The Death Drive

When Freud articulated the idea of the death drive in Beyond the Pleasure Principle (Jenseits des Lustprinzips, 1920), he transformed himself into the psychological counterpart of a radical Hegelian without realizing it. The pleasure principle was “obvious.” People sought to maximize their pleasures and minimize their pains. The ultimate pain was symbolized (and actually experienced) by death, avoided at all costs. But, Freud concluded in a way that was broadly misunderstood, the opposite was the case. Another drive, more powerful than the drive for pleasure, dominated human behavior and consciousness, a death drive. Note: “drive,” Trieb, was translated as “instinct” until recently. Freud’s drives related to the key critical objects of childhood: the breast, shit, the phallus, the gaze, and the voice. These complex mediators (“partial objects”) continued to exercise an ambiguous force after first childhood encounters; they could not be assimilated within the world of objects and, thus, were linked to the idea of the Freudian Thing (das Ding).