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BEYOND PLEASURE |
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In his essay „Beyond the Pleasure Principle“
(1920) Sigmund Freud developed the hypothesis that in opposition to the sexual
drives, which are aimed at the production and preservation of life, there must
be an equal drive within us, that seeks dissolution, the reduction of tension
and the abolishment of life. He called this drive „Todestrieb“ – the death
instinct or death drive, which to Freud represented the desire of life forms to
return to the anorganic world.(...) Freud's concept of the Todestrieb was never fully accepted by his followers,
except by Jacques Lacan and Melanie Klein. Most other theoreticians of
psychoanalysis regarded it as too poetic or too metaphysical. One could say
that’s a pity, but we think this was quite good, for so it leaves the problem to
us artists and philosophers, who now can try to make some sense of Freuds notion
of the death instinct...
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