If we use Freud’s early terms “pleasure principle” and “reality principle”, we can formulate the process of repression as follows:
Thesis the pleasure principle + Antithesis the reality principle =
Synthesis repression
The demands of reality repress the will to pleasure that was instilled in man during his prolonged dependence on his parents/guardians (by the pleasure, i.e., the feeling of power, this gave him).
Consequently, we can formulate the process of neurosis as follows:
Thesis repression + Antithesis the pleasure principle =
Synthesis neurosis
These two dialectical formulations have suggested to me a third:
Thesis neurosis + Antithesis the pleasure principle =
Synthesis …
For thesis and antithesis can be turned around, so the pleasure principle is always the antithesis:
Thesis the reality principle + Antithesis the pleasure principle =
Synthesis repression + Antithesis the pleasure principle =
Synthesis neurosis + Antithesis the pleasure principle =
Synthesis …
The human will to pleasure has been so deeply instilled in him during his prolonged infancy that it can probably never be eradicated during his lifetime (if man would evolve back so that human infancy would be less prolonged, the human will to pleasure might become eradicable).
It is always the pleasure principle that rebels against other principles or facts. In its rebellion against the reality principle, it must be suppressed (repressed), otherwise the person will come to harm (e.g., the child may stick its fingers in a power socket). So when it rebels against the reality principle, the result is repression (or death). When it rebels against repression, it, like a resistance movement rebelling against an oppressor, performs its activities underground: e.g., in dreams.
Now it may be hard to picture how it will rebel against neurosis. For me, the antithesis PP versus neurosis is too abstract. However, there is, in my view, no true difference between neurosis and sublimation. Sublimation is merely the socially acceptable form of neurosis. We may therefore understand sublimation as a form of neurosis, and neurosis as a form of sublimation. And for me, the antithesis PP versus sublimation is much easier to picture. The pleasure principle may battle against the tendency to sublimate it, may strive to lead “flown-away virtue”, to speak with Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, “back to the earth—yea, back to body and life” (TSZ, Of the Bestowing Virtue).
[size=95]Once hadst thou passions and calledst them evil. But now hast thou only thy virtues: they grew out of thy passions.
[ibid., Of Joys and Passions.][/size]