ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview of death in psychoanalytic thought and introduced the theoretical foundation on which this research draws. Theoretical material was organised and presented around the subheadings of the impossibility of death, working through death, nothingness vs. destruction, and loss vs. desire. The chapter deals with responses to loss and ways of working through death presented in the psychoanalytic literature. Before Sigmund Freud pronouncement of the death drive, he explores mourning and melancholia in his 1917 essay that tackles the human response to loss. However, Freud fails to respond to his own call to engage with the subject and maintains an arms-length treatment of death, despite the preoccupation with death evident in his personal life and correspondence. War plays an important part in any reflection on death because the possibility of death is present from the outset. It encompasses the sacrifice of one's life for a greater good, be that country, battalion, value, or philosophy.
