INTRODUCTION BY THE AUTHOR
In my essay, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, published in 1920, I began the discussion of a train of thought, my personal attitude towards which, as I mentioned there, might be described as a sort of benevolent curiosity ; in the following pages this train of thought is developed further. I have taken up those ideas and brought them into connection with various facts observed in psycho-analysis and have endeavoured to draw fresh conclusions from the combination ; in the present work, however, no further contributions are levied from biology, and it consequently stands in a closer relation to psycho-analysis than does Beyond the Pleasure Principle. The thoughts contained in it are synthetic rather than speculative in character and their aim appears to be an ambitious one.