ABSTRACT
With extreme psychic trauma, the ego is left defenceless, at the mercy of crude drive phenomena after the capacity for psychic representation collapses. Then the pleasure principle will be replaced by another mode of psychic regulation to which Freud provided a theoretical description in his Beyond the Pleasure Principle.
The present chapter is a comment on Freud’s dualistic drive theory in the light of a case history in which destructive drive phenomena led to fatal consequences. The death drive becomes related here to an early psychic trauma, which tends to repeat throughout individual life. The author suggests that the repetition compulsion also manifests an instinctual tendency towards normal psychic functioning based on the primary identification. The task of psychoanalytic treatment is to create the preconditions for the restitution of this configuration. The success in this endeavour depends on whether the libidinal resources available are commensurate with the force of aggression eluding psychic representation, and the capacity for the work of mourning.
