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==Death Drive and Freud ==
The [[death drive]] (French: ''[[pulsion de mort]]'') is first elaborated by [[Sigmund Freud]] in ''[[Beyond the Pleasure Principle]]'' (1920).
The former is concerned with the creation of cohesion and unity; the latter with the undoing of connections and the destruction of unity.
===Freud's Death Drive===
According to [[Freud]], the [[death drive]] exhibits the tendency of all living beings to return to an inorganic state.
All drives are regressive in that they seek to return to an earlier state or to recover a lost [[object]].
Initially inward-directed, the [[death drive]] first manifests its [[existence]] in the human tendency to self-destruction; as it subsequently turns to the outside world, it takes the form of [[aggressivity|aggressive]] or destructive [[behavior]].
===Controversy===
The theory of the death drive is, by Freud's own admission, speculative, and is grounded in the ddescriptions of the [[compulsion to repeat]].
The fact that Freucd describes the death drive as 'silent' makes it difficult to supply concrete clinical evidence for its existence and the notion remains controversal, even though Freud continues to uphold it in his very last writings.
Many post-Freudian analysts dismiss the notion of a death drive as mere speculation on Freud's part, but Klein adopts it whole-heartedly, regarding the tyranny of the early [[superego]] as it crushes the young child's [[ego]] as the first clinical manifestation of its power.
(The concept of the death drive was one of the most controversial concepts introduced by Freud, and many of his disciples rejected it, but Freud continued to reaffirm the concept for the rest of his life. Of the non-Lacanian schools of psychoanalytic theory, only Kleinian psychoanalysis takes the concept seriously.)
In 1938, [[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>
In 1946, [[Lacan]] associates the [[death drive]] with the [[suicide|suicidal tendency]] of [[narcissism]].<ref>{{Ec, }} p.186</ref>
In the 1950s, [[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]]. "The death instinct is only the mask of the symbolic order."<ref>{{S2, }} p.326</ref>
==Death Drive and Biology==
For [[Freud]], the [[death drive]] was closely bound up with [[biology]].
[[Lacan]] situates the [[death drive]] in the [[symbolic]].
[[Lacan]] articulates it with culture rather than nature.
[[Lacan]] states that the death drive "is not a question of biology."<ref>{{E, }} p.102</ref> The [[death drive]] is not the [[biology|biological]] [[instinct]] to return to the inanimate.<ref>{S7, }} p.211-12</ref>
==Death Drive and Drives==
Another difference between [[Lacan]]'s concept of the [[death drive ]] and [[Freud]]'s emerges in 1964. [[Freud ]] opposed the [[death drive ]] to the [[sexual drives]] [[drive]]s. [[Lacan]] rejects [[Freud]]'s thesis of a duality of [[life ]] and [[death drivesdrive]]s.
[[Lacan]] argues that the [[death drive]] is an aspect of every [[drive]].
The [[death drive]] is an aspect of every [[drive]].
"The distinction between the life drive and the death drive is - true in as much as it manifests two aspects of the drive."<ref>gl 20</ref>
# every [[drive]] is an attempt to go [[beyond the pleasure principle]], to the realm of [[excess jouissance]] where enjoyment is experienced as suffering.
The [[death drive ]] strives, in [[Lacan]]'s view, to go beyond the [[pleasure principle]] and to attain the painful joys of [[jouissance]].
==See Also==
* [[Death]]
* [[Drive]]
==References==
<references/>
<ref>3, 1, 64-5, 94, 135 Conversations.</ref>
[[Category:Terms]]
