pleasure-pain principle

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Noun

pleasure-pain principle - (psychoanalysis) the governing principle of the id; the principle that an infant seeks gratification and fails to distinguish fantasy from reality

pleasure principle, pleasure-unpleasure principle

depth psychology, psychoanalysis, analysis - a set of techniques for exploring underlying motives and a method of treating various mental disorders; based on the theories of Sigmund Freud; "his physician recommended psychoanalysis"

principle - a basic truth or law or assumption; "the principles of democracy"

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HOME AND AWAY Channel 5 THE pleasure-pain principle seems to be at play for Brody this week.

STREET FIGHTER; Will David's run-in with Dane spell the end of his and Shona's relationship?

I thought then that its only failing was this: that the characters were in a too rarefied atmosphere--moving too absolutely according to the pleasure-pain principle. Whenever you did allow the everyday comment, the effect was remarkable.

102 *Typed: [1937]

Since he cannot make sense of his spiritual condition, he now tries to reduce ethical mystery to a perverse pleasure-pain principle. Initially he told the Grandmother: "No pleasure but meanness." Yet his encounter with her touch has exposed his need, his human vulnerability.