Principle of reality

In Psychology, the principle of reality indicates the capacity to defer satisfaction nelle Pulsion.

To respect the principle of reality consists in taking into account the requirements of the real-world, and the consequences of its acts. The principle of reality indicates before all the possibility of being extracted from the Hallucination, of the Rêve, in which triumph the Pleasure principle and to admit the existence of a reality, unsatisfactory.

Origin

The origin of the principle of reality is read in disappointment. In the pleasure principle, the hallucination is first of all as satisfactory as satisfaction in act. It is reinvestment of the mnemic-traces of an experience of satisfaction: this satisfaction is revived. Thereafter, the reinvestment is shown less satisfactory, and the impulse will require another means of realization.

According to another model, complementary, the principle of reality is seen built whereas the subject needs to store instinctual energy. The modification of the pleasure principle in theory of reality binds the impulse, makes it pass from free energy to bound energy. This need to store the libido would come from the implementation for the Attention, the Conscience, the memory, which supposes a high instinctual expenditure, and thus represent the first form of sublimation.

One can make on this subject the following remark: the disorders of the attention are present in the totality of psychopathologies. In the same way, for Freud, the Oubli does not raise the question of cognitive capacities but necessarily returns to the disorder of the memory.

Psychic principles

The principle of reality however does not replace the pleasure principle, but is continuity. There will be always research of the pleasure, the desire will always seek to obtain win as fast as possible. More still, the principle of reality does not continue once and for all. For example, the sleep is included/understood like daily need to deliver itself several hours to the pleasure principle.

Principle of reality and impulses

According to Freud, this model of the passage of the pleasure principle to the principle of reality applies indifferently, that one considers the sexual instincts or the impulses of autoconservation. He postulates simply that the sexual instincts suffer from a delay in their education, and that they very highly remain attached to the pleasure principle, where the instincts of self-preservation are let bind, to defer more easily.

Reality

For as much, the statute of reality in psychoanalysis remains complex. The access to a principle of reality does not mean the knowledge of the world such as it is. If the psychotic replaces reality by the Délire, the neurotic in the same way cannot accept fragement reality and sees itself some barred the access.

The staut of the Représentation itself makes it possible to imagine the individual as prisoner of his subjectivity. Jacques Lacan will develop the three registers R, S, I, that is to say Réel, symbolic system and imaginary.

See too

Compulsion to repeat