Some Problems Presented by Freud's Life-Death Instinct Theory

One of the problems very much to the fore among contemporary thinkers is an effort to think about thinking. Such an effort presents many difficulties whether it be approached from the purely logical point of view which considers the result of thinking in terms of a structure having a form possessed of certain invariant features, or whether it be approached from the standpoint of the psychoanalyst who considers the behavior of thinking as a manifestation of the instinctual tendencies common to all life. One of the difficulties arises from the necessity of using the results of thinking to characterize the process of arriving at these same results. This is a circular process which has as one byproduct unpleasant emotions. Many ways of attempting to avoid this circularity have been tried and found wanting. Presumably there is no way of succeeding.

The logician must accept what Sheffer has called the logo-centric predicament which arises when the logician in attempting to give an account of logic must pre-suppose logic to do so. In psychoanalysis likewise if we would give an account of psychoanalytic theory as a theory to be considered from the point of view of psychoanalysis, we must pre-suppose the results of that way of thinking. Psychoanalysts have been aware of this problem from the first, and have in the main accepted it and dismissed it as something that must be ignored as of little consequence, Without having done this they could not have gotten started. In the main we must concur with this decision. Previous thinkers have, we may assume, consoled themselves with the notion that as long as no difficulties arose hindering further progress it would be safe to ignore this particular logical difficulty arising from self-reflectiveness. But we may not ignore the emotional difficulties nor the occasion for them. It constitutes perhaps our main problem as therapists.