ABSTRACT
Recourse to the drive theory makes it evident that the interpretative engagement Freud was envisioning along Talmudic lines would be a work of Eros, whose principle task is to avert the disintegrating operation of the death drive. Talmudic interpretation of Freud’s writings would serve to unite the Viennese Group – and perhaps psychoanalysts more generally. At a deeper level of analysis, the task of such interpretative engagement would be to bind the death drive operating within the psychoanalytic transmission itself. The neglect of the Viennese Group is a case in point, and recourse to the death drive seems necessary to help comprehend the non-transmission of their work. The traumatic situation alters the relationship between the drives, leading to an unbinding and therefore to an unleashing of the death drive. The development of psychoanalysis is deeply affected by contingent factors, such as the ravages of history and also, though more discretely, the operations of the death drive within this discipline itself.
