The pleasure principle: some principles for a psychophysical training

The aim of this paper is to look at the idea of ‘pleasure’ as a strategy and an objective in a process of psychophysical training. In particular I want to suggest how a rigorous insistence on the primacy of pleasure in the approach a performer takes to his or her work, provides important strategies for structuring that work and developing and channelling creative energies to underpin their development. In other words, how the pursuit of pleasure can help create and sustain what Mexican practitioner Nicolas Nunez calls ‘the will to work’.