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The [[life ]] [[instinct ]] or [[Eros ]] was one of the two basic [[instincts ]] described by [[Freud ]] in Beyond the [[Pleasure ]] [[Principle ]] (1920g) when he began to [[construct ]] his [[structural ]] [[theory]], in which the [[life instinct ]] stands opposed to the [[death ]] instinct. The life instinct subsumed uninhibited [[sexual ]] instincts, [[instinctual ]] impulses inhibited in respect of their aim and sublimated, and the instincts of [[self]]-preservation.

In contrast to the monism of [[Jung ]] and Adler, Freud upheld a dualistic theory with respect to the instincts. Up until his discovery of [[narcissism ]] (1914c), he contrasted the sexual instincts, directed toward [[outside ]] [[objects]], to the ego-instincts, which included the instincts of [[individual ]] self-preservation. But then his theory needed modifying in [[order ]] to respond to the discovery that the ego itself could become the sexual [[object ]] (1914c). [[Narcissistic ]] [[libido ]] thus became a manifestation of the pressure of the sexual instincts, and the former dichotomy between ego-instincts and sexual instincts lost its force. Part of the ego-instincts, namely the self-preservative instincts, were now seen as [[libidinal ]] in [[nature]], and the main [[conflict ]] became that between narcissistic and autoerotic instincts, that is, between two forms of the [[sexual instinct]].

With the turning-point of the early 1920s, Freud introduced the hypothesis of a [[death instinct ]] to account for phenomena of [[repetition ]] that were independent of the [[pleasure principle]], indeed susceptible of opposing that principle (1920g). His dualistic imperative led him to group both the sexual and the self-preservative instincts under the head of the life instincts, as opposed to the death instincts.

In The Ego and [[the Id]], Freud maintained his [[position ]] on the [[need ]] to distinguish between the two classes of instincts: "the task of [the death instinct] is to lead [[organic ]] life back into the inanimate [[state]]; on the [[other ]] hand . . . Eros, by bringing [[about ]] a more and more far-reaching combination of the particles into which [[living ]] substance is dispersed, aims at complicating life and at the same [[time]], of course, at preserving it" (i.e., in the interest of evolution). "Life itself," Freud added, "would be a conflict and compromise between these two trends" (1923b, pp. 40, 41). Deeming his "fundamental dualistic point of view" inescapable, Freud was "driven to conclude that the death instincts are by their nature mute and that the clamor of life proceeds for the most part from Eros" (p. 46).

Freud held firm to the dualistic view until the end of his life, as [[witness ]] these lines from his [[Outline ]] of [[Psycho]]-[[Analysis]]: "After long hesitancies and vacillations we have decided to assume the [[existence ]] of only two basic instincts, Eros and the destructive instinct." The aim of Eros was to "establish ever greater unities," so preserving life; but if "binding together" was thus the task of the life instincts, the aim of the death instincts was "to undo connections and so to destroy things" (1940a [1938], p. 148).

In distinguishing between life and death instincts, Freud sought to introduce a [[duality ]] within the [[notion ]] of instinct itself. The outcome was a [[dual ]] instinct that could be described as two instincts that are so entangled, so melded, that the one can barely have [[meaning ]] outside of its [[relationship ]] with the other. This instinctual entanglement arises through the indispensable mediation of the object. Effective instinctual functioning requires that the life instinct serve to [[bind ]] the death instinct. When the instincts become disentangled, [[notes ]] Benno Rosenberg, "the [[subject]]'s [[cathexis ]] of the object is so massive that he will have difficulty differentiating himself from it. So intense and unbearable is the [[excitation ]] that the subject will resort to a [[splitting ]] of the ego" (1991).

The beneficial contribution of the death instinct, as imbricated with the life instinct, is that it allows a tolerable distance to be maintained between subject and object, thus facilitating the [[working ]] out of the subject's wishes.

See also: [[Civilization ]] and its Discontents; [[Drive]]/instinct; Eros; [[German ]] romanticism and [[psychoanalysis]]; [[Love]]; [[Marcuse]], Herbert; Object, [[change ]] of/choice of; Primary [[masochism]]; [[Sexuality]]; [[Spinoza ]] and psychoanalysis.[[Bibliography]]