The death drive: Conceptual analysis and relevance in the Spanish psychoanalytic community

Abstract

Based on a six-year doctoral research, the author carries out a historical, epistemological and paradigmatic assessment of the controversial concept of the death instinct. The author analyses this notion's speculative nature; its relation with the second principle of thermodynamics; the feasibility of a return to an inorganic state; the death drive's metaphorical and isomorphic uses, as well as its theoretical and doctrinaire approaches; its relationship with repetition compulsion and masochism; the influence of Freud 's scientific background on its formulation; and its context-dependent meaning. Although this paper stems mainly from the theoretical aspects of the study, it also offers some clinical thoughts on the basis of a clinical vignette. The author stresses the underlying healing aspects of repetition in the analytic situation. Next, he presents concise comments on his empirical research on the current professional usage of the death drive in the Spanish psychoanalytical community. This research covered more than 27% of Spanish psychoanalysts (IPA) and psychotherapists (EFPP). The essay's conclusions point to the ambiguous character of the death drive concept and its literal unacceptability and the absence of consistent arguments for its acceptance.

The tendency of the schematic structure to maintain stability can be interpreted as mental inertia

“…Freud's death drive is considered a tendency for living matter to gravitate toward inorganic matter (Armengou, 2009), which means that if the death drive acts on the Markov blanket, it will continue to be acted upon by the death drive, and if the Markov blanket loses its function, the individual will not be able to stabilize his or her psychological state. Rabeyron proposed that just as cellular structures need closed boundaries to ensure their survival, mentally such closed structures can distinguish between the inside and the outside (Rabeyron, 2021), but such closed structures also need to maintain a certain exchange with the environment and keep their structures stable during the exchange, and we can consider this as the reason for schema construction.…”

What is love? An interpretation of love in Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis

“…Cinta terkait secara erat dengan prinsip kenikmatan (pleasure principle) -prinsip kenyataan (reality principle) serta dorongan hidup (life drive/Eros) -dorongan mati (death drive/Thanatos). Teori dorongan adalah konsep kunci dalam memahami cinta dan Freud memformulasikan teori ini pada tahun 1920 (Armengou, 2009). Teori dorongan menjelaskan determinan dari motivasi yang dimiliki oleh manusia terkait dengan hasrat, emosi, pikiran dan perilaku dari perspektif pengalaman subjektif manusia (Yovell, 2016).…”

Discussion of the place of metapsychology in Winnicott's work

“…I think that a closer investigation of this question requires, on the one hand, that we take up again the distinction in Winnicott between the notions of instinct, truly biological pressures which, elaborated imaginatively, demand action (Winnicott, , p. 57), and the notion of drive in Freud, a conventional concept, an abstract idea, a myth, for which Freud's pedagogical effort provides an intuitive analogical content, by stating that it is a border concept between the somatic and the psychic (cf. Armeangou, ; Assoun, , pp. 387–9; Fulgencio, ); and, on the other, that we distinguish, as Girard has done, between ego‐needs and id‐needs, which I take as synonyms for instinctual needs, and the development of these needs.…”