ABSTRACT
The vicissitudes of Thanatos, the death instinct, form the cornerstone of Freud’s post-1920 psychoanalytic project. By contrast, the concept of a death instinct is conspicuously absent in Jung’s psychology. However, this omission is both ambiguous and perplexing, for while Jung distanced himself from Freud’s theory of Thanatos there are numerous references in his writings to death as a purposeful goal and a fundamental objective of psychological life-an objective which may be wished for, enacted and revealed in both literal and imaginal forms. This chapter claims that in their treatment of death both Freud and Jung were attempting to lend theoretical substance to a pervasive and compelling facet of existence, that the dispute between their positions reflects important tensions between different ontological perspectives, and that both theorists were to varying degrees misdirected in their thanatological formulations by a subtle but intrusive allegiance to Cartesian science. The latter concern is more obvious in the case of Freud, who tended to view psychological reality as an epiphenomenon reducible to biology. Jung’s promotion of psychological life as an order of reality in its own right does appear to set him apart from the Cartesian tradition, but it will be demonstrated that positivistic reductionism is a passive but equally intrusive influence in his thanatology, as it is in his broader theory of mind (cf. Brooke 1991).
