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‘Without metapsychological speculation and theorizing-I had almost said phantasying—we shall not get another step forward.’ Freud
In 1920 Freud hypothesized that there is a death drive whose goal is to return to the previous state, whereas the repetition compulsion is a search for something beyond the pleasure principle. The death drive's purpose is to combat whatever increases a person's tension. In its destructive tendency it operates silently. This is a hypothesis, a speculation, which would eventually impinge upon and modify the fundaments of Freudian metapsychology and create innumerous controversies.
Freud had found a destructive force in mankind. This destructive force, infiltrating through transference and countertransference, will be capable of hiding the libido's manifestations, it will impede psychic harmony as well as links between the patient and analyst so as to block the development of the analytic process. These are the manifestations of the return to the previous state, a non-process. They are sometimes experienced silently within the setting, other times they are violently discharged in executing acts.
Based on Freud's notion of drive dialectic, Green (1967) proposes studying the operations of the psychic apparatus, beginning with the work, movement, force and the drive's interrelationship with the object. In addition to primary decussation [decussation primaire]2, Green introduces the double