Article
Destruction as the Cause of Coming into Being
Die Destruktion als Ursache des Werdens
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.
Main ideas
- The reproductive drive brings negative feelings, anxiety and disgust, alongside the pleasure one would expect, and these call for an explanation.
- Reproduction demands the dissolution of the individual: the “I” passes into a “we”, so the drive to preserve the species works against self-preservation.
- The reproductive drive consists of two antagonistic components, one destructive and one of becoming; becoming is the result of destruction.
- Left unsatisfied, the destructive urge in the reproductive drive grows stronger; destruction may be carried out symbolically, or self-destruction replaced by the destruction of a victim.
- Examples from mythology are read as showing that becoming arises out of destruction.
- Against Jung, who opposes ideas of death to sexual ideas, Spielrein places destruction within sexuality itself.
What it shows
- 1912
Sabina Spielrein introduced Destruction as the cause of coming into being
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
Death drive diverges from Destruction as the cause of coming into being
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.
- 1912
Sabina Spielrein disputed with Carl Gustav Jung
In Die Destruktion als Ursache des Werdens Spielrein observes that Jung sets ideas of death in opposition to sexual ideas rather than in accord with them, whereas her own thesis places destruction within the sexual drive itself.