The Death Instinct vs. the Libidinal Instinct
By: Matilda Koroma & Katherine Marshall Woods, Psy.D.
In response to his traumatic experience of World War I, Freud created the concept of the death instinct (Laub & Lee, 2003). This concept was his attempt to understand why people often repeated painful or traumatic experiences, as he thought such behavior was the direct opposite of what people truly desired. As Freud described, the death instinct acted as an inner dynamic in which its ultimate goal was “to return to the quiescence of the inorganic world” (p. 62, as cited in Laub & Lee, 2002). Essentially, the death instinct has little to do with death, but rather our drives towards it (Razinsky, 2010). Based on this knowledge, for individuals who seemingly repeat painful or traumatic experiences, it is when the “earlier state of things” is chaotic that the urge to restore seems to function as a force of traumatic repetition. Consequently, the death instinct becomes a compulsion to reproduce that very experience of chaos. Both libidinal and the death instincts drives us to create connections, attachments to others and achieve emotional health. These two instincts, according to Freud, are possessed within each of us and manifested in idiosyncratic ways. When engaging with others, might these instincts also be present and experienced within the dynamics of an intimate relationship? We explore the films Malcom &…
