Beyond the Principle of Pleasure and Reality

In the 19th century man reached the realization that human unconsciousness is just a true labyrinth through research on the literature of the absurd of E.T.A. Hoffman and F. Kafka, etc. It is indispensable for children who try to imprint the patterns of their parents' habits into their own minds in order to cultivate the spirit of what is right and what is wrong. The patterns of habits mean the patterns of man's psychological reactions which are based on the principle of pleasure and reality (displeasure) such as S. Freud advocated. We can find such figures, not only in the persons of Sindbad the Sailor and Sindbad the Porter in Arabian Nights, but also in those of Tu Tze-chun the Extravagant and Tu Tze-chun the Ascetic in Akutagawa's Tu Tze-chun. This binominal conflict in an individual corresponds to the specialization of the human mind. They are poles in the human mind and they compensate each other. In consideration of this relationship, we arrive at the conclusion that the principle of pleasure works as a function of motherhood with humor, the principle of reality as a function of fatherhood with irony and the transcendental ego as a function of a wise old man or great mother