LEAR ON FREUD'S DEATH FORCE (CHICAGO 2000 AAP MEETING)

Victor Bloom MD

Analyzing the history of psychoanalysis is inevitable. Doing so, professor Lear picked a great focal point, the point at which Freud realized that the repetition-compulsion contradicted the pleasure principle. Where was the pleasure in endlessly repeating the pain of some traumatic memory, interfering with sleep, interfering with happiness, interfering with life? Lear emphasized the inescapable fact that Freud was forced to discard the pre-eminence of his Life Force (Eros = pleasure) as the (only) governing principle of our intinctual drives. He found another contrasting and over-arching principle, the Death Force or wish. It made a certain sense that two opposing forces would be in conflict, and that our eventual 'will' to die would win out. The inevitability of death is certainly our undeniable experience­. The 'drive' to death would certainly have to be unconscious; not many of us would admit to 'willing' or allowing ourselves to die, to go gently into that good night.

The Death Instinct explained a lot of self-destructive human behavior, such as suicide, fatal 'accidents' and war. Karl Menninger surely got a lot of mileage from this theory, in his classic, "Man Against Himself," in which he included example after clinical example of suicidal behavior, from risky pursuits to chronic suicidality, such as alcoholism and chain-smoking. But it seems modern Freudians did not like the idea, and so after much bitter wrangling, they discarded it. The Death Instinct was too grim and it didn't explain all the data, at least not enough of it. Besides, who wants to be associated with such a gloomy prospect? We really don't want to die, isn't that so? Let's just leave it at that.

In Jonathan Lear's opening address of the Chicago 2µ000 meeting, he did not mention the commonly accepted explanation for the repetition-compulsion, which satisfied the pleasure principle, the idea that each repetition was a reassurance that we were not destroyed. No matter what the fright or the dread, we were not dead. Not very logical or realistic, but since when is the primitive unconscious, the primary process, logical? They don't make much rational sense, but the unconscious forces are powerful, nevertheless.

Let us say that when Freud realized that there was another force besides the pleasure principle, one that is equal and opposite, he again resorted to basic physical principles. Not only did The Death Force make perfect sense, (because we all do die, after all, do we not?)--- but that the notion was in accord with a basic principle of entropy. Structure eventually breaks down, gives way to randomness (chaos), which in our case means that the organic structure of life an...d consciousness eventually breaks down to inorganic structure and eventually to the basic elements, atoms and molecules, a state antithetical to life as we know it. "Dust to dust" as the bible says.

Since we are evolved Darwinian animals, we are endowed with the instinct of self-preservation, which serves us well during life, but which eventually dwindles and succumbs to this entropy, the death force. We succumb, but we don't like it. We rage against the dying of the light. Perhaps what professor Lear left out of his theory of how Freud missed the boat when he realized that his 'repetition-compulsion' contradicted the Pleasure Principle, was Freud's narcissistic injury (mortification), when he realized that he was wrong. When Freud is forced to give up a theory, though, he creatively comes up with a bigger, better one, such as the Death Force. God forbid a man of his ambitious nature should say, "I don't know!" (It's a mystery!) He was, after allË, the undisputed favorite of his mother.

Why do we say that a narcissist is 'mortified?' (Sounds like 'dead'). We don't like being thwarted, being at a loss for words or ideas. Such a loss, however brief, becomes a little death.

This 'little death' idea keeps reminding me of orgasm. Wilhelm Reich dwelled on the function of the orgasm. If the mental apparatus is always dealing with the accumulation and discharge of tension, the orgasm is the ultimate discharge, giving rise to the ultimate pleasure. Eros, I am sure, would agree with Reich. The ultimate pleasure is the counterforce to the Death Instinct, because Nature uses the orgasm to lure us into reproduction, the carrying forth of our DNA into the next generation, into the future, beyond our bodily existence. It promises an immortality of sorts. Nature gives us a momentary feeling of being at one with the universe, our every cell with every star and galaxy.

In his provocative and scholarly t›alk, Jonathan Lear made our mental apparatus into the metaphor of a house. As an alternative to Freud's theory, he proposed the idea that a trauma is like something that blows a fuse in our neural circuits. We shut down and we repeat and repeat like a dumb relay apparatus, the wiring of which repeats like a hiccup, but for no particular reason, to no particular purpose, he suggests. What about that? Maybe there is no purpose to the repetition-compulsion. But Freud's essence is to propose that there is always a purpose in the theory of psychic determinism. There is always the question of why and how. Lear proposes that not everything is psychologically determined, not everything can be characterized in the paradigm of cause-and-effect. In this age of neuroscience, can he be correct? Lear's idea is certainly trendy in this postmodern, revisionist, deconstructionist world. Maybe the repetition is just førom a damaged neural electrical relay that keeps twitching and won't quit?

But if we are to analyze the analytic movement and the premier analyst who gives rise to a new theory, we must consider Freud's defensive structure, his own reaction to the knowledge of his certain and ultimate death, to his own Death Force. Freud's essential character was one which was, if nothing else, undaunted. (He was, after all, the undisputed favorite of his mother). If one purposeful and explanatory theory does not explain the available data, then another one must. That is the philosophy of logical positivism. Lear's contrary postmodern, deconstructionist philosophy opines that maybe there is no purpose, no explanation. No need for one? Chaos again? Entropy?;

Lear concludes his talk with the classic Freudian example of the one and a half year old boy who plays 'fort/da.' Mommy gone/ mommy returned! How nice for a little boy who has successfully introjected the good mother, and has reassurance against abandonment and death, solace against the terror of helpless vulnerability! Aren't we all that baby, needing our defensive games and creative strivings against nothingness, despair and annihilation? What is the global feeling state of a small child without the ever-present good mother? The answer must be abject terror, the warning signal of impending death, because the infant is in fact quite helpless if unprotected in the world, and we were all infants, Freud, Lear and myself included. And all who have read this far.

Rather than suppose that the alternative to the; Pleasure Principle is a neural hiccup, let us consider the conjecture that Freud was playing 'fort/da' with the Life Force (pleasure principle) and the Death Drive (competing principle)? One theory lost, another regained! Don't we do that? Don't we need to do that?

I prefer Marianne Eckerdt's idea of keeping all the doors open, keeping flexibility alive, and tolerating infinite complexity. In reality we are still scratching the surface of what remains to be known, and after all that is humanly possible to know is known, we have still will have only scratched the surface. The depth and complexity of the human brain and the infinite universe must ultimately be beyond our ken.

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