Death Drive
In classical Freudian psychoanalytic theory, the death drive(s) (Todestrieb) is the drive towards death, self-destruction and the return to the inorganic: "the hypothesis of a death instinct, the task of which is to lead organic life back into the inanimate state". It was originally proposed by Sigmund Freud in 1920 in Beyond the Pleasure Principle, where in his first published reference to the term he wrote of the "opposition between the ego or death instincts and the sexual or life instincts". The death drive opposes the drive for life, 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 one of Freud's followers, Wilhelm Stekel.
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. "This incorrect equating of instinct and Trieb has created serious misunderstandings". Freud actually refers to the "death instinct" as a drive, 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. 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).
Read more about Death Drive: The Making of The Theory: Beyond The Pleasure Principle, Philosophy, Cultural Application: Civilization and Its Discontents, The Continuing Development of Freud's Views, Analytic Reception
Famous quotes containing the words death and/or drive:
“Do but consider this small dust, here running in the glass,
By atoms moved.
Could you believe that this the body was
Of one that loved?
And in his mistress’ flame playing like a fly,
Turned to cinders by her eye?
Yes, and in death as life unblest,
To have’t expressed,
Even ashes of lovers find no rest.”
—Ben Jonson (1572–1637)
“There is nothing more likely to drive a man mad, than the being unable to get rid of the idea of the distinction between right and wrong, and an obstinate, constitutional preference of the true to the agreeable.”
—William Hazlitt (1778–1830)