Instinctual Mechanisms in the Neuroses1

Within the last few years, psycho-analytical theories on the neuroses have been modified by a reduction of the multiplicity of instinctual phenomena to a bipolar simplification, that is, the doctrine of the life instinct (Eros) and the death or destructive instinct. These instinctual mechanisms were formulated by Freud in Beyond the Pleasure Principle and later more widely utilized in the Ego and the Id and in Inhibition, Symptom and Anxiety. This change in the classification of the instincts has tended to transform the dynamic conceptions of the neuroses both from the theoretical and practical aspects, as an inevitable psycho-biological development from earlier viewpoints. The primary significance of the death instinct has been questioned by other investigators, who contend that it is derived from an inward turning of a destructive tendency which was originally directed outwardly (sadism). It appears that the neuroses are produced by a defusion of the death instinct, that is, a discharge of deeply seated death impulses into the ego, and neurotic suffering so produced is determined almost solely by the impression of a fantasied danger to the afflicted individual.

Stimulated by Freud's recent conceptions which are partly theoretical and speculative and partly clinical, a wider analytical experience has emphasized a previously immature suspicion that the neuroses are caused by a disturbance in the balance of these instincts. These two antagonistic instincts under normal conditions fuse and neutralize each other; it is only under special influences that a defusion of the instinctual components occurs, that is, a mastery of the death or destructive instincts over the Eros or life instincts. It is then that a neurotic disorder develops. This defusion is nearly always incomplete, and even in the severe neuroses or psychoses the death instinct seldom becomes absolutely isolated and completely masterful; there always remains a state of partial fusion and neutralizatio