Death Drive - Analytic Reception

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". 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".

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". 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"'". In the object relations theory, among the Independent group 'the most common repudiation was the loathsome notion of the death instinct'. Indeed, "for most analysts Freud's idea of a primitive urge towards death, of a primary masochism, was...bedevilled by problems".

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".

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"; 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".

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". 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!."

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".

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