Concept
Destruction as the cause of coming into being
Sabina Spielrein’s thesis, set out in 1912, that the reproductive or sexual drive consists of two antagonistic components, one destructive and one of becoming. Because reproduction requires the individual to dissolve, the “I” passing into a “we”, the drive to preserve the species works against the drive of self-preservation, which accounts for the anxiety and disgust that accompany sexuality; new life comes into being only through the destruction of the old. In 1920 Freud acknowledged the idea as anticipating part of his theory of the death drive.
Development
1912
introduced by Sabina Spielrein
Spielrein set out the thesis in Die Destruktion als Ursache des Werdens (1912), concluding that the reproductive drive consists, psychologically as well, of two antagonistic components, and that becoming is the result of destruction.
In Destruction as the Cause of Coming into Being (1912);Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920)
Relations
- 1912 introduced by Sabina Spielrein
Spielrein set out the thesis in Die Destruktion als Ursache des Werdens (1912), concluding that the reproductive drive consists, psychologically as well, of two antagonistic components, and that becoming is the result of destruction.
- 1920 diverged into Death drive
Freud acknowledged that Spielrein had anticipated part of his speculation, but where she placed destruction inside the reproductive drive, as one of its two antagonistic components, he set the death drives apart from and against the life or sexual drives.
Works
- 1912
Destruction as the Cause of Coming into Being
Spielrein’s best-known paper starts from a question that earlier analysts, among them Stekel, Gross, Freud and Bleuler, had touched on: why does the reproductive drive, the strongest of the drives, bring with it anxiety and disgust as well as pleasure? In a first part, drawing on biology and individual psychology, she argues that reproduction requires the individual to dissolve: the drive to preserve the species expresses itself psychically in a dissolution in which the “I” passes into a “we”, and so it works against the drive of self-preservation. The reproductive drive demands destruction from the individual, and its destructive urge gains in tension when it is left unsatisfied; destruction can be carried out symbolically so as to escape it in reality, and self-destruction can be replaced by the destruction of a victim. A second part offers samples from mythology to show that becoming arises from destruction, and the paper concludes that the reproductive drive consists, psychologically too, of two antagonistic components, as much a drive of destruction as of becoming. Spielrein notes that Jung sets ideas of death in opposition to sexual ideas, whereas she places destruction within sexuality itself. In Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920) Freud acknowledged that she had anticipated part of his speculation on the death drives.
- 1920
The essay in which Freud revised his theory of the drives. He starts from facts the pleasure principle does not account for: the dreams of the traumatic neuroses, including the war neuroses, which keep returning the patient to the accident; a small child’s game of throwing away a reel so that it is “gone” (fort) and pulling it back with a joyful “there” (da); and the patient in analysis who, instead of remembering the repressed, repeats it in the transference. From these he infers a compulsion to repeat that seems more original, more elementary and more drive-like than the pleasure principle. Trauma is described as excitation strong enough to break through the mind’s protective shield against stimuli, leaving it the task of binding the incoming quantities. Freud then proposes that the drives are conservative, striving to restore an earlier state, so that “the aim of all life is death”, and he sets death drives against the life or sexual drives, the libido he identifies with the Eros of the poets and philosophers. Biological findings on natural death and on the immortality of protists neither confirm nor remove the hypothesis, and he holds to the distinction between death drives and life drives, adding that the pleasure principle seems to serve the death drives. A footnote acknowledges that Sabina Spielrein had anticipated a good part of this speculation.
See also
People
References
- Destruction as the Cause of Coming into Being1912Evidence for a relation
- Beyond the Pleasure Principle1920Evidence for a relation