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The [[Freudian ]] [[concept ]] of "destrudo" is one of a group of [[concepts ]] that appeared fleetingly in Sigmund [[Freud]]'s [[work ]] and subsequently disappeared, although it is not always easy to [[identify ]] the reasons for their [[disappearance]]. In the [[present ]] [[case ]] the [[situation ]] is clearer since from an [[energy ]] perspective Freud has always refused to postulate a "destrudo," that is, an energy specifically associated with the [[death ]] [[drive]], even though the term makes its [[appearance ]] in The Ego and [[the Id ]] (1923b).

Freud did not [[want ]] to associate the [[duality ]] of the [[drives ]] with a duality of energies, since for him there was no energy [[dualism]], but with a kind of energy monism, that of the [[libido]]. He subsequently abandoned use of the term "destrudo," which would have risked implying the [[existence ]] of an energy dualism.

On several occasions [[Jean Laplanche ]] has returned to this problem of terminology (1970, 1986). Destrudo does not appear in Jean Laplanche and Jean-Bertrand Pontalis's The [[Language ]] of [[Psychoanalysis]].

Ego and the Id, The; Death [[instinct ]] ([[Thanatos]]); Libido; Weiss, Edoardo.[[Bibliography]]

* [[Freud, Sigmund]]. (1923b). [[The Ego and the Id|The ego and the id]]. SE, 19: 12-59.