- [Voiceover] When you were young
and you saw a piece of candy,
oftentimes you probably just immediately wanted it.
You wanted to have that pleasure straightaway.
The thought of waiting and delaying
would absolutely terrify you.
This is the type of behavior
that Sigmund Freud, a psychoanalyst and neurologist,
described as the pleasure principle.
And what he means by that
is that when we are young or immature,
we immediately want to fulfill our needs and feel pleasure,
and by that very token,
we also want to avoid suffering.
But the thing is that, over time,
we grow older and we become mature
and then we may also see that piece of candy again
but this time, that piece of candy
may not belong to us.
It may be somebody else's.
And we may get into trouble for taking it.
It may just be socially inappropriate.
We may have to wait.
And what we're seeing here,
we're seeing that pleasure starts to
get replaced with reality.
The reality of the situation is
that you're gonna have to wait.
You're gonna have to sacrifice
that immediate reward,
and replace it with this kind of long-term gratification.
You have to realize that the outside world
may not tolerate your pleasure-seeking behavior anymore,
and you're not always gonna get what you want.
You're gonna have to sit down
and play your role in society with the real world,
and now we've gone from the pleasure principle
to the reality principle.
And note that both of these principles
actually fulfill the same overall task of that gratification
but with the reality principle,
you may have to wait.
There may be a delay.
And you're gonna have to get that gratification
while still trying to adhere to
the rules of engagement, let's say.
The rules of society, the rules of the world.
Whereas with the pleasure principle,
this much more immature way of interacting,
you almost expect to get what you want there and then,
without any compromise.
Much like what a baby may expect.
It cries and it gets fed.
That doesn't always apply as we get older.
So these are two important principles
that Freud outlined.
Let's look at couple of other things
that Freud also talked about.
This time they will be called drives.
And one of the things that he said was that
we all have a drive towards life
and this drive involves us being healthy,
being safe, and also partaking in sex,
reproducing for our species.
So this is something that benefits our lives
that we want to live and also we want to
reproduce and allow our species to live.
And he gave this life drive
a name, and he called this Eros,
or I should say, this was a drive that's now referred to as,
often referred to as Eros.
And it also comes with other
commonly attached things such as love,
cooperation, collaboration,
so basically you're working with others
to promote your own well-being and that of others.
But one other thing that Freud also noticed
was that some people get into these
patterns of behavior that appear to be
self-destructive or harmful to others,
and he started to think about this as the death drive.
And this also comes with some associated emotions.
And these include things like fear,
anger, hate, and these can be directed both
inward at oneself or outward,
outward towards other people.
And this death drive also has a name
and this death drive is commonly called Thanatos,
and these two drives, as you can tell,
are the opposites of each other.
And one thing we have to understand about drives
is that, he said that drives are these intrinsic,
universal impulses and feelings that we all have,
and these are drives that naturally come about.
We don't need something from outside
to shift us into having this life drive or this death drive.
These are things that naturally develop in humans.
And this is something that Freud had outlined.
Now one thing we have to bear in mind
is that Freud is now seen as somewhat
of a controversial character,
so whether we're talking about the pleasure
and reality principles or the life and death drives,
Eros or Thanatos, we have to bear in mind
that many people may not agree or may argue
against these points.