An Irresistible Death Drive?

Abstract

In what Freud identifies as the third phase of the theory of drives, he makes the death drive the pivot of the economy of drives. The end of the dominance of the pleasure principle, and the taking over by the death drive, remain no less profoundly puzzling. It is precisely the question of death in the death drive that I addressed in the article, by taking and following to the letter, as much as possible, Freud’s hypothesis-turned-thesis. The article examines the status of the death drive within the Freudian economy of instincts, in order to ultimately establish the signification and the sense of death—or at least what Freud means by that—in his theory of drives.