"Within the Realm of the Death Instinct" (1971)
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Copyrighted Material. For use only by UPENN. Reproduction prohibited. Usage subject to PEP terms & conditions (see terms.pep-web. org). Int. J. Psycho-Anal. (1971) 52, 145 WITHIN THE REALM OF THE DEATH INSTINCT ANGEL GARMA, BUENOS AIRES This paper is intended as a basis for discussion the archaic heritage of human beings comprises not of the subject of aggression and will deal with only dispositions but also subject-matter-memory various aspects of the death instinct theory. My traces of the experience of earliergenerations(Freud, choice of this theory for discussion was influ- 1939, p. 99). enced by the existence in our modern civilization The above quotations show how for Freud, of profound discontents, in spite of immense the characteristics of both the primary instincts possibilities for happiness. and other human reactions are dependent on After a review ofthe theory I attempt to show the individual's ancestral and personal circum- that masochistic reactions are incompatible with stances. For instance, Freud, in his study on the pleasure principle. Afterwards I defend the the genesis of the superego, emphasizes the thesis that everybody loves or is aggressive importance of the influence of ancestral totemic against his neighbour as he loves or is aggressive society, and of the defusion of life and death against himself. I then investigate manifesta- instincts which comes from identification, de- tions of the death instinct unrelated to guilt sexualization and sublimation of the individual's feelings and discuss psychoanalytic interpre- relationship with his parents. The defusion tations of sadism turned against the self. In increases the manifestations of the self-destruc- conclusion I maintain that the theory of the tive instinct, because the ego struggles against death instinct, which answers to reality, is both the erotic instinct. sinister and optimistic. But since the ego's work of sublimation results in a defusion of the instincts and a liberation of the LIFE AND DEATH INSTINCTS aggressive instincts in the superego, its struggle Freud reformulated the instincts into two against the libido exposes it to the danger of mal- main groups: those of life and those of death. treatment and death (1923, p. 56). He postulated the death instinct on the basis of his speculations on the repetition compulsion The theory of life and death instincts can also and the tendency of the instincts to re-establish be applied on a national scale following the earlier situations, and also on the basis of clinical ideas put forward by Freud (1923, p. 38), and facts allegedly contrary to the pleasure principle, sometimes considered Lamarckian, that one as for example: traumatic neuroses, fate neu- individual may be regarded as composed of roses, masochism, unconscious guilt feelings, , harboured residues of the existence of countless the transferential repetition of painful infantile egos " with different ancestral experiences. experiences and negative therapeutic reactions. If we assume the survival of these memory-traces of Freud (1920, p. 38) thought that the instincts the experience of our ancestorsin the archaicheritage were the result of interaction between organic we have bridged the gulf between individual and matter and environmental circumstances: group psychology: we can deal with peoples as we do with an individual neurotic (Freud, 1939, p. 100). the phenomena of organic development must be attributed to external disturbing and diverting in- A nation, like an individual, has a beginning fluences.... In the last resort, what has left its mark and an evolution. Present national charac- on the development of organisms must be the history teristics are determined by past circumstances of the earth we live in and of its relation to the sun. that continue to hold sway over the present Thus, for example, the latency period of through a kind of compulsion to repeat. Accor- human sexuality is attributed by Freud to the ding to Freud, for instance, present-day Judaeo- destructive influence of the Ice Ages: Christian ideology and rituals, such as belief in Invited contribution to the 27th International Psycho-Analytical Congress, Vienna, 1971. Copyrighted Material. For use only by UPENN. Reproduction prohibited. Usage subject to PEP terms & conditions (see terms.pep-web. org). 146 ANGEL GARMA immortality, communion and circumcision, One's own death can only be represented by repeat behaviour patterns originated in the social a total lack of mental representations. But any- conditions of primitive totemic society and of one trying to visualize this absence of represen- the Egyptian empire. tations must necessarily create a mental repre- Some of the reactions to ancient experiences sentation of the lack of them, which, of course, which persist in the present compel a nation to is not a state of total lack of mental represen- seek progress and well-being; others are more tations. destructive and cause suffering. This can be If this is the case, then, when the individual is simplified by saying that in a nation we find representing this lack of representations to him- progressive life tendencies together with other self he is representing himself as alive and not regressive, self-destructive death tendencies. dead. Hence the possibility of imagining some- These two opposed tendencies are present in one else's death but not one's own. every national activity. Their relative intensity The mental representation of one's own death is also determined by the strength of the influ- would be ' loss of consciousness',which implies an ence that the pleasant or unpleasant, constructive absence of mental representation. In Spanish and or destructive characteristics of present environ- French this is literally described by' loss ofknow- mental circumstances exercises upon them at any ledge '. It is also significant that' a dead faint' one moment. is a synonym for loss of consciousness. Perhaps When we know that a nation, because of its Freud's exclamation, ' How sweet it must be to experience in the past, carries a heavy burden die' (Jones, 1953, p. 317), when he recovered of inherited regressive, self-destructive death from a dead faint in 1912, might be considered tendencies, we can better understand why such as lending support to this supposition. a nation tends to suffer more intensely than its present circumstances would seem to warrant. DEATH INSTINCT OR INSTINCTUAL AGGRESSIVE It also enables us to understand why, just as in DRIVE the treatment of individual neuroses, attempts Some analysts do not admit to the existence to relieve the suffering and destructive behaviour of destructive tendencies which are not brought of a nation either fail or only partly succeed. about by frustration. Others accept that destruc- Persistence of excessive suffering cannot be tive instincts can exist independently, but have explained as incidental in a nation's search for doubts regarding the death instinct. Thus, happiness. It is significant, too, that empires according to Loewenstein (1940, p. 388): have usually perished because of internal prob- we must range ourselves with those [Fenichel, lems. Hartmann] who prefer the older theory, though that The concept of death instincts (always bearing theory will ... have to undergo terminological in mind that its genesis, evolution and present modifications and, above all, completion. features must be considered in relation to past and present circumstances) furnishes us with a Nevertheless in certain details in their wri- tentative understanding of how a nation or an tings, Hartmann et al. (1949) (who prefer to individual suffers and destroys itself. I find that speak of' instinctual drive' rather than instinct) Freud's theory of the death instinct validates would appear to admit to the existence of an some of the earlier psychoanalytic explanations, instinct of self-destruction or death. This seems maintains others unchanged, and re-examines clear from the following quotations: yet others from a new viewpoint without dis- ... the existence of a primary drive toward aggres- carding them. As Freud (1930, p. 119) wrote: sion or destruction. We... considerthis assumption to be of immediate relevance in the formulation of The assumption of the existence of an instinct of psychoanalytic propositions [po 11]. The vicissitudes death or destruction ... provides that simplification of aggression resemble those of sexuality to such a without either ignoring or doing violence to the degree that the assumption of a constant driving facts for which we strive in scientific work. power comparable to that of libido seems approp- riate [po 28]. The unmodified aggressive impulse The fact that there is no unconscious repre- threatens the existence of the object ... [p. 19]. sentation of one's own death does not imply ... since the ' full' discharge of aggressive energy that the death instinct does not exist. This can would endanger the objects, whereas the full dis- be understood if we consider that the very act charge of libido ... does not threaten the existence of creating a mental representation implies the of the object itself [po 20].... We start from the presence of life, which precludes one's owndeath. assumption of an undifferentiated phase of psychic Copyrighted Material. For use only by UPENN. Reproduction prohibited. Usage subject to PEP terms & conditions (see terms.pep-web. org). WITHIN THE REALM OF THE DEATH INSTINCT 147 structure. ... During the undifferentiated phase who would have made her suffer far more. In one might assume aggression ... to be centred in this way her superego deceived her (Garma, the self [po 25]. 1968) into submitting to totally unnecessary To draw a conclusion from these quotations: pain, the degree of which she controlled. Had if there is a primary aggressive drive, which she not been a masochist, she would not have , threatens the existence of the object itself' and fantasied with cruel imaginary persecutors which if in the beginning the object of the aggressive forced her towards painful, although controlled drive is the self, then it must be assumed that destructive forms of behaviour.