From Gradiva to the Death Instinct: Response to Discussion of Lawrence J. Friedman's Article

(Dr. Hanna Segal, a training analyst in the London Institute of Psychoanalysis, is a well-known exponent of Melanie Klein's work. Dr. Friedman questioned the validity of the death instinct in his paper “From Gradiva to the Death Instinct,” and Dr. Segal was invited to discuss the paper. [The Psychoanalytic Forum, Vol. I, No. 1.] Inadvertently, part of her discussion was omitted. We present here her original and thought-provoking comments.)

Dr. Friedman's interesting article traces the genesis of the concept of the death instinct in Freud's own psychological preoccupations. His thesis is: (a) that Freud arrived at the concept of the death instinct as a way of mastering his own anxiety about death, stimulated by his cancer—“Thus man overcomes death, which in thought he has acknowledged.

No greater triumph of wish fulfillment is conceivable;” (b) that the concept of the death instinct is a defense against guilt about aggression, the denial of destructive impulses in relation to his mother being characteristic of Freud and often reflected in his psychological formulations; (c) that the anxiety about his own death may have led to a regression with a reactivation of his original ambivalence toward his mother, thus necessitating the formation of the concept of the death instinct as a defense.

I should like to examine these contentions separately. It seems to me quite likely that Freud's anxiety about his own death, as well as his preoccupation with death in the broader context of the 1914-18 war, was a contributory factor in his wish to tackle the problem of life and death and the psychological meaning of death. Such a preoccupation, however, is not itself pathological: indeed, coming to terms with the finiteness of life in general and the idea of one's own personal death in particular seems to be a fundamental psychological task in middle age.

Elliot Jaques, in a paper entitled “The Mid-Life Crisis,”1 on the basis of his analysis of middle-aged patients and his study of t