Death drive

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In classical psychoanalysis, the death drive (German: Todestrieb) is an aspect of libidinal energy that seeks "to lead organic life back into the inanimate state." For Sigmund Freud, it "express[es] itself‍— though probably only in part‍— as a drive of destruction directed against the external world and other organisms", for example, in the behaviour of predation. It complements the life drive, which encompasses self-preservation and reproduction behaviours such as nutrition and sexuality. Both aspects of libido form the common basis of Freud's dual drive theory. The death drive is not only expressed through instinctive aggression, such as hunting for nourishment, but also through pathological behaviour such as repetition compulsion and self-destructiveness. Freud proposed the concept of the death and life drives in his work Beyond the Pleasure Principle in 1920. It was developed to solve problems arising from the distinction between the pleasure principle of the id and the reality...

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