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

In this essay we have undertaken to investigate whether Freud's Life-Death instinct theory (theorem would be a more logically appropriate name) was not already implicit in the initial hypothesis elaborated as the result of his investigation of dreams. We have already seen that this was Freud's own feeling about the matter and as we know1 he attributed the failure to recognize this implicit theorem to having overlooked the existence of the impulse to non-erotic aggression and destruction. We do not know whether this oversight was due to a failure to think through the logical consequences of his initial theory, which had a more hypotheticodeductive character than he had been willing to recognize, or whether he had been blinded to objective realities by some process of denial on the order of a repression. It is well known2 that a tacit presupposition acquired by some process that can hardly be called repression can produce such tendencies to overlook something.

We cannot investigate either of these questions in the rigorous manner required. The purely logical question must wait on a more strictly logical formulation of the theory. The question of Freud's own repressions we are neither inclined, nor have we the means, to attempt to investigate. There is, however, a third avenue of approach which we shall attempt. It will give us an opportunity,