By Dr Margaret Lowenfeld

There are few subjects to which so little serious thought is given as pleasure. Pleasure in general is an aspect of life which has perhaps shown the greatest swing in estimation during the past half- century. From the old Calvanistic view that duty was or should be the paramount motive of life, and that pleasure was entirely a side-issue – slightly out of order and not to be considered seriously, if not slightly declasse – we have swung over to the exactly opposite point of view, that pleasure is the end of all life. Quite obviously neither point of view is correct, and truth lies somewhere on the arc between these two extreme standards.

A study of contemporary literature and life reveals an attitude to pleasure that is confused, unstable and unreasoned, due to the fact that little careful thought has as yet been given to the nature of pleasure in itself – what it is and why – the kinds of pleasure that there are, and how the psychological root of pleasure can be discovered.

Pleasure can broadly be considered as the agreeable emotion accompanying a successful exercise of function in any individual. There are in the main two kinds of pleasure exactly opposed the one to the other in every manifestation: these form two poles of a perfectly balanced parabola or sphere, or series of concentric circles, and it is failure to understand that the nature of these two forms of pleasure, as well as their reaction on the individual, is entirely different, which brings about a good deal of the confusion under which we at present labour. Temporarily let us call these two kinds of pleasure A and B. Under A come all those pleasures brought about by exercise of the function of the senses – the pleasure of sight, of hearing, of taste, of touch; all those pleasures to which the individual is receptive and passive. Existing among these stimuli the individual receives them and responds to them by the sensation recognised as pleasure. The activity of the organism in regard to experience is narcissuslike – first producing the stimulus then receiving it back itself as pleasure sensation – it plays a piece and hears it – it paints a picture and looks at it – cooks a dinner and eats it. The product of the activity is re-absorption into the individual cresting it.