Formulations on the Two Principles of Mental Functioning

These (older, primary) processes strive towards gaining pleasure; physical activity draws back from any event which might arouse unpleasure. (Here we have repression.)

Senses - The increased significance of external reality (the setting up of the reality principle) heightened the importance, too, of the sense-organs that are directed towards that external world, and of the consciousness attached to them. Consciousness now learned to comprehend sensory qualities in addition to the qualities of pleasure and unpleasure which hitherto had along been of interest to it.
Attention - A special function was instituted which had periodically to search the external world, in order that its data might be familiar already if an urgent internal need should arise - the function of attention. Its activity meets the sense-impressions half-way, instead of awaiting their appearance. At the same time, probably, a system of notation was introduced, whose task it was to lay down the results of this periodical activity of consciousness - a part of what we call memory.
Action - Motor discharge was now employed in the appropriate alteration of reality; it was converted into action.
Thinking - Restraint upon motor discharge (upon action), which then became necessary, was provided by means of the process of thinking, which was developed from the presentation of ideas. Thinking was endowed with characteristics which made it possible for the mental apparatus to tolerate an increased tension of stimulus while the process of discharge was postponed. It is essentially an experimental kind of acting, accompanied by displacement of relatively small quantities of cathexis together with less expenditure (discharge) of them.
- It is probably that thinking was originally unconscious, in so far as it went beyond mere ideational presentations and was directed to the relations between impressions of objects, and that it did not acquire further qualities, perceptible to consciousness, until it became bound to verbal residues.
Day-Dreaming - With the introduction of the reality principle one species of thought-activity was split off; it was kept free from reality-testing and remained subordinated to the pleasure principle alone. This activity is phantasying, which begins already in children's play, and later, continued as day-dreaming, abandons dependence on real objects.
Just as the pleasure-ego can do nothing but wish, work for a yield of pleasure and avoid unpleasure, so the reality-ego need do nothing but strive for what is useful and guard itself against damage.
Actually the substitution of the reality principle for the pleasure principle implies no deposing of the pleasure principle but only a safeguarding of it. A momentary pleasure, uncertain in its results, is given up, but only in order to gain along the new path an assured pleasure at a later time.
Education - Can be described as an incitement to the conquest of the pleasure principle, and to its replacement by the reality principle; it seeks, that is, to led its help to the developmental process which affects the ego.
Art - Brings about the reconciliation between the two principles in a peculiar way. An artist is originally a man who turns away from reality because he cannot come to terms with the renunciation of instinctual satisfaction which it at first demands, and who allows his erotic and ambitious wishes full play in the life of phantasy. He finds the way back to reality, however, from this world of phantasy by making use of special gifts to mould his phantasies into truths of a new kind, which are valued by men as precious reflections of reality. Thus in a certain fashion he actually becomes the hero, the king, the creator, or the favorite he desired to be, without following the long roundabout path of making real alterations in the external world.
Sex - While the ego goes through its transformation from a pleasure-ego into a reality-ego, the sexual instincts undergo the changes that lead them from their original auto-erotism through various intermediate phases to object-love in the service of procreation.