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Death drive

In classical Freudian psychoanalytic theory, the death drive (German: Todestrieb) is the drive toward death and destruction, often expressed through behaviors such as aggression, repetition compulsion, and self-destructiveness.[1][2] It was originally proposed by Sabina Spielrein in her paper "Destruction as the Cause of Coming Into Being"[3][4] (Die Destruktion als Ursache des Werdens)[5] in 1912, which was then taken up by Sigmund Freud in 1920 in Beyond the Pleasure Principle. This concept has been translated as "opposition between the ego or death instincts and the sexual or life instincts".[6] In Pleasure Principle, Freud used the plural "death drives" (Todestriebe) much more frequently than the singular.[7]

The death drive opposes Eros, the tendency toward survival, propagation, sex, and other creative, life-producing drives. The death drive is sometimes referred to as "Thanatos" in post-Freudian thought, complementing "Eros", although this term was not used in Freud's own work, being rather introduced by Wilhelm Stekel in 1909 and then by Paul Federn in the present context.[8][9] Subsequent psychoanalysts such as Jacques Lacan and Melanie Klein have defended the concept.

Terminology

The standard edition of Freud's works in English confuses two terms that are different in German, Instinkt (instinct) and Trieb (drive), often translating both as instinct; for example, "the hypothesis of a death instinct, the task of which is to lead organic life back into the inanimate state".[10] "This equating of Instinkt and Trieb has created serious misunderstandings".[11][12] Freud actually refers to the term "Instinkt" in explicit use elsewhere,[13] and so while the concept of "instinct" can loosely be referred to as a "drive," any essentialist or naturalist connotations of the term should be put in abeyance. In a sense, the death drive is a force that is not essential to the life of an organism (unlike an "instinct") and tends to denature it or make it behave in ways that are sometimes counter-intuitive. In other words, the term death "instinct" is simply a false representation of death drive. The term is almost universally known in scholarly literature on Freud as the "death drive", and Lacanian psychoanalysts often shorten it to simply "drive" (although Freud posited the existence of other drives as well, and Lacan explicitly states in Seminar XI that all drives are partial to the death drive).[14] The contemporary Penguin translations of Freud translate Trieb and Instinkt as "drive" and "instinct" respectively.

Origin of the theory: Beyond the Pleasure Principle

It was a basic premise of Freud's that "the course taken by mental events is automatically regulated by the pleasure principle...[associated] with an avoidance of unpleasure or a production of pleasure".[15] Three main types of conflictual evidence, difficult to explain satisfactorily in such terms, led Freud late in his career to look for another principle in mental life beyond the pleasure principle—a search that would ultimately lead him to the concept of the death drive.

The first problem Freud encountered was the phenomenon of repetition in (war) trauma. When Freud worked with people with trauma (particularly the trauma experienced by soldiers returning from World War I), he observed that subjects often tended to repeat or re-enact these traumatic experiences: "dreams occurring in traumatic patients have the characteristic of repeatedly bringing the patient back into the situation of his accident",[16] contrary to the expectations of the pleasure principle.

A second problematic area was found by Freud in children's play (such as the Fort/Da Forth/here game played by Freud's grandson, who would stage and re-stage the disappearance of his mother and even himself). "How then does his repetition of this distressing experience as a game fit in with the pleasure principle?"[17][18]

The third problem came from clinical practice. Freud found his patients, dealing with painful experiences that had been repressed, regularly "obliged to repeat the repressed material as a contemporary experience instead of ... remembering it as something belonging to the past".[19] Combined with what he called "the compulsion of destiny ... come across [in] people all of whose human relationships have the same outcome",[20] such evidence led Freud "to justify the hypothesis of a compulsion to repeat—something that would seem more primitive, more elementary, more instinctual than the pleasure principle which it over-rides".[21]

He then set out to find an explanation of such a compulsion, an explanation that some scholars have labeled as "metaphysical biology".[22] In Freud's own words, "What follows is speculation, often far-fetched speculation, which the reader will consider or dismiss according to his individual predilection".[23] Seeking a new instinctual paradigm for such problematic repetition, he found it ultimately in "an urge in organic life to restore an earlier state of things"[24]—the inorganic state from which life originally emerged. From the conservative, restorative character of instinctual life, Freud derived his death drive, with its "pressure towards death", and the resulting "separation of the death instincts from the life instincts"[25] seen in Eros. The death drive then manifested itself in the individual creature as a force "whose function is to assure that the organism shall follow its own path to death".[26]

Seeking further potential clinical support for the existence of such a self-destructive force, Freud found it through a reconsideration of his views of masochism—previously "regarded as sadism that has been turned round upon the subject's own ego"—so as to allow that "there might be such a thing as primary masochism—a possibility which I had contested"[27] before. Even with such support, however, he remained very tentative to the book's close about the provisional nature of his theoretical construct: what he called "the whole of our artificial structure of hypotheses".[28]

Although Spielrein's paper was published in 1912, Freud initially resisted the concept as he considered it to be too Jungian. Nevertheless, Freud eventually adopted the concept, and in later years would build extensively upon the tentative foundations he had set out in Beyond the Pleasure Principle. In The Ego and the Id (1923) he would develop his argument to state that "the death instinct would thus seem to express itself—though probably only in part—as an instinct of destruction directed against the external world".[29] The following year he would spell out more clearly that the "libido has the task of making the destroying instinct innocuous, and it fulfils the task by diverting that instinct to a great extent outwards .... The instinct is then called the destructive instinct, the instinct for mastery, or the will to power",[30] a perhaps much more recognisable set of manifestations.

At the close of the decade, in Civilization and Its Discontents (1930), Freud acknowledged that "To begin with it was only tentatively that I put forward the views I have developed here, but in the course of time they have gained such a hold upon me that I can no longer think in any other way".[31]

Philosophy

From a philosophical perspective, the death drive may be viewed in relation to the work of the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer. His philosophy, expounded in The World as Will and Representation (1818) postulates that all exists by a metaphysical "will" (more clearly, a will to live[32]), and that pleasure affirms this will. Schopenhauer's pessimism led him to believe that the affirmation of the "will" was a negative and immoral thing, due to his belief of life producing more suffering than happiness. The death drive would seem to manifest as a natural and psychological negation of the "will".

Freud was well aware of such possible linkages. In a letter of 1919, he wrote that regarding "the theme of death, [that I] have stumbled onto an odd idea via the drives and must now read all sorts of things that belong to it, for instance Schopenhauer".[33] Ernest Jones (who like many analysts was not convinced of the need for the death drive, over and above an instinct of aggression) considered that "Freud seemed to have landed in the position of Schopenhauer, who taught that 'death is the goal of life'".[34]

However, as Freud put it to the imagined auditors of his New Introductory Lectures (1932), "You may perhaps shrug your shoulders and say: "That isn't natural science, it's Schopenhauer's philosophy!" But, ladies and gentlemen, why should not a bold thinker have guessed something that is afterwards confirmed by sober and painstaking detailed research?"[35] He then went on to add that "what we are saying is not even genuine Schopenhauer....we are not overlooking the fact that there is life as well as death. We recognise two basic instincts and give each of them its own aim".[36]

Cultural application: Civilization and Its Discontents

Freud applied his new theoretical construct in Civilization and Its Discontents (1930) to the difficulties inherent in Western civilization—indeed, in civilization and in social life as a whole. In particular, given that "a portion of the [death] instinct is diverted towards the external world and comes to light as an instinct of aggressiveness', he saw 'the inclination to aggression ... [as] the greatest impediment to civilization".[37] The need to overcome such aggression entailed the formation of the [cultural] superego: "We have even been guilty of the heresy of attributing the origin of conscience to this diversion inwards of aggressiveness".[38] The presence thereafter in the individual of the superego and a related sense of guilt—"Civilization, therefore, obtains mastery over the individual's dangerous desire for aggression by ... setting up an agency within him to watch over it"[39]—leaves an abiding sense of uneasiness inherent in civilized life, thereby providing a structural explanation for 'the suffering of civilized man'.[40]

Freud made a further connection between group life and innate aggression, where the former comes together more closely by directing aggression to other groups, an idea later picked up by group analysts like Wilfred Bion.

Continuing development of Freud's views

In the closing decade of Freud's life, it has been suggested, his view of the death drive changed somewhat, with "the stress much more upon the death instinct's manifestations outwards".[41] Given "the ubiquity of non-erotic aggressivity and destructiveness", he wrote in 1930, "I adopt the standpoint, therefore, that the inclination to aggression is an original, self-subsisting instinctual disposition in man".[42]

In 1933, he conceived of his original formulation of the death drive 'the improbability of our speculations. A queer instinct, indeed, directed to the destruction of its own organic home!'.[43] He wrote moreover that "Our hypothesis is that there are two essentially different classes of instincts: the sexual instincts, understood in the widest sense—Eros, if you prefer that name—and the aggressive instincts, whose aim is destruction".[44] In 1937, he went so far as to suggest privately that 'We should have a neat schematic picture if we supposed that originally, at the beginning of life, all libido was directed to the inside and all aggressiveness to the outside'.[45] In his last writings, it was the contrast of "two basic instincts, Eros and the destructive instinct ... our two primal instincts, Eros and destructiveness",[46] on which he laid stress. Nevertheless, his belief in "the death instinct ... [as] a return to an earlier state ... into an inorganic state"[47] continued to the end.

Mortido and Destrudo

The terms mortido and destrudo, formed analogously to libido, refer to the energy of the death instinct.[48] In the early 21st century, their use amongst Freudian psychoanalysists has been waning, but still designate destructive energy.[49] The importance of integrating mortido into an individual's life, as opposed to splitting it off and disowning it, has been taken up by figures like Robert Bly in the men's movement.[50]

Paul Federn used the term mortido for the new energy source,[51] and has generally been followed in that by other analytic writers.[52] His disciple and collaborator Weiss, however, chose destrudo, which was later taken up by Charles Brenner.[53]

Mortido has also been applied in contemporary expositions of the Cabbala.[54]

Whereas Freud himself never named the aggressive and destructive energy of the death drive (as he had done with the life drive, "libido"),[55] the next generation of psychoanalysts vied to find suitable names for it.

Literary criticism has been almost more prepared than psychoanalysis to make at least metaphorical use of the term 'Destrudo'. Artistic images were seen by Joseph Campbell in terms of "incestuous 'libido' and patricidal 'destrudo'";[56] while literary descriptions of the conflict between destrudo and libido[57] are still fairly widespread in the 21st century.[58]

Destrudo as an evocative name also appears in rock music[59] and video games.[60]

Paul Federn

Mortido was introduced by Freud's pupil Paul Federn to cover the psychic energy of the death instinct, something left open by Freud himself:[61] Providing what he saw as clinical proof of the reality of the death instinct in 1930, Federn reported on the self-destructive tendencies of severely melancholic patients as evidence of what he would later call inwardly-directed mortido.[62]

However, Freud himself favoured neither term – mortido or destrudo. This worked against either of them gaining widespread popularity in the psychoanalytic literature.[63]

Edoardo Weiss

Destrudo is a term introduced by Italian psychoanalyst Edoardo Weiss in 1935 to denote the energy of the death instinct, on the analogy of libido[64][65]—and thus to cover the energy of the destructive impulse in Freudian psychology.

Destrudo is the opposite of libido—the urge to create, an energy that arises from the Eros (or "life") drive—and is the urge to destroy arising from Thanatos (death), and thus an aspect of what Sigmund Freud termed "the aggressive instincts, whose aim is destruction".[66]

Weiss related aggression/destrudo to secondary narcissism, something generally only described in terms of the libido turning towards the self.[67]

Eric Berne

Eric Berne, who was a pupil of Federn's, made extensive use of the term mortido in his pre-transactional analysis study, The Mind in Action (1947). As he wrote in the foreword to the third edition of 1967, "the historical events of the last thirty years...become much clearer by introducing Paul Federn's concept of mortido".[68]

Berne saw mortido as activating such forces as hate and cruelty, blinding anger and social hostilities;[69] and considered that inwardly directed mortido underlay the phenomena of guilt and self-punishment, as well as their clinical exacerbations in the form of depression or melancholia.[70]

Berne saw sexual acts as gratifying mortido at the same time as libido; and recognised that on occasion the former becomes more important sexually than the latter, as in sadomasochism and destructive emotional relationships.[71]

Berne's concern with the role of mortido in individuals and groups, social formations and nations, arguably continued throughout all his later writings.[72]

Jean Laplanche

Jean Laplanche has explored repeatedly the question of mortido,[73] and of how far a distinctive instinct of destruction can be identified in parallel to the forces of libido.[74]

Analytic reception

As Freud wryly commented in 1930, "The assumption of the existence of an instinct of death or destruction has met with resistance even in analytic circles".[75] Indeed, Ernest Jones would comment of Beyond the Pleasure Principle that the book not only "displayed a boldness of speculation that was unique in all his writings" but was "further noteworthy in being the only one of Freud's which has received little acceptance on the part of his followers".[76]

Otto Fenichel in his compendious survey of the first Freudian half-century concluded that "the facts on which Freud based his concept of a death instinct in no way necessitate the assumption ... of a genuine self-destructive instinct".[77] Heinz Hartmann set the tone for ego psychology when he "chose to ... do without 'Freud's other, mainly biologically oriented set of hypotheses of the "life" and "death instincts"'".[78] In the object relations theory, among the independent group 'the most common repudiation was the loathsome notion of the death instinct'.[79] Indeed, "for most analysts Freud's idea of a primitive urge towards death, of a primary masochism, was ... bedevilled by problems".[80]

Nevertheless, the concept has been defended, extended, and carried forward by some analysts, generally those tangential to the psychoanalytic mainstream; while among the more orthodox, arguably of "those who, in contrast to most other analysts, take Freud's doctrine of the death drive seriously, K. R. Eissler has been the most persuasive—or least unpersuasive".[81]

Melanie Klein and her immediate followers considered that "the infant is exposed from birth to the anxiety stirred up by the inborn polarity of instincts—the immediate conflict between the life instinct and the death instinct";[2] and Kleinians indeed built much of their theory of early childhood around the outward deflection of the latter. "This deflection of the death instinct, described by Freud, in Melanie Klein's view consists partly of a projection, partly of the conversion of the death instinct into aggression".[2]

French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, for his part, castigated the "refusal to accept this culminating point of Freud's doctrine ... by those who conduct their analysis on the basis of a conception of the ego ... that death instinct whose enigma Freud propounded for us at the height of his experience".[82] Characteristically, he stressed the linguistic aspects of the death drive: "the symbol is substituted for death in order to take possession of the first swelling of life .... There is therefore no further need to have recourse to the outworn notion of primordial masochism in order to understand the reason for the repetitive games in ... his Fort! and in his Da!."[83]

Eric Berne too would proudly proclaim that he, "besides having repeated and confirmed the conventional observations of Freud, also believes right down the line with him concerning the death instinct, and the pervasiveness of the repetition compulsion".[1]

For the twenty-first century, "the death drive today ... remains a highly controversial theory for many psychoanalysts ... [almost] as many opinions as there are psychoanalysts".[84]

Freud's conceptual opposition of death and eros drives in the human psyche was applied by Walter A. Davis in Deracination: Historicity, Hiroshima, and the Tragic Imperative[85] and Death's Dream Kingdom: The American Psyche since 9/11.[86] Davis described social reactions to both Hiroshima and 9/11 from the Freudian viewpoint of the death force. Unless they consciously take responsibility for the damage of those reactions, Davis claims that Americans will repeat them.

See also

References

  1. ^ a b Eric Berne, What Do You say After You Say Hello? (London, 1975) pp. 399–400.
  2. ^ a b c Hanna Segal, Introduction to the work of Melanie Klein (London, 1964), p. 12.
  3. ^ Spielrein, Sabina (April 1994). "Destruction as the Cause of Coming Into Being". Journal of Analytical Psychology. 39 (2): 155–186. doi:10.1111/j.1465-5922.1994.00155.x. Free pdf of the full essay 2016-03-06 at the Wayback Machine by the Arizona Psychoanalytic Society.
  4. ^ Spielrein, Sabina (1995). "Destruction as Cause of Becoming". Psychoanalysis and Contemporary Thought. 18 (1): 85–118.
  5. ^ Spielrein, Sabina (1912). "Die Destruktion als Ursache des Werdens". Jahrbuch für Psychoanalytische und Psychopathologische Forschungen (in German). IV: 465–503.
  6. ^ Sigmund Freud, "Beyond the Pleasure Principle" in On Metapsychology (Middlesex 1987), p. 316.
  7. ^ See occurrences of "death drives" and of "death drive".
  8. ^ Jones, Ernest (1957) [1953]. The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud. Volume 3. New York City: Basic Books. p. 273. It is a little odd that Freud himself never, except in conversation, used for the death instinct the term Thanatos, one which has become so popular since. At first he used the terms "death instinct" and "destructive instinct" indiscriminately, alternating between them, but in his discussion with Einstein about war he made the distinction that the former is directed against the self and the latter, derived from it, is directed outward. Stekel had in 1909 used the word Thanatos to signify a death-wish, but it was Federn who introduced it in the present context.
  9. ^ Laplanche, Jean; Pontalis, Jean-Bertrand (2018) [1973]. "Thanatos". The Language of Psychoanalysis. Abingdon-on-Thames: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-429-92124-7.
  10. ^ Sigmund Freud, "The Ego and the Id", in On Metapsychology (Middlesex, 1987), p. 380.
  11. ^ Otto Fenichel, The Psychoanalytic Theory of Neurosis, (London, 1946), p. 12.
  12. ^ Laplanche, Jean; Pontalis, Jean-Bertrand (2018) [1973]. "Instinct (or Drive)."
  13. ^ Nagera, Humberto, ed. (2014) [1970]. "Instinct and Drive (pp. 19ff.)". Basic Psychoanalytic Concepts on the Theory of Instincts. Abingdon-on-Thames: Routledge. ISBN 978-1-317-67045-2.
  14. ^ The four fundamental concepts of psychoanalysis. W.W. Norton. ISBN 9780393317756.
  15. ^ Freud, "Beyond the Pleasure Principle", p. 275.
  16. ^ Freud, "Beyond", p. 282.
  17. ^ Freud, "Beyond", p. 285.
  18. ^ Clark, Robert (October 24, 2005). "Repetition Compulsion". The Literary Encyclopedia. Retrieved March 15, 2020.
  19. ^ Freud, "Beyond" p. 288.
  20. ^ Freud, "Beyond" p. 294 and p. 292.
  21. ^ Freud, "Beyond", p. 294.
  22. ^ Schuster, Aaron (2016). The Trouble with Pleasure. Deleuze and Psychoanalysis. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. p. 32. ISBN 978-0-262-52859-7.
  23. ^ Freud, "Beyond", p. 295.
  24. ^ Freud, "Beyond", p. 308.
  25. ^ Freud, "Beyond", pp. 316 and 322.
  26. ^ Freud, "Beyond", p. 311.
  27. ^ Freud, "Beyond", p. 328.
  28. ^ Freud, "Beyond", p. 334.
  29. ^ Freud, "Ego/Id", p. 381.
  30. ^ Freud, "The Economic Problem of Masochism" in On Metapsychology, p. 418.
  31. ^ Sigmund Freud, "Civilization and Its Discontents", in Civilization, Society and Religion (Middlesex, 1987), p. 311.
  32. ^ Schopenhauer, Arthur (2008). The World as Will and Presentation. Translated by Richard E. Aquila and David Carus. New York: Longman.
  33. ^ Quoted in Peter Gay, Freud: A life for our time (London, 1989), p. 391.
  34. ^ Ernest Jones, The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud (London, 1964), p. 508.
  35. ^ Sigmund Freud, New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis (London, 1991), pp. 140–1.
  36. ^ Freud, New, p. 141.
  37. ^ Freud, Civilization pp. 310 and 313.
  38. ^ Freud, "Why War?" in Civilization, p. 358.
  39. ^ Freud, Civilization, p. 316.
  40. ^ Jacques Lacan, Ecrits: A Selection (London, 1997), p. 69.
  41. ^ Albert Dickson, "Editor's Introduction", Civilization, p. 249.
  42. ^ Freud, Civilization, pp. 311 and 313.
  43. ^ Freud, New, p. 139.
  44. ^ Freud, New, p. 136.
  45. ^ Freud quoted by Dickson, Civilization, p. 249.
  46. ^ Sigmund Freud, Standard Edition vol. xxiii (London 1964), pp. 148 and 246.
  47. ^ Freud, SE, xxiii, pp. 148-9.
  48. ^ Charles Rycroft, A Critical Dictionary of Psychoanalysis (London 1995) p. 104
  49. ^ Jadran Mimica, Explorations in Psychoanalytic Ethnography (2007) p. 78
  50. ^ Keith Tudor, in B. J. Brother, Power and Partnership (1995) p. 71
  51. ^ Eric Berne, A Layman's Guide to Psychiatry and Psychoanalysis (Middlesex 1976) p. 101
  52. ^ J. G. Watkins, The Therapeutic Self (1978) p. 142
  53. ^ Todd Dufresne, Tales from the Freudian Crypt (2000) p. 24
  54. ^ Z. B. S. Halevi, Introduction to the Cabbala (1991) p. 197
  55. ^ Salman Akhtar, Comprehensive Dictionary of Psychoanalysis (2009) p. 227
  56. ^ Quoted in Margery Hourihan, Deconstructing the Hero (1994) p. 22
  57. ^ M. Beugnet/M. Schmid, Proust at the Movies (2004) p. 194
  58. ^ Andrew Gibson, Beckett and Badiou (2006) p. 255
  59. ^ Metal Nation Archived 2012-07-10 at archive.today
  60. ^ Destrudo-questions Archived 2012-07-17 at archive.today
  61. ^ Salman Akhtar, Comprehensive Dictionary of Psychoanalysis (2009) p. 176
  62. ^ Franz Alexander et al, Psychoanalytic Pioneers (1995) p. 153
  63. ^ Akhtar, p. 176
  64. ^ International Journal of Psycho-Analysis (1953) Vol 23 p. 74
  65. ^ Eric Berne, A Layman's Guide to Psychiatry and Psychoanalysis (Middlesex 1976), p. 101
  66. ^ Sigmund Freud, New Introductory Lectures in Psychoanalysis (London 1991), p. 136
  67. ^ Herbert A. Rosenfeld, Impasse and Interpretation (1987) p. 126
  68. ^ Berne, A Layman's Guide, p. 16
  69. ^ Berne, A Layman's Guide, p. 69
  70. ^ Berne, A Layman's Guide p. 95 and p. 214
  71. ^ Berne, A Layman's Guide p. 124
  72. ^ Petrushka Clarkson, Transactional Analysis Psychotherapy (1993) p. 5
  73. ^ Bernard Golse "Destrudo"
  74. ^ Jean Laplanche/John Fletcher, Essays on Otherness (1999) p. 34
  75. ^ Freud, Civilization, p. 310.
  76. ^ Jones, Life, p. 505.
  77. ^ Otto Fenichel, The Psychoanalytic Theory of Neurosis (London, 1946), p. 60.
  78. ^ Quoted in Gay, Freud, pp. 402–3n.
  79. ^ Richard Appignanesi, ed., Introducing Melanie Klein (Cambridge, 2006), p. 157.
  80. ^ Gay, Freud, p. 402.
  81. ^ Gay, p. 768.
  82. ^ Lacan, Ecrits, p. 101.
  83. ^ Lacan, Ecrits pp. 124 and 103.
  84. ^ Jean-Michel Quinodoz, Reading Freud (London, 2005), p. 193.
  85. ^ Davis, Walter A. (2001). Deracination; Historicity, Hiroshima, and the Tragic Imperative. Albany: State University of New York Press. ISBN 978-0-79144834-2.
  86. ^ Davis, Walter A. (2006). Death's Dream Kingdom. London: Pluto Press. ISBN 978-0-74532468-5.

Further reading

  • Otto Fenichel, "A Critique of the Death Instinct" (1935), in Collected Papers, 1st Series (1953), 363–72.
  • K. R. Eissler, "Death Drive, Ambivalence, and Narcissism", The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, XXVI (1971), 25–78.
  • Paul Federn, Ego Psychology and the Psychoses (1952)
  • Jean Laplanche, Vie et Mort en Psychanalyse (1970)
  • Rob Weatherill, The death drive: new life for a dead subject? (1999).
  • Niklas Hageback, The Death Drive: Why Societies Self-Destruct Gaudium; Reprint edition. (2020). ISBN 978-1592110346.
  • Edoardo Weiss, Principles of Psychodynamics (New York 1950)

External links

death, drive, album, sole, pain, death, drive, album, classical, freudian, psychoanalytic, theory, death, drive, german, todestrieb, drive, toward, death, destruction, often, expressed, through, behaviors, such, aggression, repetition, compulsion, self, destru. For the album by Sole amp DJ Pain 1 see Death Drive album In classical Freudian psychoanalytic theory the death drive German Todestrieb is the drive toward death and destruction often expressed through behaviors such as aggression repetition compulsion and self destructiveness 1 2 It was originally proposed by Sabina Spielrein in her paper Destruction as the Cause of Coming Into Being 3 4 Die Destruktion als Ursache des Werdens 5 in 1912 which was then taken up by Sigmund Freud in 1920 in Beyond the Pleasure Principle This concept has been translated as opposition between the ego or death instincts and the sexual or life instincts 6 In Pleasure Principle Freud used the plural death drives Todestriebe much more frequently than the singular 7 The death drive opposes Eros the tendency toward survival propagation sex and other creative life producing drives The death drive is sometimes referred to as Thanatos in post Freudian thought complementing Eros although this term was not used in Freud s own work being rather introduced by Wilhelm Stekel in 1909 and then by Paul Federn in the present context 8 9 Subsequent psychoanalysts such as Jacques Lacan and Melanie Klein have defended the concept Contents 1 Terminology 2 Origin of the theory Beyond the Pleasure Principle 3 Philosophy 4 Cultural application Civilization and Its Discontents 5 Continuing development of Freud s views 6 Mortido and Destrudo 6 1 Paul Federn 6 2 Edoardo Weiss 6 3 Eric Berne 6 4 Jean Laplanche 7 Analytic reception 8 See also 9 References 10 Further reading 11 External linksTerminology EditThe standard edition of Freud s works in English confuses two terms that are different in German Instinkt instinct and Trieb drive often translating both as instinct for example the hypothesis of a death instinct the task of which is to lead organic life back into the inanimate state 10 This equating of Instinkt and Trieb has created serious misunderstandings 11 12 Freud actually refers to the term Instinkt in explicit use elsewhere 13 and so while the concept of instinct can loosely be referred to as a drive any essentialist or naturalist connotations of the term should be put in abeyance In a sense the death drive is a force that is not essential to the life of an organism unlike an instinct and tends to denature it or make it behave in ways that are sometimes counter intuitive In other words the term death instinct is simply a false representation of death drive The term is almost universally known in scholarly literature on Freud as the death drive and Lacanian psychoanalysts often shorten it to simply drive although Freud posited the existence of other drives as well and Lacan explicitly states in Seminar XI that all drives are partial to the death drive 14 The contemporary Penguin translations of Freud translate Trieb and Instinkt as drive and instinct respectively Origin of the theory Beyond the Pleasure Principle EditMain article Beyond the Pleasure Principle It was a basic premise of Freud s that the course taken by mental events is automatically regulated by the pleasure principle associated with an avoidance of unpleasure or a production of pleasure 15 Three main types of conflictual evidence difficult to explain satisfactorily in such terms led Freud late in his career to look for another principle in mental life beyond the pleasure principle a search that would ultimately lead him to the concept of the death drive The first problem Freud encountered was the phenomenon of repetition in war trauma When Freud worked with people with trauma particularly the trauma experienced by soldiers returning from World War I he observed that subjects often tended to repeat or re enact these traumatic experiences dreams occurring in traumatic patients have the characteristic of repeatedly bringing the patient back into the situation of his accident 16 contrary to the expectations of the pleasure principle A second problematic area was found by Freud in children s play such as the Fort Da Forth here game played by Freud s grandson who would stage and re stage the disappearance of his mother and even himself How then does his repetition of this distressing experience as a game fit in with the pleasure principle 17 18 The third problem came from clinical practice Freud found his patients dealing with painful experiences that had been repressed regularly obliged to repeat the repressed material as a contemporary experience instead of remembering it as something belonging to the past 19 Combined with what he called the compulsion of destiny come across in people all of whose human relationships have the same outcome 20 such evidence led Freud to justify the hypothesis of a compulsion to repeat something that would seem more primitive more elementary more instinctual than the pleasure principle which it over rides 21 He then set out to find an explanation of such a compulsion an explanation that some scholars have labeled as metaphysical biology 22 In Freud s own words What follows is speculation often far fetched speculation which the reader will consider or dismiss according to his individual predilection 23 Seeking a new instinctual paradigm for such problematic repetition he found it ultimately in an urge in organic life to restore an earlier state of things 24 the inorganic state from which life originally emerged From the conservative restorative character of instinctual life Freud derived his death drive with its pressure towards death and the resulting separation of the death instincts from the life instincts 25 seen in Eros The death drive then manifested itself in the individual creature as a force whose function is to assure that the organism shall follow its own path to death 26 Seeking further potential clinical support for the existence of such a self destructive force Freud found it through a reconsideration of his views of masochism previously regarded as sadism that has been turned round upon the subject s own ego so as to allow that there might be such a thing as primary masochism a possibility which I had contested 27 before Even with such support however he remained very tentative to the book s close about the provisional nature of his theoretical construct what he called the whole of our artificial structure of hypotheses 28 Although Spielrein s paper was published in 1912 Freud initially resisted the concept as he considered it to be too Jungian Nevertheless Freud eventually adopted the concept and in later years would build extensively upon the tentative foundations he had set out in Beyond the Pleasure Principle In The Ego and the Id 1923 he would develop his argument to state that the death instinct would thus seem to express itself though probably only in part as an instinct of destruction directed against the external world 29 The following year he would spell out more clearly that the libido has the task of making the destroying instinct innocuous and it fulfils the task by diverting that instinct to a great extent outwards The instinct is then called the destructive instinct the instinct for mastery or the will to power 30 a perhaps much more recognisable set of manifestations At the close of the decade in Civilization and Its Discontents 1930 Freud acknowledged that To begin with it was only tentatively that I put forward the views I have developed here but in the course of time they have gained such a hold upon me that I can no longer think in any other way 31 Philosophy EditSee also Philosophy of the Will in Schopenhauer From a philosophical perspective the death drive may be viewed in relation to the work of the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer His philosophy expounded in The World as Will and Representation 1818 postulates that all exists by a metaphysical will more clearly a will to live 32 and that pleasure affirms this will Schopenhauer s pessimism led him to believe that the affirmation of the will was a negative and immoral thing due to his belief of life producing more suffering than happiness The death drive would seem to manifest as a natural and psychological negation of the will Freud was well aware of such possible linkages In a letter of 1919 he wrote that regarding the theme of death that I have stumbled onto an odd idea via the drives and must now read all sorts of things that belong to it for instance Schopenhauer 33 Ernest Jones who like many analysts was not convinced of the need for the death drive over and above an instinct of aggression considered that Freud seemed to have landed in the position of Schopenhauer who taught that death is the goal of life 34 However as Freud put it to the imagined auditors of his New Introductory Lectures 1932 You may perhaps shrug your shoulders and say That isn t natural science it s Schopenhauer s philosophy But ladies and gentlemen why should not a bold thinker have guessed something that is afterwards confirmed by sober and painstaking detailed research 35 He then went on to add that what we are saying is not even genuine Schopenhauer we are not overlooking the fact that there is life as well as death We recognise two basic instincts and give each of them its own aim 36 Cultural application Civilization and Its Discontents EditMain article Civilization and Its Discontents Freud applied his new theoretical construct in Civilization and Its Discontents 1930 to the difficulties inherent in Western civilization indeed in civilization and in social life as a whole In particular given that a portion of the death instinct is diverted towards the external world and comes to light as an instinct of aggressiveness he saw the inclination to aggression as the greatest impediment to civilization 37 The need to overcome such aggression entailed the formation of the cultural superego We have even been guilty of the heresy of attributing the origin of conscience to this diversion inwards of aggressiveness 38 The presence thereafter in the individual of the superego and a related sense of guilt Civilization therefore obtains mastery over the individual s dangerous desire for aggression by setting up an agency within him to watch over it 39 leaves an abiding sense of uneasiness inherent in civilized life thereby providing a structural explanation for the suffering of civilized man 40 Freud made a further connection between group life and innate aggression where the former comes together more closely by directing aggression to other groups an idea later picked up by group analysts like Wilfred Bion Continuing development of Freud s views EditIn the closing decade of Freud s life it has been suggested his view of the death drive changed somewhat with the stress much more upon the death instinct s manifestations outwards 41 Given the ubiquity of non erotic aggressivity and destructiveness he wrote in 1930 I adopt the standpoint therefore that the inclination to aggression is an original self subsisting instinctual disposition in man 42 In 1933 he conceived of his original formulation of the death drive the improbability of our speculations A queer instinct indeed directed to the destruction of its own organic home 43 He wrote moreover that Our hypothesis is that there are two essentially different classes of instincts the sexual instincts understood in the widest sense Eros if you prefer that name and the aggressive instincts whose aim is destruction 44 In 1937 he went so far as to suggest privately that We should have a neat schematic picture if we supposed that originally at the beginning of life all libido was directed to the inside and all aggressiveness to the outside 45 In his last writings it was the contrast of two basic instincts Eros and the destructive instinct our two primal instincts Eros and destructiveness 46 on which he laid stress Nevertheless his belief in the death instinct as a return to an earlier state into an inorganic state 47 continued to the end Mortido and Destrudo EditThe terms mortido and destrudo formed analogously to libido refer to the energy of the death instinct 48 In the early 21st century their use amongst Freudian psychoanalysists has been waning but still designate destructive energy 49 The importance of integrating mortido into an individual s life as opposed to splitting it off and disowning it has been taken up by figures like Robert Bly in the men s movement 50 Paul Federn used the term mortido for the new energy source 51 and has generally been followed in that by other analytic writers 52 His disciple and collaborator Weiss however chose destrudo which was later taken up by Charles Brenner 53 Mortido has also been applied in contemporary expositions of the Cabbala 54 Whereas Freud himself never named the aggressive and destructive energy of the death drive as he had done with the life drive libido 55 the next generation of psychoanalysts vied to find suitable names for it Literary criticism has been almost more prepared than psychoanalysis to make at least metaphorical use of the term Destrudo Artistic images were seen by Joseph Campbell in terms of incestuous libido and patricidal destrudo 56 while literary descriptions of the conflict between destrudo and libido 57 are still fairly widespread in the 21st century 58 Destrudo as an evocative name also appears in rock music 59 and video games 60 Paul Federn Edit Mortido was introduced by Freud s pupil Paul Federn to cover the psychic energy of the death instinct something left open by Freud himself 61 Providing what he saw as clinical proof of the reality of the death instinct in 1930 Federn reported on the self destructive tendencies of severely melancholic patients as evidence of what he would later call inwardly directed mortido 62 However Freud himself favoured neither term mortido or destrudo This worked against either of them gaining widespread popularity in the psychoanalytic literature 63 Edoardo Weiss Edit Destrudo is a term introduced by Italian psychoanalyst Edoardo Weiss in 1935 to denote the energy of the death instinct on the analogy of libido 64 65 and thus to cover the energy of the destructive impulse in Freudian psychology Destrudo is the opposite of libido the urge to create an energy that arises from the Eros or life drive and is the urge to destroy arising from Thanatos death and thus an aspect of what Sigmund Freud termed the aggressive instincts whose aim is destruction 66 Weiss related aggression destrudo to secondary narcissism something generally only described in terms of the libido turning towards the self 67 Eric Berne Edit Main article Eric Berne Eric Berne who was a pupil of Federn s made extensive use of the term mortido in his pre transactional analysis study The Mind in Action 1947 As he wrote in the foreword to the third edition of 1967 the historical events of the last thirty years become much clearer by introducing Paul Federn s concept of mortido 68 Berne saw mortido as activating such forces as hate and cruelty blinding anger and social hostilities 69 and considered that inwardly directed mortido underlay the phenomena of guilt and self punishment as well as their clinical exacerbations in the form of depression or melancholia 70 Berne saw sexual acts as gratifying mortido at the same time as libido and recognised that on occasion the former becomes more important sexually than the latter as in sadomasochism and destructive emotional relationships 71 Berne s concern with the role of mortido in individuals and groups social formations and nations arguably continued throughout all his later writings 72 Jean Laplanche Edit Jean Laplanche has explored repeatedly the question of mortido 73 and of how far a distinctive instinct of destruction can be identified in parallel to the forces of libido 74 Analytic reception EditAs Freud wryly commented in 1930 The assumption of the existence of an instinct of death or destruction has met with resistance even in analytic circles 75 Indeed Ernest Jones would comment of Beyond the Pleasure Principle that the book not only displayed a boldness of speculation that was unique in all his writings but was further noteworthy in being the only one of Freud s which has received little acceptance on the part of his followers 76 Otto Fenichel in his compendious survey of the first Freudian half century concluded that the facts on which Freud based his concept of a death instinct in no way necessitate the assumption of a genuine self destructive instinct 77 Heinz Hartmann set the tone for ego psychology when he chose to do without Freud s other mainly biologically oriented set of hypotheses of the life and death instincts 78 In the object relations theory among the independent group the most common repudiation was the loathsome notion of the death instinct 79 Indeed for most analysts Freud s idea of a primitive urge towards death of a primary masochism was bedevilled by problems 80 Nevertheless the concept has been defended extended and carried forward by some analysts generally those tangential to the psychoanalytic mainstream while among the more orthodox arguably of those who in contrast to most other analysts take Freud s doctrine of the death drive seriously K R Eissler has been the most persuasive or least unpersuasive 81 Melanie Klein and her immediate followers considered that the infant is exposed from birth to the anxiety stirred up by the inborn polarity of instincts the immediate conflict between the life instinct and the death instinct 2 and Kleinians indeed built much of their theory of early childhood around the outward deflection of the latter This deflection of the death instinct described by Freud in Melanie Klein s view consists partly of a projection partly of the conversion of the death instinct into aggression 2 French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan for his part castigated the refusal to accept this culminating point of Freud s doctrine by those who conduct their analysis on the basis of a conception of the ego that death instinct whose enigma Freud propounded for us at the height of his experience 82 Characteristically he stressed the linguistic aspects of the death drive the symbol is substituted for death in order to take possession of the first swelling of life There is therefore no further need to have recourse to the outworn notion of primordial masochism in order to understand the reason for the repetitive games in his Fort and in his Da 83 Eric Berne too would proudly proclaim that he besides having repeated and confirmed the conventional observations of Freud also believes right down the line with him concerning the death instinct and the pervasiveness of the repetition compulsion 1 For the twenty first century the death drive today remains a highly controversial theory for many psychoanalysts almost as many opinions as there are psychoanalysts 84 Freud s conceptual opposition of death and eros drives in the human psyche was applied by Walter A Davis in Deracination Historicity Hiroshima and the Tragic Imperative 85 and Death s Dream Kingdom The American Psyche since 9 11 86 Davis described social reactions to both Hiroshima and 9 11 from the Freudian viewpoint of the death force Unless they consciously take responsibility for the damage of those reactions Davis claims that Americans will repeat them See also EditAggression Cupio dissolvi Destrudo Group conflict Id resistance L appel du vide Karl Menninger Psychical inertia Suicide The Scorpion and the Frog Thoughts for the Times on War and Death Useless machineReferences Edit a b Eric Berne What Do You say After You Say Hello London 1975 pp 399 400 a b c Hanna Segal Introduction to the work of Melanie Klein London 1964 p 12 Spielrein Sabina April 1994 Destruction as the Cause of Coming Into Being Journal of Analytical Psychology 39 2 155 186 doi 10 1111 j 1465 5922 1994 00155 x Free pdf of the full essay Archived 2016 03 06 at the Wayback Machine by the Arizona Psychoanalytic Society Spielrein Sabina 1995 Destruction as Cause of Becoming Psychoanalysis and Contemporary Thought 18 1 85 118 Spielrein Sabina 1912 Die Destruktion als Ursache des Werdens Jahrbuch fur Psychoanalytische und Psychopathologische Forschungen in German IV 465 503 Sigmund Freud Beyond the Pleasure Principle in On Metapsychology Middlesex 1987 p 316 See occurrences of death drives and of death drive Jones Ernest 1957 1953 The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud Volume 3 New York City Basic Books p 273 It is a little odd that Freud himself never except in conversation used for the death instinct the term Thanatos one which has become so popular since At first he used the terms death instinct and destructive instinct indiscriminately alternating between them but in his discussion with Einstein about war he made the distinction that the former is directed against the self and the latter derived from it is directed outward Stekel had in 1909 used the word Thanatos to signify a death wish but it was Federn who introduced it in the present context Laplanche Jean Pontalis Jean Bertrand 2018 1973 Thanatos The Language of Psychoanalysis Abingdon on Thames Routledge ISBN 978 0 429 92124 7 Sigmund Freud The Ego and the Id in On Metapsychology Middlesex 1987 p 380 Otto Fenichel The Psychoanalytic Theory of Neurosis London 1946 p 12 Laplanche Jean Pontalis Jean Bertrand 2018 1973 Instinct or Drive Nagera Humberto ed 2014 1970 Instinct and Drive pp 19ff Basic Psychoanalytic Concepts on the Theory of Instincts Abingdon on Thames Routledge ISBN 978 1 317 67045 2 The four fundamental concepts of psychoanalysis W W Norton ISBN 9780393317756 Freud Beyond the Pleasure Principle p 275 Freud Beyond p 282 Freud Beyond p 285 Clark Robert October 24 2005 Repetition Compulsion The Literary Encyclopedia Retrieved March 15 2020 Freud Beyond p 288 Freud Beyond p 294 and p 292 Freud Beyond p 294 Schuster Aaron 2016 The Trouble with Pleasure Deleuze and Psychoanalysis Cambridge Massachusetts MIT Press p 32 ISBN 978 0 262 52859 7 Freud Beyond p 295 Freud Beyond p 308 Freud Beyond pp 316 and 322 Freud Beyond p 311 Freud Beyond p 328 Freud Beyond p 334 Freud Ego Id p 381 Freud The Economic Problem of Masochism in On Metapsychology p 418 Sigmund Freud Civilization and Its Discontents in Civilization Society and Religion Middlesex 1987 p 311 Schopenhauer Arthur 2008 The World as Will and Presentation Translated by Richard E Aquila and David Carus New York Longman Quoted in Peter Gay Freud A life for our time London 1989 p 391 Ernest Jones The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud London 1964 p 508 Sigmund Freud New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis London 1991 pp 140 1 Freud New p 141 Freud Civilization pp 310 and 313 Freud Why War in Civilization p 358 Freud Civilization p 316 Jacques Lacan Ecrits A Selection London 1997 p 69 Albert Dickson Editor s Introduction Civilization p 249 Freud Civilization pp 311 and 313 Freud New p 139 Freud New p 136 Freud quoted by Dickson Civilization p 249 Sigmund Freud Standard Edition vol xxiii London 1964 pp 148 and 246 Freud SE xxiii pp 148 9 Charles Rycroft A Critical Dictionary of Psychoanalysis London 1995 p 104 Jadran Mimica Explorations in Psychoanalytic Ethnography 2007 p 78 Keith Tudor in B J Brother Power and Partnership 1995 p 71 Eric Berne A Layman s Guide to Psychiatry and Psychoanalysis Middlesex 1976 p 101 J G Watkins The Therapeutic Self 1978 p 142 Todd Dufresne Tales from the Freudian Crypt 2000 p 24 Z B S Halevi Introduction to the Cabbala 1991 p 197 Salman Akhtar Comprehensive Dictionary of Psychoanalysis 2009 p 227 Quoted in Margery Hourihan Deconstructing the Hero 1994 p 22 M Beugnet M Schmid Proust at the Movies 2004 p 194 Andrew Gibson Beckett and Badiou 2006 p 255 Metal Nation Archived 2012 07 10 at archive today Destrudo questions Archived 2012 07 17 at archive today Salman Akhtar Comprehensive Dictionary of Psychoanalysis 2009 p 176 Franz Alexander et al Psychoanalytic Pioneers 1995 p 153 Akhtar p 176 International Journal of Psycho Analysis 1953 Vol 23 p 74 Eric Berne A Layman s Guide to Psychiatry and Psychoanalysis Middlesex 1976 p 101 Sigmund Freud New Introductory Lectures in Psychoanalysis London 1991 p 136 Herbert A Rosenfeld Impasse and Interpretation 1987 p 126 Berne A Layman s Guide p 16 Berne A Layman s Guide p 69 Berne A Layman s Guide p 95 and p 214 Berne A Layman s Guide p 124 Petrushka Clarkson Transactional Analysis Psychotherapy 1993 p 5 Bernard Golse Destrudo Jean Laplanche John Fletcher Essays on Otherness 1999 p 34 Freud Civilization p 310 Jones Life p 505 Otto Fenichel The Psychoanalytic Theory of Neurosis London 1946 p 60 Quoted in Gay Freud pp 402 3n Richard Appignanesi ed Introducing Melanie Klein Cambridge 2006 p 157 Gay Freud p 402 Gay p 768 Lacan Ecrits p 101 Lacan Ecrits pp 124 and 103 Jean Michel Quinodoz Reading Freud London 2005 p 193 Davis Walter A 2001 Deracination Historicity Hiroshima and the Tragic Imperative Albany State University of New York Press ISBN 978 0 79144834 2 Davis Walter A 2006 Death s Dream Kingdom London Pluto Press ISBN 978 0 74532468 5 Further reading EditOtto Fenichel A Critique of the Death Instinct 1935 in Collected Papers 1st Series 1953 363 72 K R Eissler Death Drive Ambivalence and Narcissism The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child XXVI 1971 25 78 Paul Federn Ego Psychology and the Psychoses 1952 Jean Laplanche Vie et Mort en Psychanalyse 1970 Rob Weatherill The death drive new life for a dead subject 1999 Niklas Hageback The Death Drive Why Societies Self Destruct Gaudium Reprint edition 2020 ISBN 978 1592110346 Edoardo Weiss Principles of Psychodynamics New York 1950 External links EditLaplanche Jean Pontalis Jean Bertrand 1974 The Language of Psychoanalysis Norton ISBN 0393011054 Retrieved 1 July 2022 Death Instincts sic Nirvana Principle Compulsion to Repeat Repetition compulsion Bernard Golse Destrudo Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Death drive amp oldid 1111770065, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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