Changes

The [[death drive]] ([[French|Fr]]. ''[[pulsion de mort]]'') is introduced by [[Sigmund Freud]] in ''[[Beyond the Pleasure Principle]]'' (1920).

[[Freud]] posits a basic opposition between the [[life drive]] (''[[Lebestriebe]]'' or ''[[Eros]]'') and the [[death drive]] (''[[Todestriebe]]'' or ''[[Thanatos]]'').

The former is concerned with the creation of [[cohesion]] and [[unity]]; the latter with the undoing of connections and the destruction of [[unity]].

According to [[Freud]], the [[death drive]] exhibits the [[regressive]] tendency of all [[living]] [[being]]s to return to an (earlier) inorganic 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]].)

The theory of the [[death drive]] is grounded in the descriptions of the [[compulsion to repeat]].