The Pleasure Instinct

"This fascinating trek to the nexus of evolutionary biology and psychology goes on to examine the impact of pleasure in our everyday lives. Wallenstein reveals how the pleasure instinct influences everything from how we choose our mates to why we laugh at jokes, from our favorite dance rhythms to our preferences in art, perfume, and amusement park rides. He also takes a look at the dark side of pleasure, seeking to unearth the evolutionary roots of addiction, fetishes, and other excesses in the pursuit of pleasure."--BOOK JACKET.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.