In Chapter 2 of Freud’s text, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, the “pleasure principle” is expressed through the story of an eighteen-month-old child’s actions. The child plays this game of “fort-da” where he throws a wooden reel with a piece of string wound around it, repeatedly, over the side of his cot. The concept of “disappearance and return” is incorporated into this game, resulting in two different reactions from the boy – an interjection of “o-o-o-oh” which is meant to be the phrase “fort”, meaning “go away”, at the disappearance of the reel when he throws it away, and a joyful outburst of the phrase “Da”, meaning “there”, at the reappearance of the reel when he pulls it back. Freud’s take on the boy’s interjection is parallel to the boy’s mother’s frequent disappearance. The boy feels this certain anger and distaste towards his mother because of when she leaves, which is expressed by throwing the reel away. He feels the need to have a control over his mother’s presence, or non-presence, which he expresses through his pulling back of the reel, which grants him joy and happiness, just as his mother’s return gives him. This game is important to Freud’s ideas because it expresses how people, such as the boy, seek pleasure and avoid pain or suffering by taking control of a situation in their own way, such as controlling the mother’s absence and presence by means of a wooden reel.
This compares to Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” because of how the prisoner is faced with reality and has to accept the truth of what actually exists after being exposed to it. Similarly the boy accepts the truth of his mother’s presence, or lack thereof, and expresses that through the game. In terms of happiness, I believe both Plato and Freud show that it can be achieved only after experiencing pain, or suffering reality, and overcoming it by accepting reality.
