Synopsis
"Beyond the Pleasure Principle is a difficult text." As Ernest Jones, one of Freud's closest associates and a member of his Inner Ring, put it, "the train of thought by no means easy to follow...and Freud's views on the subject have often been considerably misinterpreted."
What have been called the "two distinct frescoes or canti" of Beyond the Pleasure Principle break between sections III and IV. If, as Otto Fenichel remarked, Freud's "new classification has two bases, one speculative, and one clinical", thus far the clinical. In Freud's own words, the second section "is speculation, often far-fetched speculation, which the reader will consider or dismiss according to his individual predilection" - it has been noted that "in Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Freud used that unpromising word "speculations" more than once".
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