American Imago

Abstract:

The death drive is one of the most controversial concepts in psychoanalytic literature. According to Freud, the death drive has, in essence, a biological origin. This formulation is said to be problematic with regard to the determining qualities inherent to psychoanalytical theory. This article sets forth a different interpretation of the formulation of the death drive, specifically in the context of the traumatic and drive-formation processes. The author asserts that inescapable traumatic impulses tended to gain a comprehensive resemblance with the drive and have connected this proposition (by giving additional details on the fact that phylogenesis refers to the experiences of social history rather than biology) with Freud’s view that drives are the residues of the effect of external stimulation, which caused alterations in the living matter during phylogenesis. Building on these arguments, I claim that the death drive could be designated as the phylogenetic precipitates of the repetitive traumatic experiences and accumulations of the prolonged stage of social history rather than being solely biological; moreover, this thesis of the death drive, which can be referred to as historical and not originary, could show a greater consistency with the whole of Freud’s text.