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Everything that is threatened by time secretes falsehood in order not to die, and in proportion to the danger it is in of dying. That is why there is no love of truth without an unconditional acceptance of death.
–Simone Weil, Waiting on God
Independent of scientific, philosophical, clinical, and moral convictions, or whether these convictions imply optimism or pessimism about the human condition, Freud's (1920) radical thesis of a death drive in Beyond the Pleasure Principle merits more study and consideration than it seems to have recently received by psychoanalysts. Most North American psychoanalytic authors are not only highly critical of, but also reject Freud's speculative assumption of a death drive. With formidable and widespread arguments against it (Bibring, 1943; Brenner, 1971; Fenichel, 1945; Fromm, 1973; Holt, 1965; Schur, 1960, 1972; Stephansky, 1977), the death drive seems to have been killed, and long ago laid to rest, by North American psychoanalytic authors. Even the concept of an aggressive drive with clinical or developmental implications has been eschewed by many psychoanalysts, who–consistent with Fairbain's (1952) and Kohut's (1977) formulations–view aggression, and even higher level functions of defense, as secondary to externally derived frustration and/or trauma.1
The death drive has been dismissed on several grounds. The most consistent arguments against the death drive have been organized by three themes: (1) Faced with the horrors of World War I, the threat to his sons who were in military service, his