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In Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Freud postulates the “death drive” in an attempt to explain the repetitious neurosis he witnesses in the wake of World War I. But with respect to the development of psychoanalysis this hypothesis can be seen as a traumatic repetition unto itself. This hypothesis returns to natural law to explain psychic phenomena in a manner not unlike the cathartic theory psychoanalysis had repudiated: Whereas the law of thermodynamics held sway over the theory of catharsis, the death drive represents a law, if not of the physical universe, at least of all organic life. Despite the audacious scope of Freud's nomothetic gesture, however, according to Laplanche this gesture should itself be understood according to the “fundamental rule of psychoanalysis,” that is, as asserting “the sovereign freedom” to think in defiance of all censoring authorities, “to philosophize and to dream” (pp. 106, 110). By “acting out” this repetition is Freud only performing what he would call a defensive “projection” in resistance to his thought's own freedom? Or is there also a deeper sense in which, as Laplanche suggests, this repetition itself testifies to what it is for thought to be free? (pp. 124, 126).
The repetitions of traumatic neurosis defy explanation according to the pleasure principle because such trauma overwhelms the mind's capacity to incorporate stimuli into the economy of pleasure and unpleasure; the traumatic stimulus penetrates what Freud calls the mind's outer “crust” or “protective shield” and inundates the mind directly (pp. 29, 33). Thus, Freud writes, “the pleasure principle is for the moment put out of action. There is no longer any possibility of preventing the