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The author puzzles over what seems to her the relative repression and suppression of recognition of Freud's views on aggression, sadism, and the death instinct, in contrast to the seemingly unending discussions of sexuality. Even Freud noted the resistance that he found in himself, which long postponed the discovery of what he later came to call "obvious." The author sees this resistance that Freud found in himself as still operative among contemporary psychoanalytic theoreticians, in particular in their failure to recognize Freud's equation of aggression and the death instinct. There is a tendency to regard the death instinct as a theoretical construct without a necessary link to aggression. Not only is this theoretically worthless, confusing Freud's basic insight, but it also utilizes the notion of an unconscious self-destructive force to disavow the emotional experience of things closer to hand. If we had a patient with such behavior, we would call the process a counterphobic defense. For those to whom her thesis about the collective resistance of the psychoanalytic guild seems exaggerated, the author suggests that they examine the literature on the denial of the dangers of nuclear war. She cites examples of this literature in which themes of aggression and aggressive instinct are meticulously avoided. But the repressed returns as masochism. The masochist, who willingly does what everyone unconsciously must do, makes a truly extraordinary demand on the strength and capacity of our defenses. Freud in his earlier discussions viewed masochism as economically and genetically a derivative of sadism. Le Soldat reviews Freud's discussions, beginning with dreams that seem not to express wish fulfillment, to the