Fechner’s pronouncement is to be found in his short work ‘Einige Ideen zur Schöpfungs- und Entwicklungsgeschichte der Organismen’, 1873 (Section XI, Note p. Fechner has advocated a conception of pleasure and ‘pain’ which in essentials coincides with that forced upon us by psycho-analytic work. We cannot however profess the like indifference when we find that an investigator of such penetration as G.Th. Possibly there is room here for experimental work, but it is inadvisable for us analysts to go further into these problems until we can be guided by quite definite observations. We do not thereby commit ourselves to a simple relationship between the strength of the feelings and the changes corresponding with them, least of all, judging from psycho-physiological experiences, to any view of a direct proportion existing between them probably the amount of diminution or increase in a given time is the decisive factor for feeling. We have decided to consider pleasure and ‘pain’ in relation to the quantity of excitation present in the psychic life-and not confined in any way-along such lines that ‘pain’ corresponds with an increase and pleasure with a decrease in this quantity. It is the obscurest and least penetrable region of psychic life and, while it is impossible for us to avoid touching on it, the most elastic hypothesis will be, to my mind, the best. Unfortunately no theory of any value is forthcoming.
On the other hand, we should willingly acknowledge our indebtedness to any philosophical or psychological theory that could tell us the meaning of these feelings of pleasure and ‘pain’ which affect us so powerfully. Priority and originality are not among the aims which psycho-analysis sets itself, and the impressions on which the statement of this principle is founded are of so unmistakable a kind that it is scarcely possible to overlook them. Our approach to such speculative hypotheses is by way of our endeavour to describe and account for the facts falling within our daily sphere of observation. We are not interested in examining how far in our assertion of the pleasure-principle we have approached to or adopted any given philosophical system historically established.
In our opinion a presentation which seeks to estimate, not only the topographical and dynamic, but also the economic element is the most complete that we can at present imagine, and deserves to be distinguished by the term meta-psychological. When we consider the psychic processes under observation in reference to such a sequence we are introducing into our work the economic point of view. with avoidance of ‘pain’ or with production of pleasure. In the psycho-analytical theory of the mind we take it for granted that the course of mental processes is automatically regulated by the ‘pleasure-principle’: that is to say, we believe that any given process originates in an unpleasant state of tension and thereupon determines for itself such a path that its ultimate issue coincides with a relaxation of this tension, i.e.
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