How Death Drives Us Running head: HOW DEATH DRIVES US
How Death Drives Us Ong, Herman Upper Iowa University
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Abstract In 1920, Sigmund Freud published a work - “Beyond the Pleasure Principle”. From that moment, the dispute of his most controversial topic - Death-drive has never stopped over the past several decades. Many critics have refuted Freud’s death drive due to its lack of verifiable fact or evidence. Or someone said it is carried severe shadow of pessimism and determinism which is against the modern humanistic approach. This study is to examine the value of death drive by different point of view, such as summarized Sigmund Fred’s original works, or re-interpreted by psychoanalytic theorist and ethnical philosopher, in order to counter-compare with the critics’ argument. Besides, I wish this study can lead human start thinking of what is the “real drive” for the life by understanding deeper in Freud’ death drive thesis.
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How Death Drives Us “Homo homini lupus”, derived from Plautus (254-284 BC), who is the famous Roman playwright works in the Latin literature. Freud quoted this famous tag from Plautus’s literature to metaphor his claims on death drive. In which, it means “Man is a wolf to man” (Freud, & Strachey, 2005). From the ancient times to now, human always expressed different aspects in related to the death. From internal, our physical health and illness is totally based on the daily repeatable attack and death of cells within our immune system or organ (Mills, 2006); to external, the reported number of suicide from HKJC, Center for Suicide Research and Prevention (2009), has keep increasing over years. On the other hand, from the individual, the murder and manslaughter cases have happened all around the world everyday, even as tiny as Hong Kong, we suffer approximately six to seven cases per month (2009); to the whole civilization in which war, genocide and terrorist attack impact the world. Those evidences show that we, the human, whether in different characteristic or skin, are so close to the death everyday. Recall that for Freud cited, “Man is a wolf to man” (p.104), man is not only the wolf to all man kind; he is also the wolf to himself. Sigmund Freud on Death-drive The term, death drive, Thanatos, first introduced and suggested by Freud at his famous
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work: “Beyond the Pleasure Principle” (Freud, & Strachey, 1975). Although Freud didn’t mention the term, death drive or Thanatos at his work, it is interpreted by his secretary, Paul Federn (Freud, & Strachey, 2005). Instead, he called it as “Todestrieb”, which argued that death is a motive rather than an instinct to drive our behavior towards it but not as well as an internal stimuli. Interestingly in beginning, Freud was questioning about the death drive or “aggressive drive” suggested by his student, Alfred Adler from “Analysis of a phobia in a five-year-old boy” (Freud, & Strachey, 1955). At that time, he still argued that sexual energy took the first place in leading human behavior and personality. However, he elaborated his earlier theory of dual principle: Pleasure and reality principle into dual drive theory: Life and Death drives at 1920, “Beyond the Pleasure Principle” (ibid). Given that everyone know that Sigmund Freud is narcissism, so what made him insists in changing his theory and rising out death drive ultimately? And how does death drive function? Recall that Freud had lived through the savagery of World War I and II, he saw many cases on death and repetition, such as Shellshock etc. The subjects would often repeated the traumatic experiences during the dreams or fantasies. These led Freud to start thinking about an innate drive which made us compulsively repeating the behavior. “…that there really does exist in the mind a compulsion to repeat which overrides the pleasure principle” (p.22). Something could override the pleasure principle in which is the first aim of
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mental - “Death-drive”. According to Freud, there are two opposing forces operating within our mind to pursue the pleasure: Death and Life drive. Death drive conducts aggression, destructiveness and nothing. While life drive, Eros, conducts unity, life processing, cohesiveness, creativity and being. They are always in opposite but inseparable in service of mind to produce the tension from their ambivalence, conflict and strife. This tension is the flowing of libidinal energy – sexual energy that invests on both internal and external in order to balance our libidinal energy. Why our libidinal energy has to be balanced? Freud argued that drives are “conservative”, which means organism tends to form the inertia situation and inorganic state in life, a zero sum system. Excessive energy will cause the anxiety and tension, in term of pleasure principle, our ego will find the way to discharge and reduce its anxiety. Either turns the excessive energy to inward, self-destroy; or outward as aggression to others. Thus, Freud said “the aim of all life is death” (p.38), because death is the final solution leading organism to tensionless. Nothing would be pleasurable than in inorganic state. Similar as “Cathexis” concept by Freud, death drive carries the libidinal energy which can invest on object or person, even on the civilization. Therefore, how the death drive affects individual? And how it impacts civilization? In term of individual, Freud used clinical observations such as sadism and masochism distinction to explain how death drive acts on human. Freud initially proposed that sadism and masochism is an abnormal behavior at
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“Three Essay on the Theory of Sexuality” (Freud, & Strachey, 1975). Later on, he refined this by adding death drive. He proposed that death drive commingles with life drive and directed outward to someone would express the aggression as sadism. In contrary, they commingle together and redirected inward on ego itself, which is the formation of masochism. The relationship between sadism and masochism shows the conflict and tension between Eros and Thanatos, one hand we had the inherent motive to self-destruct ourselves. On the other hand, we unconsciously wish to live longer with our own path to death, thus we imposed the aggression on others to defend ourselves or avoid self-destructiveness due to the excessive libidinal energy. However, in response to the civilization, Freud found death drive has a wider application on civilization than in individual at his “Civilization and its discontent” (Freud, & Strachey, 2005). According to Freud, civilization is a whole sum of human achievements and regulations. By achieving this, men have to abandon or inhibit their innate pleasure, in order to maintain the unity and cohesiveness of society by imposition of superego, which is the internalized law or taboo from civilization (ibid). Nevertheless, this civilizing process will lead men to unhappiness, and it also stimulates the death drive to disintegrate the civilization because of the excessive liberation of aggression from repressed mental. Thus, Freud said, “If civilization imposes such great sacrifices not only on man’s sexuality but on his aggressivity, we can understand better why it is hard for him to be happy in that civilization…Civilized
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man has exchanged a portion of his possibilities of happiness for a portion of security” (p.108-109). Summarize that Freud proposed on the death drive, it is the original drive that affect our conscious even unconscious thought, behavior and dreams. By competing with its adversary – Eros, the formed conflict permeates human behavior even civilization through and through. Jon Mills on Death-drive Jon Mills (2006), who is the psychoanalytic theorist, conducts a deeper understanding on Freud’s thesis: Death drive. He published a journal, “Reflection on the Death Drive” (ibid) which criticizes what contemporary psychoanalytic theorists argued: Death drive is a fanciful nonsense, an artifact of imagination without any verifiable evidence to prove. Jon Mills tends to accept the Freud’s view on death drive, and extend it in related to current era and modern conflicts such as addictions, harmful behavior and even the war. He explained and explored the death drive far further even than Freud’s work, in order to refute the critics. By achieving this, Jon Mills made a claim “life is only possible through the force of the negative that brings about higher developmental achievements through the destruction of the old” (ibid.). He paid a lot of attention of interpreting how death drive acts as a first drive, to lead every life returns to the inorganic state through “compulsive repetition”. For example, post-traumatic
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experience makes human repeat the “unpleasant”, and “Fort-Da” game in which child possess the satisfaction through gain-and-lost process. These evidences recited by Mills to prove the existence of death drive. Furthermore, he interprets how the repetitions in service of death drive by “traumatic neurosis”. According to Mills, some traumas and external events have the capacity which carries the excessive libidinal energy to breach our self-preservation. Under this pressure and tension, a drive has to repeat itself in order to liberate the excessive libidinal energy and return the life to an earlier state of undifferentiation (ibid). This shows that death drive is not an external drive. Instead, it is an innate drive stimulated by extrinsic force and cannot be abandoned. Other than that, in response to critics, “If Death is placed at first priority of life, why, then, does every creature appear to fend off threats to its survival instinctively?” (Freud, & Strachey, 2005), Mills skillfully cited another scholar, Melanie Klein (1932), who proposed that infantile sadism, such as hate, rage and frustration is the tension between the life and death drive at her first book, “The Psycho-Analysis of Children” (ibid). She claimed the destructive force originally exists in the birth and threaten the young infant. This threat will alert the ego and stimulate the anxiety, and then ego will divert the destructive energy from internality to externality. This means we “seek to defend ourselves by destroying others”. Although death drive leads us to the inorganic state, meanwhile, it also stimulated our
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self-preservative to make us live longer for let us choose our own way to die (Freud, & Strachey, 1975). Notwithstanding that Sigmund Freud’s death drive thesis is difficult to understand and analysis due to his mixing the science with literatures and poetries, Jon Mills had well summarized what Freud stated and interpreted them with more concrete examples and words. This led the contemporary scholars and even readers re-consider the position and meaning of Sigmund Freud’s death drive thesis. Havi Carel on Death-drive Another scholar, Havi Hannah Carel (2001) who is a philosophy doctor published an article and tried to re-interpret the death drive from the ethnical standpoint. In general, Sigmund Freud’s death drive is well-known to be classified as pessimism and determinism. However, Carel perceived the aggression formed by death drive is a double-head pin and neutral. Notwithstanding it can destroy the life or civilization, death drive also can be redirected and sublimated for fulfilling the life. She explained the aim of Freud’s death drive is not a fully pessimism, Freud tried to make people understand what is the meaning of life by setting a bound – “Death” to it. Once human acknowledges the fact that aggression and death is our innate tendency, we have to accept rather than resist or try to eliminate it. Then we will know the truth of life: “Finitude” (ibid).
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Carel clarified the whole system of psychoanalysis including dualism of life and death drive is always in ethical. It encourages the people to pursue the happiness, tensionless and reduce symptom by analyzing, diagnosing, relieving your conflict & anxiety. On the other hand, it is also promoting the acceptance, responsibility and faithfulness as long as you accept the innate disposition. “If you want to endure life, prepare yourself for death”, said by Sigmund Freud on Thoughts for the Times on War and Death and quoted by Carel (ibid). Precisely, life is meaningless if we don’t know what the syllabus and boundary is. At that moment, we would only waste the entire life to pursue the “Eternity” illusion. In contrary, if we know the ambivalence by dualism of life and death drive, and understand life has constructiveness; on the other hand, it also has destructiveness, being and nothingness, good and bad etc. Then there had no point to pursue the absolute happiness or evolution. Instead, we can release our bias and illusion and take total control of our life. Because when we fully acknowledged and understood the death drive, we have no fear and anxiety to it, thus we can shape our life in a more realistic and achievable way which is similar as the “Self-actualization” concept from Carl Rogers (Schultz, & Schultz, 2008). As long as our ideal self is congruence with our perceived self, we are actualizing ourselves with unlimited potential and hope. Thus, Carel reaffirmed that Freud’s death drive thesis is not pessimism or determinism; instead, it gives
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us hope and space to reformulate and fulfill our life by so called “ambivalence”. Conclusion Sigmund Freud’s death drive thesis is a controversial topic over several decades. It is always being criticized for its value in modern science, because Freud didn’t provide any verifiable fact or evidence to prove it. Instead, he used a lot of poetries and literatures to articulate his theory. This really made a giant barrier to scholar even reader to read, let alone segments of study. Given that death is a well-known cultural taboo (Chan, T., Chan, F., Tin, Chow, & Chan, C., 2006). It is difficult to convince human accept its any argument, so as Sigmund Freud’ claims. Such as “the aim of all life is death”, “Man is a wolf to man” or “Death is an original drive” etc. Those are not easy to be accepted, especially his core concept of combined the death drive in pleasure principle: If everyone aims for seeking the pleasure, there is no doubt that they are seeking the death. However, I would like to take this opportunity to re-interpret Freud’s meaning for pleasure and death. Freud means pleasure is a tensionless and no anxiety rather than a real happiness. Moreover, death doesn’t mean the superficial ending of organism. It is an inorganic state and balance of libidinal energy. Thus, according to Freud, tensionless pleasure has no difference from inorganic death. Conclusively, even critics view the death drive theoretically nonsense, I still believe it is
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a good start for leading human understand the death and its driving force. We have many empirical and verified facts to show who we are and where we come from, such as Darwin’s evolution theory. But we didn’t figure out yet where we go and who we will be. By achieving this, Sigmund Freud really does a good guideline for us to follow, just as what he said at the end of his death drive theory, “left to future investigation”.
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References Carel, H.H. (2007). Born to be Bad or Born to Die? Evil and Finitude in Freud’s Death Drive. So Many Faces: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Evil, Nancy Mardas (ed.) pp.233-250. Center for Suicide Research and Prevention. (2009). Suicide Rates and Deaths by Gender. Retrieved December 27, 2009 from http://csrp.hku.hk/WEB/eng/statistics.asp Chan, T., Chan, F., Tin, A., Chow, A., & Chan, C. (2006). Death Preparation and Anxiety: A Survey in Hong Kong. Omega: Journal of Death & Dying, 54(1), 67-78. Freud, S. (1955). Analysis of a phobia in a five-year-old-boy. In J. Strachey (Ed. & Trans.). The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud (Vol. 10, pp. 1–149). London: Hogarth Press. Freud, S, & Strachey, J. (1975). Beyond the pleasure principle. W. W. Norton & Company. Freud, S, & Strachey, J. (1975). Three essays on the theory of sexuality. Basic Books Freud, S., & Strachey, J. (2005). Civilization and its discontents. W. W. Norton & Company. Klein, M. (1932). The psycho-analysis of children. London: Hogarth Press. Mills, J. (2006). Reflections on the death drive. Psychoanalytic Psychology, 23(2), 373-382. Schultz, Duane, & Schultz, Sydney. (2008). Theories of personality. Wadsworth Pub Co. Social Indicators of Hong Kong Organization. (2009). Number of cases reported by murder
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and manslaughter. Retrieved December 27, 2009 from http://www.socialindicators.org.hk/eng/indicators.php?cat=22&cat1=&cat3=&cat4=&e mail=