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André Green’s On the Destruction and Death Drives is a fine translation of his 2010 book, Pourquoi les pulsions de destruction ou de mort?, which was written five years before his death after having published more than ten books and countless major papers. One of the most important psychoanalytic thinkers of our times, Green developed his own theory of psychoanalysis that always included Freudian metapsychology. It is a theory created to work with non-neurotic and psychotic configurations where representation is at stake, leaving the analyst to deal with the unrepresentable.
In the 1960’s, Green developed his specific interest in narcissism, being a reader and critic of Lacan, Winnicott, and Bion. He introduced his theory of negative narcissism and the work of the negative when observing borderline features that challenged the analytic frame and presented specific mechanisms, such as splitting, decathexis, and expulsion of quantities of tension into the body.
Green’s books Life Narcissism, Death Narcissism and The Work of the Negative displayed his theoretical development on the drives as well as his technical propositions on how to work with borderline configuration and clinical impasses. To this end, he articulated narcissism and the death drive within the context of negative narcissism.
On the Destruction and Death Drives begins with an important introduction written by Howard Levine, which provides a cultural adjustment for the American psychoanalytic reader who may need some orientation to Green’s reading of Freud. In doing so, Levine also shows how the book provides a useful contemporary clinical model.
In Green’s thinking, working with borderline states stimulates exploration of the conditions of both the possibility and limits of analyzability. The concept of framework is introduced and explained in terms of its metapsychological foundation, its methodological (and epistemological) function, and its possible technical variations. As a result, the importance of t