Can we do without the death drive?

Abstract

The concept of the "death drive" is overly laden with the word death, so that its use is subject to a startling confusion of the tongues. Freud identifies two types of drives and their fusion and defusion inscribe fundamental dynamics in the psychic economy throughout life. The death drives are often regarded as the negative element but they can also turn out to be useful and beneficial. The plurality of the death drive's action in the twofold perspective is put forward by Freud: destructive unbinding at the service of construction. The paradox is that the death drive may well be sometimes the only resort for the preservation of life - "dying in order to survive." However scandalous it may seem, the experience of pain is what ensures the permanence of the taste for life. The analysis becomes a site of suffering that amounts to a transitional space where the question of belonging is no longer really at stake. What can be experienced in the transference is the capacity to suffer in the presence of the other, which implies the capacity to experience, in the here-and-now, a high degree of excitation through physical or mental pain, via a tolerable narcissistic withdrawal, despite the presence of the other. Jeanne's treatment underscores this perspective.