“If there are two there are twenty. There is one psychic drive it is the Death Drive”

Willy Apollon 2002 (From a private conversation)

Shock and confusion was the reaction members of Freud’s inner circle had to the concept of the Death Drive introduced in Beyond the Pleasure Principal. A shocking revision to libido theory, was the assessment made by Freud’s followers when he published Jenseits des Lustprinzzips (known in English as Beyond the Pleasure Principal). While this and many other accounts of the shock with which Beyond was greeted identify Freud’s introduction of a drive in opposition to the libido the “life force”? Might going ‘beyond’ mean something quite different? As we read through accounts of Beyond’s reception there is often a missing piece. That being the entropic nature of the impulse Freud is describing. Is it missed because other aspects of the death drive seem to obscure it? If libido is a component drive of the death drive rather than its opponent aren’t we thinking in terms of a structure that does not have terms like good and evil baked into it? If so then do we avoid some of the moralistic trappings that continue to snag analysis?