On Freud's Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Akhtar, O'Neil 9780367106805 New..

Taylor & Francis

Freud's \""Beyond the Pleasure Principle\"" constitutes a major landmark and a real turning point in the evolution of psychoanalytic theory. This work introduces the notion of a 'deamonic force' within all human beings that slowly but insistently seeks psychic inactivity, inertia, and death. > Freud's Beyond the Pleasure Principle constitutes a major landmark and a real turning point in the evolution of psychoanalytic theory. Pushing aside the primacy of the tension-discharge-gratification model of mental dynamics, this work introduced the notion of a \""daemonic force\"" within all human beings that slowly but insistently seeks psychic inactivity, inertia, and death. Politely dismissed by some as a pseudo-biological speculation and rapturously espoused by others as a bold conceptual advance, \""death instinct\"" became a stepping stone to the latter conceptualizations of mind's attacks on itself, negative narcissism, addiction to near-death, and the utter destruction of meaning in somee