Beyond The Pleasure Principle - Composition: Freud's Defensiveness

Composition: Freud's Defensiveness

Freud's daughter Sophie died at the start of 1920, partway between Freud's first (1919) version and the version of Beyond the Pleasure Principle reworked and published in 1920. Freud insisted that the death had no relation to the contents of the book. In a July 18, 1920, letter to Max Eitingon, Freud wrote, "The Beyond is now finally finished. You will be able to confirm that it was half ready when Sophie lived and flourished". He had however already written (in June) to Ferenczi "that 'curious continuations' had turned up in it, presumably the part about the potential immortality of protozoa". Ernest Jones considers Freud's claim on Eitingon "a rather curious request... an inner denial of his novel thoughts about death having been influenced by his depression over losing his daughter". Others have also wondered about "inventing a so-called death instinct - is this not one way of theorising, that is, disposing of - by means of a theory - a feeling of the "demoniac" in life itself...exacerbated by the unexpected death of Freud's daughter"? - and it is certainly striking that "the term 'death drive' - Todestrieb - entered his correspondence a week after Sophie Halberstadt's death"; so that we may well accept at the very least that the "loss can claim a subsidiary role...his analytic preoccupation with destructiveness".