I have revised this translation, so carefully made by Miss Hubback, several times, but I feel
that it calls for special indulgence on the part of the reader. On account, doubtless, of the
extreme complexity and re-markable novelty of the ideas which Professor Freud here
expounds, comprising as they do his thoughts on the ultimate problems of life, the style is
one of exceptional difficulty. As it is more important to render his ideas precisely than to
clothe them in another garb, we decided to adhere faithfully to the original even at the …

In the theory of psychoanalysis we have no hesitation in assuming that the course taken by
mental events is automatically regulated by the pleasure principle. We believe, that is to say,
that the course of those events is invariably set in motion by an unpleasurable tension, and
that it takes a direction such that its final outcome coincides with a lowering or supension1 of
that tension–that is, with an avoidance of unpleasure or a production of pleasure. In taking
that course into account in our consideration of the mental processes which are the subject …

Page 1 PENGUIN BOOKS THE NEW PENGUIN FREUD GENERAL EDITOR: ADAM PHILLIPS
Beyond the Pleasure Principle and Other Writings Sigmund Freud was born in 1856 in Moravia;
between the ages of four and eighty-two his home was in Vienna: in 1938 Hitler's invasion of
Austria forced him to seek asylum in London, where he died in the following year. His career
began with several years of brilliant work on the anatomy and physiology of the nervous
system. He was almost thirty when, after a period of study under Charcot in Paris, his interests …