In Chapter 2 of Freud’s Beyond the Pleasure Principle, he concentrates the majority of this chapter onto his observations of a Child’s Play. In his observations, Freud had noticed that a child would “allow” a beloved/pleasurable toy to disappear his play. Freud mentioned that instead of, for example, combining his favorite toy (the reel w. the string) with the his other toys, instead, the child behaves somewhat masochistically, continually depriving himself of his favorite toy in order to see it return again (hence the name fort da :going away/there). This game is very important to Freud’s theories as from my primitive and basic knowledge of Freud, he seem to base many of his theories on adult actions being subconsciously influenced by traumas and neuroses developed in childhood. In addition, this fort da/child’s play stage is seems to at least deflate a good amount of the presumption that “pleasure” is the driving force of a person’s conscious and subconscious goals (as even a child in his most primitive stage of development would act in a manner that would contradict the pleasure principle).
The only comparison I can see between chapter two and Plato’s allegory is their use of “stages” to describe different stages of human development. Both authors/writes seem to focus their writings on the mental development of a human. Although, in this particular excerpt Freud did not elaborate on the child’s stages development and also made no reference to some of his more controversial theories (which, to my limited knowledge has something to do with a child’s oral, anal, genital fixations etc.) This however, tells me that happiness can also be motivated subconsciously, although since I lack any anecdotal “proofs” as I do not remember most my early childhood.
-Allen Chan
