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By virtue of its economic orientation, this notion is part of the metapsychological approach and speaks to the quantitative [[dimension]] in Freud's model. Freud discussed discharge when he described the [[pleasure]]/unpleasure [[principle]]: the pleasure of discharge, the unpleasure of retention. We should [[recall]] that according to Freud, the source of the [[instinct]] is a [[state]] of excitation in the [[body]] and its aim is to eliminate this excitation. Obviously, the [[concept]] of discharge implies as a corollary the notion of tension, or charge. Pleasure and unpleasure probably depend less upon an exact level of tension than upon the rhythm of variation in tension. The principle of pleasure/unpleasure is thus considered a [[particular]] [[case]] of Gustav Fechner's "tendency toward [[stability]]," that "tendency" becoming in this [[instance]] the "principle of consistency."
Consistency is said to be achieved by means of the discharge of the energy already [[present]], but also by the avoidance of factors that might increase the quantity of excitation. The principle of consistency is indeed basic to Freud's economic [[theory]] and is closely linked with the [[pleasure principle]]. The [[Psychic Apparatus|psychic apparatus]], in this view, also tends to cancel out excitations or reduce [[them]] to a minimum, and Freud, following Barbara Low, called this the "[[Nirvana]] principle," which works in tandem with the principle of inertia. It is in this realm that the forces of [[Thanatos]] lurk; moroever, it was in Beyond the [[Pleasure Principle]] (1920g), where the [[death]] instinct is introduced, that Freud explicitly formulated the principle of consistency and related it to the Nirvana principle.
Discharge can be [[total]] or [[partial]]; it can be appropriate or it can contribute to psychopathological, even psychodramatic disorders. The notion thus appears in Freud's discussions of "[[abreaction]]" or "[[acting-out]]," when there is insufficient regulation of excitation by the psychic apparatus. [[Another]] possibility is discharge into the body, which suggests the mysterious leap from the psychic to the somatic, the notion of somatic compliance, and the phenomenon of conversion. Freud also mentioned the pathogenic [[role]] of defective discharge in considering the model of actual [[neurosis]], and in presenting the hypothesis of the damming up of the [[libido]] to explain the phenomenon of [[hypochondria]]. Still in the context of discharge, the soma as an internal safety-valve has been viewed as a way of handling tensions that cannot be worked through or that are too massive—in short, a kind of somatic "acting-in."
