In Freudian psychoanalysis, the pleasure principle (German: Lustprinzip) is the instinctual seeking of pleasure and avoiding of pain in order to satisfy biological and psychological needs. Specifically, the pleasure principle is the driving force guiding the id
Epicurus in the ancient world, and Jeremy Bentham in the modern, laid stress upon the role of pleasure in directing human life, the latter stating: “Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure”.
Freud used the idea that the mind seeks pleasure and avoids pain in his Project for a Scientific Psychology of 1895, as well as in the theoretical portion of The Interpretation of Dreams of 1900, where he termed it the ‘unpleasure principle’