Quotes About Reality-principle

The reaction to these claims of impulse and these threats of danger, a reaction in which the real activity of the psychic apparatus is manifested, may be guided correctly by the pleasure-principle or by the reality-principle which modifies this.

The creation of the mental domain of phantasm has a complete counterpart in the establishment of "reservations" and "nature-parks."... The "reservation" is to maintain the old condition of things which has been regretfully sacrificed to necessity everywhere else; there everything make grow and spread as it pleases, including what is it useless and even what is harmful. The mental realm of phantasm is also such a reservation reclaimed from the encroachment of the reality-principle.

The function of art—Freud says "wit"—is to help us find our way back to sources of pleasure that have been rendered inaccessible by the capitulation to the reality-principle which we call education or maturity—in other words, to regain the lost laughter of infancy