- 120 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Only available on web
About This Book
This comprehensive yet accessible book analyses the clinical and historical experiences that led to the radical, complex and fundamental psychoanalytic concept of the death drive.
In The Death Drive: A Contemporary Introduction, Rossella Valdrè traces the path that led Sigmund Freud to theorise this key concept in his essay, Beyond the Pleasure Principle. She considers its roots in Freud's experiences of war trauma and his assessment of the human compulsion to repeat, as well as its consequences on his later theoretical and clinical work. Short vignettes from the clinician's room and examples from books and films introduce the reader to the birth and development of the concept, its biological and philosophical roots and its many clinical implications. Valdrè also reviews its varied reception among post-Freudians, and examines the controversies and questions that the death drive commonly engenders within the psychoanalytic community. She concludes by considering the death drive through the medium of art, its relationship with sublimation and the confirmation neuroscience is beginning to provide.
Written in a style that is at once accessible and precise, this book is an invaluable tool to students and psychoanalysts in training approaching the theory for the first time, as well as practising analysts, postgraduate students and scholars familiar with the concept and looking to explore it further.
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Table of contents
- Cover
- Half Title
- Series Page
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Table of Contents
- Foreword
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 The death drive in Freudian thought: theory and historical context
- 2 Death wish or death of desire?
- 3 A controversial concept: the death drive in the post-Freud era
- 4 How is the “silent” drive expressed? Masochism’s dangerous derivative
- 5 Clinical and artistic examples of the death drive in the individual and in social groups
- 6 The death drive and sublimation: a dangerous relationship
- 7 The reason for a fundamental concept on human nature
- 8 Future developments: the contribution of neuroscience
- Conclusions
- Bibliography
- Index