Jacqueline Liang
Option #2
Undoubtedly, everyone in this world as consciously or unconsciously thought about happiness and what it is that’s associated with this complex word. Pleasure is of course one of the words that comes into mind, but how exactly we can feel this pleasure is a whole other story. In Beyond the Pleasure Principle, psychologist, Sigmund Freud, made a rather clever observation of a child‘s play, which eventually came to be coined as “fort da” or “disappearance and return“. In this instance, an eighteen month old child seems to take much time flinging toys to and fro, especially a wooden reel with a string attached to it. This certain toy is the central figure of the “fort da” game because when the toy is thrown, it disappears but with a tug on the string, the toy seems to magically appear again much to the pleasure of the child.
The game, though simple, holds an interesting point to Freud’s whole argument on the basis and fundamentals of pleasure. The whole idea of this “fort da” game is for the child to cope with the various departures of his mother because when he is reeling the toy back into his view, it is representational of the hope and joy of his mother’s return. The simple act of the child flinging the toy away is symbolic to his mothers departure because what baby doesn’t feel at least a twinge of pain when his or her mother goes away. But if this game has so much pain before the actual pleasure, why does the child keep repeating the action? Perhaps you think that this has no relation to us because the center of the game is a mere child whereas we are developed adults with more complex thought capabilities but this “fort da” game can be readily applied to all human beings. In life, how can we ever feel satisfaction or know what that is if there is no pain or un-pleasurable feeling as a prelude; it is a necessary contradiction in a sense. Imagine that you are going jogging on a dry, sunny day and you somehow forgot to bring water. The more the jog, the thirstier you will get, but the thirstier you get the better and more refreshing the water will taste when you actually get to it. The whole irony of it all is that by repeating the unpleasant things, you will eventually find pleasure in it.
Surprisingly, the “fort da” game is like its predecessor, The Allegory of the Cave, by Plato. In this instance, the story is much more somber with it being about prisoners who have been chained in a dark cave for their whole lives. They have never seen each other or the outside world and their only companions are the shadows dance across the cave walls. But what if one day, one of the prisoners was freed from the cave? The prisoner is similar to the child in the “fort da” game because they lack the knowledge of the “real world”; the baby is still too young and the prisoner has never been in contact with the world outside of the cave. The two resort to symbolic things and imagination to cope and make sense of their surroundings and feelings. Furthermore, after the prisoner adapts to the real world and begins to see that his life in the cave and the shadows are not the only realities, he goes back to the cave to the other chained men. This instance is like the child throwing the toy away and reeling it back in repeatedly because when you learn something new and more pleasurable, there is always an urge to go back to the origin of the unpleasant thing or event. It is almost like a boost or reinforcement for the happiness or pleasure because lets face it, pain and pleasure goes hand in hand even if their perceptions are different in each human being.
