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The [[death ]] [[instinct ]] or death [[drive ]] is the force that makes [[living ]] [[creatures ]] strive for an inorganic [[state]]. It does not appear in [[isolation]]; its effect becomes [[apparent]], in [[particular ]] through the [[repetition ]] compulsions, when a part of it is connected with Eros. Its tendency to [[return ]] living creatures to the earlier inorganic state is a component of all the [[drives]]. In this combined [[form]], its main impetus is toward [[dissolution]], unbinding, and dissociation. In its pure form, silent within the [[psychic ]] [[apparatus]], it is subjugated by the [[libido ]] to some extent and thus deflected to the [[outside ]] [[world ]] through the musculature in the drive for [[destruction ]] and [[mastery ]] or the will to [[power]]: this is sadism proper; the part that remains "[[inside]]" is primary erogenous masochism.Having put forward, particularly in "[[Instincts ]] and Their Vicissitudes" (1915c), a [[dualism ]] in which the [[sexual ]] drives [[conflict ]] with the ego drives, in <i>Beyond the [[Pleasure ]] [[Principle]]</i> (1920g), [[Freud ]] introduced the [[concept ]] of the [[death drive ]] as a [[negative ]] term in opposition to the [[life ]] drive: "The opposition between the ego or death instincts and the sexual or life instincts would then cease to hold and the [[compulsion ]] to [[repeat ]] would no longer possess the importance we have ascribed to it" (p. 44).The [[death instinct ]] was Freud's attempt to explain this repetition compulsion that overrides the [[pleasure principle]], whether in post-[[traumatic ]] [[dreams]], certain compulsive [[children]]'s [[games ]] (such as the "[[fort-da]]" [[game]]), or indeed in analysands' [[resistances ]] to the [[treatment ]] (the [[transference]]). He observed that "<i>the aim of all life is death</i>," "<i>inanimate things existed before living ones</i>" and that "everything living dies for <i>[[internal]]</i> reasons" (p. 38). Drawing on August Weismann's differentiation of soma from germ-plasma, Freud went on to draw "a sharp [[distinction ]] between ego-instincts, which we equated with death instincts, and sexual instincts, which we equated with life instincts" (pp. 52-53). He thus continued to adhere to the dualistic concept of the drives: "even more definitely dualistic than before—now that we describe the opposition as [[being ]] not between ego instincts and sexual instincts but between life instincts and death instincts" (p. 53).Freud found support for his arguments in Fechner's [[stability ]] principle: "The dominating tendency of [[mental ]] life . . . is the effort the reduce, to keep constant or to remove internal tension due to stimuli . . . a tendency which finds expression in the pleasure principle; and our [[recognition ]] of this fact is one of our strongest reasons for believing in the [[existence ]] of death instincts" (p. 55-56).In 1924, Freud drew a clear distinction between [[three ]] principles: "The Nirvana principle [Barbara Low's term], belonging as it does to the death instinct, has undergone a modification in living organisms through which it has become the pleasure principle ... the <i>pleasure</i> principle represents the [[demands ]] of the libido; and the modification of the latter principle, the <i>[[reality]]</i> principle, represents the influence of the [[external ]] world" (1924c, p. 160). Although Freud recognized the speculative [[nature ]] of his final drive [[theory]], he continued to adhere to it throughout the rest of his [[work]].The source of the death drive lies in the [[cathexis ]] of [[bodily ]] zones that can generate afferent excitations for the [[psyche ]] then; this certainly involves tension in the musculature determined by a [[biological ]] urge. Its locus is in the id, then later under the influence of

the ego, as well as in the [[superego]], where it functions to restrict libidinization. In [[melancholia]], "a pure [[culture ]] of the death instinct" (1923b, p. 53) governs the superego, such that the ego can impel the [[subject ]] towards death.The [[energy ]] of this urge is fairly resistant to shaping, diversion, or [[displacement ]] and it manifests in subtle but powerful ways. The operation of this almost invisible energy has been described as a "work of the negative" (André Green). Its [[object ]] is the implementing organ—the musculature—that enables the aim to be fulfilled. Paradoxically, the libido, subject to restraint by the <i>[[destrudo]]</i> (Edoardo Weiss's term), and leading to primary masochism and sadism, is the object of the death drive here. According to Freud's descriptions, its [[goal ]] is dissociation, [[regression]], or even dissolution. While leading [[organic ]] life back to an inorganic state is the final [[stage]], "the [[purpose ]] of the death drive is to fulfil as far as is possible a <i>disobjectalising function</i> by means of unbinding" (Green, p. 85). It is therefore an entropic [[process ]] in the strict [[sense]].After explaining the [[notion ]] of the death instinct in <i>Beyond the [[Pleasure Principle]]</i>, Freud returned to it a [[number ]] of [[times ]] in his later works. He mentioned it in <i>Group [[Psychology ]] and the [[Analysis ]] of the Ego</i> (1921c) as the source of [[aggression ]] and hostility between [[people ]] and in "The Libido Theory" (1923a), and then developed the theory in <i>The Ego and [[the Id]]</i> (1923b), especially in the chapters on "the two classes of instincts" and "the dependent relationships of the ego." In this work, he connected his new drive theory with the [[structural ]] theory that he had just expounded.Then, following a dispute with Fritz Wittels, who jumped to a hasty conclusion concerning a connection between the death of Freud's daughter Sophie (January 1920) and the emergence of the concept of the death drive (a [[claim ]] that is still being debated today—cf. Grubrich-Simitis), Freud returned to this concept in "The [[Economic ]] Problem of Masochism" (1924c), in which he posited primary masochism both as evidence and as a vestige of the conjunction between the death drive and Eros. He thus elucidated the negative therapeutic reaction and the concept of [[unconscious ]] [[guilt ]] and indicated that "[[moral ]] masochism becomes a classical piece of evidence for the existence of fusion of instinct. Its [[danger ]] lies in the fact that it originates from the death instinct and corresponds to the part of that instinct which has escaped being turned outwards as an instinct of destruction" (p. 170).In his short article on "[[Negation]]" (1925h), Freud explained: "Affirmation—as a [[substitute ]] for uniting—belongs to Eros; negation—the successor to expulsion—belongs to the instinct of destruction" (p. 239). He returned to this subject in <i>[[Civilization ]] and Its Discontents</i> (1930a [1929]), in his [[letter ]] to Albert [[Einstein ]] (1933b [1932]) and finally in the thirty-second of the <i>New Introductory Lectures</i> (1933a [1932]), in which he discussed anxiety in connection with the life of the drives.For Melanie [[Klein]], a firm advocate of the existence of the death drive, psychic conflict is never a conflict between the ego and the drives but always between the [[life drive ]] and the death drive. Anxiety is the immediate response to the endopsychic [[perception ]] of the death drive. For Jacques [[Lacan]], the death drive as something [[beyond the pleasure principle ]] forms the best starting-point for introducing his concept of the "[[Real]]," in connection with the [[Imaginary ]] and the [[Symbolic]]. He [[links ]] to this the lethal [[dimension ]] inherent in [[desire ]] and <i>[[jouissance]]</i> and makes the death drive "the necessary condition for the [[natural ]] phenomenon of the instinct in entropy to be taken up at the level of the person, so that it may take on the [[value ]] of an oriented instinct and is significant for the [[system ]] insofar as the latter as a [[whole ]] is situated in an [[ethical ]] dimension" (1959-1960/1992, p. 204).Toward the end of his life, Freud recognized that "the dualistic theory according to which an instinct of death or of destruction or aggression claims equal rights as a partner with Eros as manifested in the libido, has found little sympathy and has not really been accepted even among [[psychoanalysts]]" (1937, p. 244). Its detractors include authors such as Michel Fain (1971), who [[regard ]] the concept of the death drive as the result of Freud's speculations on matters that could for the most part be explained without it—for example by the [[mechanism ]] of "[[reversal ]] into its opposite" (1915c, p. 126). [[Others ]] have objected to the theory of the death drive either because this would mean that psychic conflict, the cornerstone of [[psychoanalysis]], could no longer be the expression of lived [[experience ]] alone, since the death drive is "evidently innate, intrapsychic from the outset, and not secondarily internalized" (Nacht), or because "this drive restricts the field in which conflicts can be elaborated both internally and externally; it introduces a fatalism into the gradual progression of the treatment and brings out the negative therapeutic reaction instead of a relational problem between [[analyst ]] and [[analysand]]" (Nicolaidis). Yet others have taken more interest in Freud's methodology and are surprised at the "quality of a foreign body—within [[psychoanalytic ]] theory—that characterizes the conflict between Eros and the death drive [which] emerges here from the use of [[dialectical ]] procedures in which Freud is not well versed" (Denis).By contrast, [[other ]] authors, such as [[Melanie Klein]], [[Jacques Lacan]], and André Green, consider this concept of the death drive as further evidence of Freud's [[scientific ]] rigor, as he demonstrates his willingness to rework his previous drive theory to take account of [[clinical ]] facts and hypotheses that do not accord with it. Furthermore, studies based on the treatment of [[psychotic ]] [[subjects]], particularly by post-Kleinians, seem to have reinforced the theory of the prevalence of the death drive in the [[psychic apparatus ]] of these [[patients]], as something that constantly tears at the fabric of their representations and undermines their attempts to establish an apparatus for [[thinking ]] [[thoughts ]] (Wilfred Bion).

# [[Freud, Sigmund]]. (1915c). Instincts and their vicissitudes. SE, 14, 109-140.

# ——. (1921c). [[Group psychology ]] and the analysis of the ego. SE, 18, 65-143.

# ——. (1933a [1932]). New introductory lectures on [[psycho]]-analysis. SE, 22, 1-182.