Abstract

The purpose of this study is to articulate how psychoanalytic theory presents the primary organization of the human psyche as the dialectic interplay between the opposing and irreconcilable dynamics of the dual instincts, Eros and death. The death instinct is explicitly characterized in the theories of the Nirvana principle, the repetition compulsion and various aggressive reactions to primary anxiety. Yet because of the phenomenon of the unconscious revealed by psychoanalysis, it becomes imperative to locate the implicit form of the death instinct. This leads to the recognition of the death instinct as the unconscious negation of an intrinsic sense of loss. The negation and extroversion of the death instinct thus represents the basic organization of the ego in its neurotic attempts at identifying exclusively with a sense of presence and continuity. These same processes of splitting and projection of the death instinct that are fundamental to the organization of the ego are also located in the structure of history and within the rationalistic methodologies employed by scientists such as Freud. It is concluded that the only possibility of transcending neurosis is through the re-integration of the death instinct. In claiming the loss or absence intrinsic to the self the subject is necessarily de-centered, resulting in both the terror of uncertainty and the humble realization of the ineffable mystery of being that we come to recognize in each other