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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).Here [[Freud]] posits he established a basic fundamental opposition between the [[death drive|life drive]] s (''[[Lebestriebeeros]]'' or ''), conceived of as a tendency towards [[Eroscohesion]]'') 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]], and 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-directeds, the death drive first manifests its existence which operate in the human tendency to self-destruction; as it subsequently turns to the outside worldopposite direction, it takes the form of [[aggressivity|aggressiveundoing]] or destructive behaviorconnections and destroying things.

The theory of the death drive is, by Freud's own admission, speculative, and is grounded in the ddescriptions concept 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 [[:category:concepts |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.)

==Death Drive and Jacques Lacan=====Psychoanalysis===[[Jacques Lacan]] (following follows [[Freud) reaffirms ]] in reaffirming the concept of the [[death drive]] as central to [[psychoanalysis]]. : [[Lacan]] wrote: <blockquote>"to To ignore the [[death instinct ]] in his [Freud's] [[doctrine ]] is to misunderstand that doctrine entirely."<ref>{{E, }} p. 301</ref></blockquote>

===Nostalgia===In 1938, [[Lacan]] describes 's first remarks on the [[death drive]] , in 1938, he describes it as a [[nostalgia]] for a [[preoedipal|lost harmony]], a [[desire]] to [[return]] to the [[preoedipal|preoedipal fusion]] fusion with the [[mother]]'s [[breast]], the [[castration|loss]] of which is marked on the [[psyche]] in the [[complex|weaning complex]].<ref>Lacan, {{1938: }} p. 35</ref>In 1946, [[Lacan]] associates the [[death drive]] with the [[suicide|suicidal tendency]] of [[narcissism]].<ref>Ec, 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, 326</ref>

==Death Drive and Biology=Narcissism===For Freud, the In 1946 he [[death drive]links] was closely bound up with [[biology]].[[Lacan]] situates the [[death drive]] in to the [[symbolicnarcissism|suicidal tendency]].[[Lacan]] articulates it with culture rather than nature.of [[Lacannarcissism]] states that the death drive "is not a question of biology."<ref>E, 102{{Ec}} p. 186</ref> The [[death drive]] is not the [[biology|biological]] [[instinct]] to return to the inanimate.<ref>S7, 211-12</ref>

==Death Drive and Drives==Another difference between Lacan's concept of By linking the [[death drive and Freud's emerges in 1964.Freud opposed ]] with the death drive to the sexual drives.[[Lacanpreoedipal phase]] rejects Freud's thesis of a duality of life and death drives.with [[Lacannarcissism]] argues that the , these early remarks would [[death driveplace]] is an aspect of every the [[death drive]].The in what [[death driveLacan]] is an aspect of every later comes to call the [[driveimaginary order]].

"The distinction between ===Symbolic Order===However, when [[Lacan]] begins to develop his concept of the life drive [[order|three orders]] of [[imaginary]], [[symbolic]] and [[real]], in the 1950s, he does not situate the [[death drive is - true ]] in the [[imaginary]] but in as much as it manifests two aspects of the drive[[symbolic]]."<ref>gl 20</ref>

===Repetition===In the [[Lacanseminar]] writes of 1954-5, for example, he argues that the [[death drive]] is simply the fundamental tendency of the [[symbolic order]] to produce [[repetition]]: <blockquote>"every The [[death drive |death instinct]] is virtually only the mask of the [[symbolic order]]."<ref>{{S2}} p. 326</ref></blockquote> ===Biological Instincts===This shift also marks a [[difference]] with [[Freud]], for whom the [[death drive]] was closely bound up with [[biology]], representing the fundamental tendency of every [[living]] [[thing]] to return to an inorganic [[state]].  By situating the [[death drive]] firmly in the [[symbolic]], [[Lacan]] articulates it with [[culture]] rather than [[nature]];he states that the [[death drive]] "is not a question of biology,"<ref>Ec{{E}} p. 102</ref>, and must be distinguished from the [[biological]] [[instinct]] to return to the inanimate.<ref>{{S7}} p. 211-12</ref> ===Sexual 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]] [[drive]]s, but now [[Lacan]] argues that the [[death drive]] is not a [[separate]] [[drive]], 844but is in fact an aspect of every [[drive]].  <blockquote>"The [[distinction]] between the [[death drive|life drive]] and the [[death drive]] is - [[true]] in as much as it manifests two aspects of the [[drive]]."<ref>{{S11}} p. 257</ref> </blockquote> Hence [[Lacan]] writes that "every [[drive]] is virtually a [[death drive]]" because:

# every [[drive]] involves the [[subject ]] in [[repetition]], and # every [[drive]] is an attempt to go beyond the [[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 [[jouissancesadism|suffering]].<ref>{{Ec}} p. 844</ref>

[[Category:TermsFreudian psychology]]

[[Category:Concepts]][[Category:Freudian psychologySymbolic]]