ABSTRACT
The question of the death instinct has been a controversial one since Freud first introduced the concept in 1920. Many analysts dispute the dual drive theory, finding the idea that there is a death instinct, an unconscious demand on the mind to destroy, undo connections, and return the organism to an inanimate state, to be depressing and unsavory. This chapter presents a patient whose mother died of cancer when he was three years old. The major focus in treatment was the patient’s fascination with death. This chapter attempts to understand and explain some of the dynamics associated with this phenomenon. This fascination expressed itself in the patient’s pleasure in spending time with people dying of AIDS, and also in the transference, where the patient’s flat and boring speech, bored the analyst “to death” and induced painful somatic symptoms in her. The conclusion reached after years of research is that the fascination with death protected the patient from primitive drives, both aggressive and libidinal, and unconsciously returned him to symbiotic union with the pre-Oedipal mother.
