Worms, Frédéric
Violation et creation. Another reading of the life and death drives
- 2020.
85
The notions of “life drive” and “death drive” should not be conceived as ultimate (and metaphysical) foundations underlying their effects in psychic life and human life, but as a polarity intersecting all these dimensions, and which links up with all the great discoveries of psychoanalysis, on sexuality and destructivity, the ego, relationships, and their polarities, with as ultimate terms violation or, conversely, the creation of self and others. We can find these two possible directions of interpretation in Freud’s own work, but everything leads us today to decide in favour of one and against the other. The polarity between life and death assumes several forms in human psychic life and this is what makes it possible to understand that one can mobilize more of a life force against more of a form of death. There is a whole field waiting to be reopened here, from biology to ethics and politics, including our hates and our loves.