Effects of Physical Treatment of Mental Disease upon the Life Instinct and the Death Instinct

Abstract

The great change in magnitude and/or direction of basic dynamic drives which can result from physical treatment such as electroshock, insulin coma, and psychotropic drug therapy makes it a valuable tool in psychotherapy. The outstanding and only proved effect of physical treatment is reduced nervous system excitability. The life instinct is strengthened or only infinitesimally reduced after physical treatment, as characteristic for unconditional responses, while the death instinct drive is dramatically extinguished, as characteristic for conditional responses. Hence it would appear that the life instinct is an unconditional response and the death instinct is only a conditional distortion of it, that is, an acquired conditional response rather than an independent instinct. Therefore, the theory of dualism of instincts is contradicted by experimental results.