from Philip Chen

Sigmund Freud spent his time observing and interpreting a young child’s actions in the second chapter of Beyond the Pleasure Principle. The young child as Freud observed had a “troublesome habit of flinging into the corner of the room or under the bed all the little things he could lay his hands on”. He would accompany the action with a gratified “Ooooh”. Freud then observed the child playing with a toy that had a string attached to it. Instead of dragging the toy, the child would throw it over the side of his bed and pulled it back up to see it again. The game the child played became known as “Fort Da”. The words Fort and Da translate directly to Gone and There and thus those two words became the name of the game. Freud concluded that the child created the game through experience – the leaving and returning of his mother. The child attempted to be happy in the absence of his mother. Freud uses the example of “Fort Da” in an attempt to explain that actions made when you are an adult are subconsciously influenced by experiences in the person’s childhood. The process of repetition can be traced back to childhood.
Plato’s allegory of the cave and Freud’s “Fort Da” isn’t exactly comparable. They each apply to different concepts. The allegory of the cave describes different stages of knowledge of man – the uneducated to the all-knowing. “Fort Da” was used by Freud as an example of repetition at a young age and a child’s ability to cope with the absence of parents.
I’m unsure about what Freud’s view on happiness is besides his pleasure principle. The idea that pleasure is the driving force behind everything. This essay by Freud adds another reason for our actions and addresses many loopholes with the pleasure principle. I’m more in line to agree with Aristotle’s view of happiness – a life of knowledge and learning.