ABSTRACT
Self-destructiveness is an essential aspect of all psychopathology and human-to-human destructiveness. Around the nineteenth century European philosophers began giving thought to the phenomenon of self-destructiveness. Nietzsche attributed all forms of destructiveness to collectivism. Bion recognized the gravity of self-destructiveness and gave it an almost ontological gravity. Perhaps no one captured the dynamic and animated elements of destructiveness more articulately than Bion. Bion's characterizations of destructiveness take on an almost archetypal significance as he describes a force that wreaks damage even after existence, time, and space are annihilated. For Heidegger, destructiveness will become increasingly present as humanity mistakes itself as the measure of all things. The essence of technology is nothing technological, that is, it derives from an issuance of Being. Like the essence of technology, the essence of self-destructiveness itself is an issuance from Being. Heidegger goes to great lengths to give thought to role humanity plays in the Enframing and its destructive vicissitudes.
