Many [[post-Freudian]] [[analysts]] dismiss the notion of a [[death drive]] as mere speculation by [[Freud]], but [[Klein]] adopts it whole-heartedly, regarding the tyranny of the early [[superego]] as it crushes the [[child]]'s [[ego]] as the first clinical manifestation of its [[power]].
==Death Drive and Lacan==
[[Jacques Lacan]] (following [[Freud]]) reaffirms the concept of the [[death drive]] as central to [[psychoanalysis]].
[[Lacan]] wrote: "to ignore the death instinct in his [Freud's] doctrine is to misunderstand that doctrine entirely."<ref>{{E}} p.301</ref>
[[Lacan]] describes the [[death drive]] as a [[nostalgia]] for a [[lost harmony]], a [[desire]] to [[return]] to the [[preoedipal]] fusion with the [[mother]]'s [[breast]], the [[loss]] of which is marked on the [[psyche]] in the [[weaning complex]].<ref>Lacan, 1938: 35</ref>
[[Lacan]] associates the [[death drive]] with the [[suicide|suicidal tendency]] of [[narcissism]].<ref>{{Ec}} p.186</ref>
[[Lacan]] does not situate the [[death drive]] in the [[imaginary]] (despite its association with the [[preoedipal phase]] and [[narcissism]]), but rather in the [[symbolic]].
In the 1954-5 seminar, ''[[The Ego in Freud's Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis]]'', [[Lacan]] states that the [[death drive]] is simply the fundamental tendency of the [[symbolic]] [[order]] to produce [[repetition]].
<blockquote>"The [[death]] [[instinct]] is only the mask of the [[symbolic]] [[order]]."<ref>{{S2}} p.326</ref></blockquote>
[[Lacan]] situates the [[death drive]] in the [[symbolic]].
==Death Drive and Biology==
