ABSTRACT
The term “death drive” as opposed to “death instinct” is closer to Sigmund Freud’s original German term Trieb. People are faced with the dialectic of life and death: death means stopping life, whereas drive means pushing it forward. The death drive operates silently inside the individual. According to Freud, when this drive is directed outwards, against objects, it constitutes destructiveness or aggressiveness. A death wish may translate into a wish to destroy an object, or it may be directed against the act of wishing itself. The death drive expressed itself in attacks on linking (Bion) in external relationships and in the transference. Freud always stressed the affinity, the close relationship, and the transitions between so called normal and pathological processes. The struggles between binding and unbinding forces, between Eros and Thanatos, are not limited to mental pathology; they are inherent in life and death.
