ABSTRACT
People face self-defeating and self-destructive behaviour in many psychopathological conditions that they have to deal with in psychoanalytical clinical practice: self-harm and even self-mutilation in borderline conditions; eating disorders that threaten health and even life of the patients; alcohol and drug addictions, sometimes with the potential of long-term harm and death; unsafe sexual promiscuity and other high-risk behaviour in the context of pathological sensation seeking; different forms of criminality devastating the lives of both victims and perpetrators. All these clinical phenomena confront us with challenging clinical tasks and often make us feeling helpless. Historically, there have been several clinical approaches to further develop the psychoanalytic understanding of self-destructiveness. The death drive concept stands up against the prevalent and more optimistic view of human nature according to which chronic frustration and childhood trauma leads to human aggression. Sigmund Freud himself was convinced of the necessity of a measure of pessimism leads to scientific and psychoanalytic world view.
