Further explorations in ego psychology “Beyond the pleasure principle” and the ego, the id and the superego

Alexander Luria played a prominent role in the psychoanalytic community that flourished briefly in Soviet Russia in the decade following the 1917 October Revolution. In 1925 he co-wrote an introduction to Sigmund Freud's Beyond the Pleasure Principle with Lev Vygotsky, which argued that the conservatism of the instincts that Freud described might be overcome through the kind of radical social transformation then taking place in Russia. In attempting to bypass the backward looking aspects of Freud's theory, however, Luria and Vygotsky also did away with the tension between Eros and the death drive; precisely the element of Freud's essay they praised for being ‘dialectical’. This article theoretically unpicks Luria and Vygotsky's critique of psychoanalysis. It concludes by considering their optimistic ideological argument against the death drive with Luria's contemporaneous psychological research findings, proposing that Freud's ostensibly conservative theory may not have been as antithetical to revolutionary goals as Luria and Vygotsky assumed.

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Schopenhauer and the Unconscious

The Oxford Handbook of Schopenhauer ◽

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190660055.013.29 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 496-516

Author(s):

Stephan Atzert

Keyword(s):

Sigmund Freud ◽

Arthur Schopenhauer ◽

Death Drive ◽

Central Idea ◽

The Unconscious ◽

Pleasure Principle ◽

History Of ◽

The Will ◽

The Individual ◽

Sabina Spielrein

This chapter explores the gradual emergence of the notion of the unconscious as it pertains to the tradition that runs from Arthur Schopenhauer via Eduard von Hartmann and Philipp Mainländer to Sabina Spielrein, C. G. Jung, and Sigmund Freud. A particular focus is put on the popularization of the term “unconscious” by von Hartmann and on the history of the death drive, which has Schopenhauer’s essay “Transcendent Speculation on the Apparent Deliberateness in the Fate of the Individual” as one of its precursors. In this essay, Schopenhauer develops speculatively the notion of a universal, intelligent, supraindividual unconscious—an unconscious with a purpose related to death. But the death drive also owes its origins to Schopenhauer’s “relative nothingness,” which Mainländer adopts into his philosophy as “absolute nothingness” resulting from the “will to death.” His philosophy emphasizes death as the goal of the world and its inhabitants. This central idea had a distinctive influence on the formation of the idea of the death drive, which features in Freud’s Beyond the Pleasure Principle.

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An Ego-Psychological Approach to the Rorschach

Psychological Reports ◽

10.2466/pr0.1995.77.3.911 ◽

1995 ◽

Vol 77 (3) ◽

pp. 911-930

Author(s):

George Frank

Keyword(s):

Object Relations ◽

Psychological Assessment ◽

Comprehensive Assessment ◽

Point Of View ◽

Object Representations ◽

Psychological Approach ◽

Contemporary View ◽

Present Purpose ◽

Ego Psychology

This presentation is an extension and amplification of the ego-psychological assessment of Rorschach data initiated in 1946 by Rapaport, Gill, and Schafer whose focus was on the quality of the perception of reality and the assessment of defence. A more contemporary view of ego psychology not only includes an expanded view of defence but also of the nature of self- and object representations and the nature of object relations. An assessment of the synthesizing function of the ego was also discussed. The present purpose was to present a comprehensive assessment of Rorschach data from the point of view of contemporary ego psychology.

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