The Pleasure Instinct PDF Download

Author: Gene Wallenstein
Publisher: Turner Publishing Company
ISBN: 047047548X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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Book Description
An immensely fascinating look at the origins and evolutionary purpose of human pleasure From our enjoyment of music to our cravings for chocolate, from our love for children and family to our attraction to things of beauty, this book embarks on an intriguing and accessible exploration of the purpose of pleasure in our lives and in human history. How did pleasure evolve and why? How does it develop in children? How does the pursuit of pleasure play a critical role in brain development? The Pleasure Instinct explores everything we need to know about our urge to feel good.

Author: Denis Dutton
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199539421
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
The Dinka have a connoisseur's appreciation of the patterns and colours of the markings on their cattle. The Japanese tea ceremony is regarded as a performance art. Some cultures produce carving but no drawing; others specialize in poetry. Yet despite the rich variety of artistic expression to be found across many cultures, we all share a deep sense of aesthetic pleasure. The need to create art of some form is found in every human society.In The Art Instinct, Denis Dutton explores the idea that this need has an evolutionary basis: how the feelings that we all share when we see a wonderful landscape or a beautiful sunset evolved as a useful adaptation in our hunter-gather ancestors, and have been passed on to us today, manifest in our artistic natures. Why do people indulge in displaying their artistic skills? How can we understand artistic genius? Why do we value art, and what is it for? These questions have long been asked by scholars in the humanities and in literature, but this is the first book to consider the biological basis of this deep human need.This sparking and intelligent book looks at these deep and fundamental questions, and combines the science of evolutionary psychology with aesthetics, to shed new light on longstanding questions about the nature of art.

Author: Sigmund Freud
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141184051
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 323

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Book Description
in Freud's view we are driven by the desire for pleasure as well as by the desire to avoid pain. But the pursuit of pleasure has never been a simple thing. Pleasure can be a form of fear, a form of memory and a way of avoiding reality. Above all, as these essays show with remarkable eloquence, pleasure is a way in which we repeat ourselves. The essays collected in this volume explore, in Freud's uniquely subtle and accessible style, the puzzles of pleasure and morality - the enigmas of human development.

Author: Susan Sugarman
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107116392
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 205

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Book Description
This book presents Freud's theory of the mind as an organic whole, built from first principles and developing in sophistication over time.

Author: Salman Akhtar
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429902565
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 331

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Book Description
Freud's Beyond the Pleasure Principle constitutes a major landmark and a real turning point in the evolution of psychoanalytic theory. Pushing aside the primacy of the tension-discharge-gratification model of mental dynamics, this work introduced the notion of a "daemonic force" within all human beings that slowly but insistently seeks psychic inactivity, inertia, and death. Politely dismissed by some as a pseudo-biological speculation and rapturously espoused by others as a bold conceptual advance, "death instinct" became a stepping stone to the latter conceptualizations of mind's attacks on itself, negative narcissism, addiction to near-death, and the utter destruction of meaning in some clinical situations. The concept also served as a bridge between the quintessentially Western psychoanalysis and the Eastern perspectives on life and death. These diverse and rich connotations of the proposal are elucidated in On Freud's "Beyond the Pleasure Principle". Other consequences of Freud's 1920 paper - namely, the marginalization of ego instincts and the "upgrading" of aggression in the scheme of things - are also addressed.

Author: Allen, A H Burlton
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136335765
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 356

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Book Description
First Published in 1999. This is Volume I of ten in the Physiological Psychology series. Written in 1930, this book is an attempt to define the nature of feeling, that which in ordinary language is called pleasure and pain, or in more technically psychological terms the affective side of the 'mental life.

Author: Sigmund Freud
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141931663
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
A collection of some of Freud's most famous essays, including ON THE INTRODUCTION OF NARCISSISM; REMEMBERING, REPEATING AND WORKING THROUGH; BEYOND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE; THE EGO AND THE ID and INHIBITION, SYMPTOM AND FEAR.

Author: A. H. Burlton Allen, A H Burlton
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781138875463
Category : Instinct
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
First Published in 1999. This is Volume I of ten in the Physiological Psychology series. Written in 1930, this book is an attempt to define the nature of feeling, that which in ordinary language is called pleasure and pain, or in more technically psychological terms the affective side of the 'mental life.

Author: Morten L. Kringelbach
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195322851
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
Many people believe that pleasure and desire are obstacles to reasonable and intelligent behavior. In The Pleasure Center, Morten Kringelbach reveals that what we desire, what pleases us--in fact, our most base, animalistic tendencies--are actually very important sources of information. They motivate us for a good reason. And understanding that reason, taking that reason into account, and harnessing and directing that reason, can make us much more rational and effective people. In exploring the many facets of pleasure, desire and emotion, Kringelbach takes us through the whole spectrum of human experience, such as how emotion fuels our interest in things, allowing us to pay attention and learn. He investigates the reward systems of the brain and sheds light on some of the most interesting new discoveries about pleasure and desire. Kringelbach concludes that if we understand and accept how pleasure and desire arise in the complex interaction between the brain's activity and our own experiences, we can discover what helps us enjoy life, enabling us to make better decisions and, ultimately, lead happier lives.

Author: Sigmund Freud
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Pleasure
Languages : en
Pages : 112

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Book Description
"In the psycho-analytical theory of the mind we take it for granted that the course of mental processes is automatically regulated by 'the pleasure-principle': that is to say, we believe that any given process originates in an unpleasant state of tension and thereupon determines for itself such a path that its ultimate issue coincides with a relaxation of this tension, i.e. with avoidance of 'pain' or with production of pleasure. We know that the pleasure-principle is adjusted to a primary mode of operation on the part of the psychic apparatus, and that for the preservation of the organism amid the difficulties of the external world it is ab initio useless and indeed extremely dangerous. Under the influence of the instinct of the ego for self-preservation it is replaced by the 'reality-principle', which without giving up the intention of ultimately attaining pleasure yet demands and enforces the postponement of satisfaction, the renunciation of manifold possibilities of it, and the temporary endurance of 'pain' on the long and circuitous road to pleasure. The replacement of the pleasure-principle by the reality-principle can account only for a small part, and that not the most intense, of painful experiences. Another and no less regular source of 'pain' proceeds from the conflicts and dissociations in the psychic apparatus during the development of the ego towards a more highly co-ordinated organisation. The two sources of 'pain' here indicated still do not nearly cover the majority of our painful experiences, but as to the rest one may say with a fair show of reason that their presence does not impugn the supremacy of the pleasure-principle. Most of the 'pain' we experience is of a perceptual order, perception either of the urge of unsatisfied instincts or of something in the external world which may be painful in itself or may arouse painful anticipations in the psychic apparatus and is recognised by it as 'danger'. The reaction to these claims of impulse and these threats of danger, a reaction in which the real activity of the psychic apparatus is manifested, may be guided correctly by the pleasure-principle or by the reality-principle which modifies this. It seems thus unnecessary to recognise a still more far-reaching limitation of the pleasure-principle, and nevertheless it is precisely the investigation of the psychic reaction to external danger that may supply new material and new questions in regard to the problem here treated"--Book. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved)