I am currently contemplating the pleasure principle aswell reading Marcuse book Eros and Civilisation. I am contemplating if the lifedrive as a motivating force of eagerness to engage and involve oneself with tasks and interests, and the want for further continuation, thus creating progression within the continuum, for example the craftman sees a progression in the lifedive because motivation is to engage with the craft, not the finished product itself. It is in the craft progress ocurrs.
A person not engaged with the lifedrive will see progress to reach the end of the task, the deathdrive. This is also what “winning” is, a deathdrive not a lifedrive.
The lifedrive is part of the pleasureprinciple, it becomes refined through the reality principle.
"the unconscious, ruled by the pleasure principle, comprises "the older, primary processes, the residues of a phase of development in which they were the only kind of mental processes.
They strive for nothing but for “gaining pleasure; from any operation which might arouse unpleasantness (‘pain’) mental activity drawsback.” But the unrestrained pleasure principle comes into conflict with the natural and human environment.The individual comes to the traumatic realization that full and painless gratification of his needs is impossible. And after this experience of disappointment, a new principle of mental functioning gains ascendancy. The reality’ principle supersedes the pleasure principle: man learns to give up momentary, uncertain, and destructive pleasure for delayed ,restrained, but “assured"pleasure. 'Because of this lasting gain through renunciation and restraint, according to Freud, the reality principle “safeguards” rather than"dethrones,”“modifies"ratherthan denies, the pleasureprinciple.”
Eros and Civilization - Marcuse
The reality principle help us discover the inbetween which the impulsive pleasure principle would have rejected to explore or see as effort or inconvenience, that is exactly there the lifedrive resides it is there craftmanship and artistry is furnaced into intellectual nuances within our dynamic expressions as sociocultural beings. If the pleasure principle rules motivation it is more convenient to search out the deathdrive, and this just keeps arousing as immediate craving (think consumer mentality), the pleasureprinciple refined as the lifedrive is ten times hundred more intellectually capable to explore the abstract curiosities of objective thinking hidden in craft and art processes, thus evolvement within our practical mentalities have abilities to furthering its topology.