Patrick McCarty

“Freud does at this point shift ground. He moves from an energetic to a topological model of the psyche. So that there be no contradiction, Freud assigns the pleasure principle to its own agency of the personality. “We know,” Freud reminds us, “that the pleasure principle is proper to a primary method of working on the part of the mental apparatus, but that, from the point of view of the self-preservation of the organism among the difficulties of the external world, it is from the very outset inefficient and even highly dangerous.” That is, the PP is blind. In itself, it is not a tendency but pure automaticity which, with respect to another topos undergoes a mutation by which is “is replaced by the reality principle.” A change in place obviates the contradiction but sets the places into relation by which the PP becomes the reality principle (RP.)”
― Patrick McCarty, Freud’s Beyond the Pleasure Principle as Analyzed by Jacques Derrida: ICG Academic Series

“there is no replacement as such in that pleasure retains its dominance. The reality principle “does not abandon the intention of ultimately obtaining pleasure, but it nevertheless demands and carries into effect the postponement of satisfaction, the abandonment of a number of possibilities of gaining satisfaction and the temporary toleration of unpleasure as a step on the long indirect road to pleasure.”
― Patrick McCarty, Freud’s Beyond the Pleasure Principle as Analyzed by Jacques Derrida: ICG Academic Series