge, deriving pleasure via sex and need to continue the race.
For the first time the term “sex” in the meaning of “coitus” (“sexual intercourse”) was recorded in 1929. Modern dictionaries decipher the word “sex” as “all that relates to the sphere of sexual relations”. Synonyms for sex are intimacy, sex, bed, sexuality, intercourse. In the British comedy series “The Black Adder 3” principal character Edmund once said to writer Samuel Johnson that people would peep into his famous dictionary of intimate lexicon solely in search for obscene words. True or not, but the interest in such words certainly exists, and there is no getting around it. Sexual intercourse is carried out through genitals – vagina and penis.
Vagina (Lat. “vagina” – “sheath”). The old meaning of the Russian word vagina is “sheath”.
Penis (Lat. “pendere” – “hang”). The origin of this word, denoting a male penis is not as straightforward as it might seem at a first glance. The fact that this part of the body is hanging is clear, but ancient Romans often used this word to call the tail of the animals, so it was an allegory. The Greeks were more straightforward – to indicate male sexual organ they used the unequivocal word “peos”, although there was also the word “phallus” (“the phallus”) in their language, which denoted intense penis. It is doubtful whether one in the army barracks could be satisfied with the “tail”. Many men, especially soldiers, willingly identified their dignity with the word “gladius” (Lat. – “sword»), especially against the background of the origin of the word vagina.
Sexuality. The language problem faced by Freud is that the word “die Sexualität” is ambiguous in its content and indicates both the quality of an object and function of the body itself. This duality is well perceived in the Russian language when comparing such expressions as “sexual girl” and “sexual dysfunction” (sounds a bit different in English – “sexy girl” and “sexual dysfunction”). Sexuality as the quality is demonstration of personal orientation on own capabilities and the desire to have sex (the phenomenon of “Macho”) by means of facial expression, pantomime (gestures), clothing, behavior, figure, anecdotes, humor. It is an inherent desire to manifest your inner libido, transforming it into an external manifestation of behavior. This is purely a personal orientation, which is made up of own fantasies, fashion requirements, imposed standards. In the modern world, the functions of sexuality and reproduction rarely coincide completely.
The function of sexuality is treated as a set of biological, psycho-physiological, mental, and emotional reactions, feelings and human actions related to the manifestation and satisfaction of sexual desire (G. B. Deriagin). Sexuality is an inherent need and function of the human body like the processes of respiration, digestion. Man is born with a certain physiological sexual potential, then sexuality is formed within the scope of individual life experience. On the whole human sexuality is determined by the integrated interaction of biological, mental and socio-cultural factors.
Libido (Lat. “libido” – “lust”) is a sexual desire. In more general terms, libido is manifestation of life, which includes strivings, desires, attractions, mental drive, usually associated with sexual instinct. It is the energy, but the special one, which can be transformed assuming any kind of human activity, which is not directly related to the sexual instinct. Freud borrowed the term “libido” from A. Moll (1898), who defined two components in it, which are the manifestation of the true sexuality: the desire to touch, inducing to the physical (hugging, kissing) and spiritual communication with an individual of the opposite sex, and the desire to relax encouraging to achieve changes in the genitals, associated with vasomotor and muscular processes, following ejaculation in men and orgasm in both sexes. In fact, originally there was a sign of equality between the libido and sexuality. Rooted understanding of sexuality and libido, as analogs of a function of genital organs was and remains dominant in the minds of both researchers and people, resulting in a constant substitution of one concept by the other. Freud himself did not escape this, and therefore became a target of criticism for his pansexuality, at a time when it was not about the sexual instinct but about the principle of pleasure. E. Fromm, in his monograph “Greatness and limitations of Freud’s theory”, wrote: “Freud did not come to the concept of “social character”, because on such a narrow basis as sex, such a concept could not develop”. However, in everyday life the term “libido” has preserved its original meaning, given by Freud – sexual passion and in the consciousness of modern man it has only one definition: sexuality.
Libido, sexuality, sex – is a chain of linguistic concepts reflecting links of a single biological function, the genetic program of which is realization of the reproductive instinct with the purpose of procreation, pleasure and stress relief.
Sexual arousal and its satisfaction occupy a completely special central place among other affective states in the psychological experience of human, especially of male. It is impossible to study and understand sexuality at some particular stage of research in isolation from the context, the psychological world of the individual, social and cultural world of the society and the evolution. Due to the dominating in the medieval Europe attitude towards manifestations of sexuality as a grave sin, the development of sexology for a long time turned out impossible. At that time the human body was considered as a source of “dirty” lusts and desires, and sexuality, love – as a sin between man and woman.
Among all pioneers and founders of the scientific study of sexuality, the most well-known figure is, of course, Sigmund Freud. It was Freud who first drew public’s attention to the role of sexual and sexuality on the whole in the personal life of man, his development, peculiarities and inclinations, his life together with other people. He, considering sexuality as a basis of human existence understood it otherwise than representatives of the science of that time, the community of the past and present. He has changed the concept of “sexual”, having separated first of all sexuality from too close association with the genitals, regarding it as a more general bodily function having the aim of pleasure and only indirectly serving the purpose of reproduction. He clearly distinguished between the concepts of “sexual” and “sex”. The first concept is much broader and includes many manifestations having nothing to do with the genitals. According to Freud, the sexual life (not sex) does not begin with the onset of puberty but shortly after birth and includes a function of obtaining pleasure from the various areas of the body; the function, which was subsequently used by the body for the purpose of reproduction.