The Pleasure Principle

Sigmund Freud

" The programme of becoming happy, which the pleasure principle
imposes on us, cannot be fulfilled; yet we must not -- indeed, we
cannot -- give up our efforts to bring it nearer to fulfilment by some
means or other. Very different paths may be taken in that direction,
and we may give priority either to the positive aspect of the aim, that
of gaining pleasure, or to its negative one, that of avoiding unpleasure.
By none of these paths can we attain all that we desire. Happiness, in
the reduced sense in which we recognize it as possible, is a problem of
the economics of the individual's libido. There is no golden rule which
applies to everyone: every man must find out for himself in what particular
fashion he can be saved. All kinds of different factors will operate to
direct his choice. It is a question of how much real satisfaction he can
expect to get from the external world, how far he is led to make himself
independent of it, and, finally, how much strength he feels he has for
altering the world to suit his wishes. In this, his psychical constitution
will play a decisive part, irrespectively of the external circumstances.
The man who is predominantly erotic will give first preference to his
emotional relationships to other people; the narcissistic man, who inclines
to be self-sufficient, will seek his main satisfactions in his internal mental
processes; the man of action will never give up the external world on which
he can try out his strength. As regards, the second of these types, the nature
of his talents and the amount of instinctual sublimation open to him will
decide where he shall locate his interests. Any choice that is pushed to an
extreme will be penalized by exposing the individual to the dangers which
arise if a technique of living that has been chosen as an exclusive one should
prove inadequate. Just as a cautious business-man avoids tying up all his
capital in one concern, so, perhaps, worldly wisdom will advise us not to
look for the whole of our satisfaction from a single aspiration. Its success
is never certain, for that depends on the convergence of many factors, perhaps
on none more than on the capacity of the psychic constitution to adapt its
function to the environment and then to exploit that environment for a
yield of pleasure."

"Civilization and its Discontents" (1930 [1929]) [SE, XXI, p.83)