Death Drive Research Articles

NALURI PENGARANG DALAM NOVEL SOGI KARYA FAIKA BURHAN

The purpose of this research is to describe the form of the author's instinct revealed in the novel Sogi written by Faika Burhan. This study uses Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytic theory. This type of research is library research with descriptive qualitative method. The result of analysis showed that the author's instinct in the novel appeared through the form of the author's unconsciousness in his work. This unconsciousness is manifested through the depiction of events that occur regarding the behavioral decisions taken by the characters in Sogi novel. These behaviors are divided into two main topics, namely the life instinct and the death instinct. The life instincts found in Sogi novel are life instincts as basic needs and instincts as sexual needs. Meanwhile, the death instinct in Sogi novel is the death instinct towards oneself, the death instinct towards others (parents towards their children and children against their parents).

Wish to Die Among Residents of Swiss Long-Term Care Facilities: AMultisite Cross-Sectional Study.

The wish to die (WTD) in persons near the end of life is a clinically important, ethically and practically complex phenomenon as demonstrated by the intense debates on assisted dying legislation around the world. Despite global aging and increasing institutionalization in old age, WTD among residents of long-term care facilities (LTCF) is underexplored. We aimed to assess the prevalence of WTD and identify its predictors in older LTCF residents. Multisite cross-sectional observational study. 31 LTCF in the 3 major linguistic regions of Switzerland, including residents 75years or older, admitted to the LTCF 4 to 10months before the study, without severe cognitive impairment. Between February 2013 and June 2017, trained research staff interviewed residents to assess WTD using 2 validated instruments and collected information on potential predictors, including depressive symptoms, anxiety, demoralization, feeling to be a burden, spiritual distress, symptom burden, multimorbidity, and drug use. Demographic data were obtained by chart review. Descriptive statistics as well as univariate and multivariate regression analyses were performed. From 427 eligible residents, 101 were excluded, 46 refused, and 280 were included in the study (acceptance rate 85.9%). In general, residents readily and openly addressed the topic of WTD. The prevalence of WTD was 16.0% and 16.2% according to the 2 instruments, with all but 1 of the residents expressing a passive WTD. The strongest independent predictors for a WTD were depressive symptoms (OR 7.45 and 5.77 for the 2 WTD assessment instruments) and demoralization (OR 2.62 and 3.66). The WTD is a relevant concern affecting approximately 1 in 6 LTCF residents. Further research is needed to investigate which interventions could best address the potentially modifiable factors that were associated with the WTD in this specific setting and population.

PAULO COELHO’NUN VERONİKA ÖLMEK İSTİYOR ROMANINDAKİ ANA KARAKTERİN İNTİHARINA İLİŞKİN FREUDYEN PSİKOLOJİK UNSURLARIN İNCELENMESİ

Suicide, one of the most common problems in modern and postmodern societies, is a socio-psychiatric phenomenon existing in every society or culture. In the past, the study of suicide was mainly included in psychiatry; however, with an increasing awareness of some social factors behind suicide, it has now been tackled from a sociological perspective. In the second half of the twentieth century, changes in relationships and lifestyles of modern society began to be more apparent in postmodern culture. Expectations for the future dramatically decline in this period. The notion of absolute nothingness is now clearly seen in every aspect of human life. All these elements affect humans' inner peace and cause physical, mental, and psychological deterioration. Veronika Decides to Die, written by Paulo Coelho in 1998, deals with the psychological journey of a young woman who loses her motivation to live and attempts suicide. Basing on his own life experiences, Coelho, reveals the psychological transformations of the main character Veronika, whose suicide attempt fails. Therefore, both the conflict between life and death and the conflict between self and society are highly significant to analyze some possible reasons for the suicidal behaviors of Veronika. In this respect, this paper intends to analyze the novel from the psychoanalytic perspective of Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis. The psychological and external motivation behind the suicide attempt will be clarified with theory of life (Eros) and death (Thanatos) instincts, and their relation to id, ego, and superego.

The Conflict Between Life and Death Instinct in The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

This study aims to show how Hawthorne uses characterization techniques and figurative languages such as metaphor and simile to describe the mental state of Arthur Dimmesdale and Hester Prynne's characters. This study uses a qualitative method with a psychological approach. The theory used in this research is the theory of life instinct and death instinct by Sigmund Freud. This study analyzes the style of language and characterizations to reveal the characters' mental conditions and inner conflict. The results of this study show that Hawthorne uses characterization techniques and figurative language to tell the conflict between the life and death instinct in Arthur Dimmesdale and Hester Prynne. Arthur Dimmesdale represents human weakness and hypocrisy that results in feelings of regret, inner conflict, and suffering that lead to the instinct of death. At the same time, the character Hester is described as having a strong and patient nature that leads to the instinct of life. This study concludes that Hawthorne uses characterization techniques and figurative language such as metaphor and simile to show the characters, Dimmesdale and Hester. They experience inner conflicts and life and death instincts.

Autoimmunity and its expression in the analytic situation: A contemporary reflection on our inherent self-destructiveness

ABSTRACT This article explores the psychical expression of autoimmunity in the analytic situation; it is informed by biological theories of autoimmunity in contemporary immunology. Several of my patients developed autoimmune conditions in the course of their analyses, leading me to consider the role of psychical change in disrupting one’s somatopsychic equilibrium. In the psychoanalytic literature, autoimmunity is used metaphorically for attack against what is foreign or unwanted in ourselves. Contemporary immunology, however, suggests a somewhat different metaphor. “Self-reactive” cells present in the body may attack self unless suppressed by inhibitory mechanisms. Biologically, limited self-destructiveness is necessary, but in autoimmune disease it becomes excessive and pathological. I suggest that the presence of biological “self-reactivity” implies an inherent self-destructiveness in line with Freud’s thinking on the death instinct; the notion that this self-destructiveness also has adaptive aspects may contribute to our understanding of Freud’s ideas. In three vignettes I illustrate clinical application of a modified metaphor of autoimmunity, finding that not only is the fusion of life and death instincts important for psychic development, but so is defusion when contained within the analytic relationship. The analytic task is to restore the balance between constructive and pathological self-destructiveness. Implications regarding controversies in psychosomatic theory are briefly considered.

Physical multimorbidity and wish to die among adults aged ≥65 years: A cross-sectional analysis of the Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing

BackgroundPhysical multimorbidity (i.e., ≥2 chronic conditions) may induce feelings of wish to die (WTD), but there is limited literature on this topic, while the mediators in this association are largely unknown. Thus, the aim of the present study was to investigate this association and its mediators among older Irish adults. MethodsCross-sectional, nationally representative data from Wave 1 of the Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing 2009–2011 were analyzed. Information on self-reported lifetime diagnosis of 14 chronic physical conditions were obtained. WTD was defined as answering affirmatively to the question “In the last month, have you felt that you would rather be dead?” Multivariable logistic regression and mediation analyses were conducted. ResultsData on 2941 adults aged ≥65 years [mean (SD) age 73.2 (5.2) years; 45.0 % males] were analyzed. Physical multimorbidity was associated with 3.39 (95%CI 1.58, 7.28) times higher odds for WTD. This association was largely explained by pain (% mediated 28.1 %), followed by depression (19.4 %), sleep problems (18.4 %), perceived stress (13.0 %), loneliness (10.4 %), anxiety (8.1 %), and disability (7.2 %). ConclusionsMultimorbidity was associated with increased odds for WTD among Irish older adults. Addressing the identified mediators may contribute to reducing feelings of WTD among older adults with multimorbidity.

“YILAN”DA EROS VE THANATOS ÇATIŞMASI

John Steinbeck’s well-known short story “The Snake” is generally accepted as a mysterious work whose motivations and message are unknown simply because the author declares so. Steinbeck relates that the event narrated in the story actually happened and he simply put the incident in words just as it happened. Both the readers and the critics have mostly accepted Steinbeck’s explanation and did not question it. However, a Freudian investigation of the short story reveals that the piece is a well-thought and well-crafted work that demonstrates the collision of life and death instincts, i.e., Eros and Thanatos. Consequently, the present paper first aims to explicate Freud’s arguments on life and death instincts and then illustrate how the action of the characters, as depicted in the short story, are clearly associated with the life and death instincts. In a number of works, Freud postulates that human beings are driven by two dominant instincts, one directing the individual towards enjoyment of life and communal life, and one towards aggression and destruction, each of which are symbolized by Eros and Thanatos respectively. The female character in “The Snake” is dominantly controlled by Thanatos as she asks a biologist to sell her a venomous rattlesnake and feed the snake a rat. She satisfies her erotic and aggressive desires by watching the killing act while the male character, a man of Eros by profession and inclination, is appalled both by the act and the woman. Thus, the short story turns out to be a realm of the collision between Eros and Thanatos. When read under this light, the short story, unlike what most readers think, is not mysterious at all.

Freud’s old age: Recognized but never realized?

This paper explores Freud’s later life and the extent to which Freud internalized a subject position as aged. Drawing upon Sartre and de Beauvoir’s idea of the unrealizability of death and old age, I argue that throughout his adult life while Freud confronted desires, experiences and fears that were previously unacceptable and even unthinkable, including the presence of a death instinct, an intrapsychic desire for oblivion, old age remained to the end for him, always and only an object position. Age had for him no subjectivity, no inner experience upon which to reflect. It remained external, an “old Freud” existing as a third person, a recognition of how he was regarded rather than how he felt. This illustrates what I suggest is a fundamental separateness between the psychic representation of ageing and dying. In practice this has left an unresolved legacy for the profession of psychoanalysis in planning retirement rather than dying by the couch.

The Unwelcome Child as a Dynamic Construct of the Terrorist Mind.

Psychoanalytic discourse on the dynamics of the terrorist mindset has been challenged by the absence of clinical work with terrorists in the literature. This paper proposes Ferenczi's concept of the unwelcome child as a dynamic construct of the terrorist mind. Unwelcome children have weak life instincts and correspondingly high death instincts. Clinical material from the analysis of an unwelcome child is presented which suggests that a sense of anomie and alienation from social ties may lead to a fundamentalist mind set which may potentially lead to a search for meaning in terrorist acts. The struggle between life and death instincts is demonstrated in the clinical material, with life instinct tipping the scales in this instance. Self-preservative survival instinct is proposed as the theoretical construct for life instinct in contrast to Freud's libido theory. The unwelcome child represents an object relations theory of the death instinct. Unwelcome children are likely a widespread phenomenon with significant social consequences.

Response to Tubert-Oklander on ‘The talmudic way of thinking cannot suddenly have disappeared from us: Death instinct, anti-Semitism and Jewish traditions in the foundation matrix of group analysis’

Tubert-Oklander’s ambivalent reading of my paper seems to have led him to some misreadings of my text. I quote five examples of this.

The unwelcome child and a lack of acceptance of new ideas.

Ferenczi's idea of the unwelcome child and his death instinct is used as a background for discussing the treatment of adult patients who do not expect to be received and understood and who turn their aggression back upon themselves, destroying their will to live. When these patients enter analysis, they are very difficult to reach because they have internalized an obstructive object (Bion, 1958). Further, I have linked the unwelcoming of a child to the hatred of the new idea. The paper highlights the deadening defenses that arise in response to awareness of premature separateness between mother and baby, inevitably experienced by an unwelcome child. Coming alive involves suffering the pain of the original loss. To avoid this pain, patients reject anything new, and become stuck in monotonous, seemingly lifeless, patterns where new ideas and new ways of being threaten the static order. This includes the threat that relationship with the analyst brings.

Sabina Spielrein’s Coming Into Being: A Way Paved by Destruction

The significance of Spielrein’s ‘destruction thesis’, as presented in her seminal paper, “Destruction as a Cause of Coming Into Being” (1994/1912), which includes: the element of a destructive component residing within sexuality; the resulting conflict arising between two fundamental biological drives; that of self-preservation and species-preservation, and the psychological consequences of the aforementioned conflict and its potential for paving the way for personal transformation in choosing between ‘sex vs survival’, is discussed with reference to sexuality, personal identity, notions of loss, and psychotherapy. Although Freud and Jung, as discussed here as well, were initially reluctant in accepting the biological considerations Spielrein was proposing for psychoanalysis, both overcame that reluctance, and her contributions to Freud’s death instinct, Jung’s concept of the anima, an understanding of transference and counter-transference, have come to be acknowledged and thus she is considered to be an early pioneer in the development of psychoanalysis.

The Self and alien self in psyche and soma.

This paper compares presentations of disorders of the sense of body ownership and agency from psychoanalytic and neurological perspectives to demonstrate similarities in symptomatology proposing these similarities arise from adjustments in Friston’s generative model of self‐organization and selfhood. The implications for the analytic model of the Self, for clinical practice and for neuroscience research are considered. Patients with narcissistic disorders use projective defences resulting in a disordered sense of what belongs to whom. This applies to mind and body of self and other and is central to understanding transference and countertransference. Clinical observations of this disordered sense of ownership and agency mirror findings in neurological disorders. This paper proposes that in both neurological and psychological disorders Friston’s ‘internal generative model’ of selfhood is adjusted. Further to this whilst this adjustment may be either neurogenic or psychogenic, the final neural mechanism and symptomatic outcome are similar. On the basis of these observations the paper compares the concept of the Self from Jungian and psychoanalytic perspectives. Finally, the implications for the concept of the death instinct and Britton’s concept of Xenophobia are explored along with the implications of these observations for clinical practice.

NALURI KEHIDUPAN DAN NALURI KEMATIAN DALAM FILM NEVER LET ME GO KARYA KAZUO ISHIGURO

All living things have instincts. Every living thing has the instinct to survive and the instinct to die. The objectives of the research are to analyze the film entitled Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro using Sigmund Freud's Psychoanalysis theory and the stages of grief’s theory using Kubler Ross’s perspective. The researcher will focus on the actions taken by Kath, Ruth, and Tommy by explaining the life instincts and death instincts according to Sigmund Freud’s theory and the stages of grief experienced by Tommy using Kubler Ross's theory. This research uses a material object in the form of the film entitled Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro and a formal object in the form of the theory of life and death instinct according to Sigmund Freud’s perspective and stage of grief according to Kubler Ross’s perspective. This research applies the qualitative descriptive method. The findings are as follows: life instinct is carried out by Kathy and death instincts are carried out by Ruth and Tommy. In addition, the stages of grief experienced by Tommy are as follows: (1) denial, (2) anger, (3) bargaining, (4) depression, and (5) acceptance.

Sabina Spielrein

Sabina Spielrein was a Russian psychoanalyst who worked in Zurich, Berlin, Geneva, Moscow and Rostov-on-Don. She influenced many well-known thinkers in psychoanalysis and psychology, including Jung, Freud, Piaget, Claparède, Vygotsky and Luria. After her death in the Shoah, her life and works were largely forgotten until the discovery of correspondence revealing her erotic relationship with Jung. She was then reinvented as a ‘femme fatale’ in popular culture. It is only in the twenty-first century that the details of her life have been properly reconstructed and that psychoanalysts have recognised her stature as an original thinker in many areas, including the death instinct, child development, attachment and evolution. This article gives an account of her life, explores the reasons for her erasure, and examines her two most significant papers.

A response to Martin Weimer’s ‘The Talmudic way of thinking cannot suddenly have disappeared from us: Death instinct, anti-Semitism and Jewish traditions in the foundation matrix of group analysis’

The author of this article poses three inter-related themes. 1) The primacy of the death instinct that accounts for destructivity in groups and, especially, for anti-Semitism. 2) There is a blind spot in group analysis that conceals the importance of anti-Semitism in its inception and history, which he deems to be largely derived from Foulkes’s idealization of groups and denial of their destructive potential. Hence, anti-Semitism is part of the foundation matrix of group analysis. 3) Group analytical practice, right down to its clinical details, can be understood as a performative realization of the rabbinic Jewish tradition. The present reviewer disagrees with these three points and expounds the reasons for this. However, he welcomes the opportunity it provides to engage in a most needed critical discussion.

The Analysis of Tragic Characters’ Tragedy Origin in The Woman Warrior Based on Freudian Psychoanalysis

Maxine Hong Kingston is one of famous Chinese-American writers. Her prominent representative, The Woman Warrior, let her earn the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction in 1976. This great work surprised literary circle and attracted quiet a few researchers and scholars to appreciate and evaluate. This work is divided into five parts: “No Name Woman”, “White Tigers”, “Shaman”, “At the Western Palace”, “A Song for a Barbarian Reed Ripe”, which mainly tell about five females’ stories. With regard to this work, many studies have been conducted before. Here, this paper is designed to conduct the analysis of tragic characters’ tragedy origin in The Woman Warrior based on Freudian psychoanalysis. This paper finds that there are three psychological factors to contribute to the two tragic characters’ tragedy: the influence of the two tragic characters’ and people’s unconsciousness, the effect of tragic characters’ death instinct, and the tragic characters’ overuse of mental defense mechanisms which include displacement, depression, denial, and introjection.

СМЕРТЬ, КРАСОТА И ТЕЛО: РАЗМЫШЛЕНИЯ О РАССТРОЙСТВАХ ПИЩЕВОГО ПОВЕДЕНИЯ

The article shows how pathological manifestations of the death instinct cause distortions of narcissistic ideals of beauty and have an extremely destructive effect on psychogenesis in adolescence. The eating disorder in this case is seen as a defense against the unbearable horror of absorption and annihilation by the mother’s object. The persecution of the subject by the cruel Superego arises in connection with the intensification of the incestuous attraction and disturbance of triangulation in a situation of family crisis. The need for separation from the mother is dictated by the tasks of development, on the one hand, and on the other hand, femininity frightens with adult desires and opportunities. The motive of sacrifice, manifested through the total rejection of femininity, is also considered as a means of combating incestuous fantasies that underlie the development of anorexia.

A PSYCHOANALYTIC ANALYSIS OF THE CHARACTER OF THEO FABER IN ALEX MICHAELIDES NOVEL SILENT PATIENT

This research study aims to analyze the main character Theo Faber in the novel "The Silent Patient" written by Alex MichaelIdes through the perspective of Freud's (1923) theory of personality, discussed in his book, The Id and The Ego. Therefore, the researchers have examined the changes in the personality Theo Faber via Id and Ego at different stages. Moreover, this research study has examined the aforementioned character by analyzing it through Id including life (sexual) and death (aggression) instincts, which indicates the impulsive urges of Theo Faber. On the other hand, Ego is used to illustrate the rational decisions and acts of Theo Faber regarding the turmoil he has created due to his Id. Furthermore, the researchers have used qualitative method to get the desired objectives.

Research on the psychological root and transmission mechanism of rumours in major epidemics based on the perspective of psychoanalysis

Since the Covid-19 epidemic, many rumours have been generated under the main theme of a whole people fighting the epidemic together. From the standpoint of depth psychology, a psychoanalytic perspective has its own advantages and unique research value on the psychological roots of rumours in major epidemics and their mechanisms of transmission, which this article discusses, along with the anxiety and fear created by the life instinct, the elements of attack and projection under the death instinct, and conjectures how the role of Lacan’s postulation that the unconscious is constituted like language all play a role as main causes of a current epidemic of rumours. The transmission mechanisms of epidemic rumours are the following: the spreading of panic caused by the interruption of emotional connection, aggressive spreading of rumours caused by hostility in processes of identification, and problems in mechanisms of projective identification, and the combined effect of audiovisual media. Furthermore, the authors make specific suggestions on how to deal with rumours in major epidemics, so as to improve understanding and response to these in cases of major epidemics.