Beyond the Pleasure Principle (Group Presentation)

My group presentation was on Sigmund Freud’s Beyond the Pleasure Principle. We as a group sought to target Freud’s theory on compulsions and the pleasure we receive from them and the treatments that he came up with to put a stop to these compulsions. To simplify the theories by Freud, we used daily habits of biting nails, lips, moving arms and legs, touching facial parts, playing with hair to exemplify whether or not these habits bring forth pleasure or if they originate from past experiences. All four of us had to come up with questions that reflect those that Freud would ask our classmates if he were to be treating their habits- simpler versions of compulsions. Most of the questions that I came up with consisted of quotes from the book and followed with asking if they find that fact to be true about their habits. We decided we could pretend to be Freud for a day and diagnose the class. Another way I contributed was by making our power point slides. I asked my group members to send me the key points they wanted to discuss. The portion I focused on in Beyond the Pleasure Principle was the notion of transference neurosis. In this I described how and where it originated from and what it actually was. I mentioned how transference neurosis was originally an art interpreting. Because this technique did not solve the therapeutic problem, retracing from our memory to indicate where our resistances came from became the newest approach. It was a therapeutic treatment and the focus of it was to make the unconscious transgress in to our conscious mind. The only way in which to do this, according to Freud, was for the patient to re-experience/repeat the repressed material (that was forgotten) and to make it a part of the present as opposed to the past. Once the patient starts to remember, the analyst has to make sure this transference becomes a permanent part of the memory. Overall, the classes response to our presentation was a positive one and the experience I took from it was, to sum it up, very educational and highly enjoyable.