Review of 'Book of pleasure - Psychoanalytic reflections'

Abstract

The author of this article seeks to share her reading of this conceptual and metapsychological essay, which situates Pleasure in its relationship with the construction and expansion of psychoanalytic theory, the organization of mental functioning, psychopathology, and the assumptions underlying therapeutic approaches, connecting Freud’s thinking with the necessary developments in contemporary psychoanalysis. The concept of Pleasure is highlighted not as an end in itself but as an integral part of the process of identity existence, linked to the awakening of object relations, the pursuit, inquiry, and creation. It is presented as embedded in the path of individuation-subjectivation, from the primitive basis of the pain of original helplessness in the human condition to symbolic capacity, within this boundless questioning of being in the world, with ourselves and with others. The book’s author offers reflections on the intricacies of various particularities and dialogues around what Pleasure is, how it is obtained, and the role it occupies in mental functioning, the construction of the symbolic, and the capacity to think, including metapsychological discussion. Rui Aragão Oliveira also seeks to highlight contemporary revisions and questions shared in the book on masochism and the relationship between pleasure and aggression, as well as on Pleasure related to the Bionian concept of transformation.