ABSTRACT
Anna Freud traced emotional conflicts to the operation of basic forces with opposite aims, antagonistic instincts. The theory of the death instinct is frowned upon and has been much disputed. One argument denies its legitimate origin from psychological considerations and asserts that Freud arrived at it exclusively by way of speculation and imaginings concerning biological events. His biological speculations suggest that, when by an event which 'baffles conjecture' life was created from the inanimate, the tendency to return to the original condition came into being as well. The life instinct aims at union and drives one individual towards others, the death instinct aims at breaking up the organism and the union between individual organisms, or at preventing such union from being formed. Destructive behaviour in the service of self-preservation indicates that the fusion between the basic instincts is in favour of the life instinct.
