Todd! This is one of the best formulated vids ever put together. If there is any truth to the death drive, then it’s at the core of all we do as humans. How can that not be one of the most important things to discuss? Thank you for discussing it and dissecting it so brilliantly. Amazing!!
Thank you so much, Todd. One of the best explanations of death drive I've ever heard. Love your videos and Why Theory podcast. Explaining the death drive in relation to symbolic suicide has really helped me work towards the end of my screenplay which I'm writing as part of my PhD, exploring Lacan's theory of desire.
I think this is probably the best video on death drive because it lays down the ramifications and ties them down with examples. Most people only do one or the other, but you did both.
Todd THANK YOU for this. I'm so fascinated with death drive and this is an enormously helpful presentation. I love your podcast Why Theory and seriously so grateful for all your work.
I've had plenty of unintentional self-destruction, yet nowhere did the Death Drive enter into my analysis. There are dozens of reasons that humans pass through periods of unhealthy behavior. If a person is not emotionally stable enough to confront themselves, perhaps they should pass on psychoanalysis. After all, it's not meant for the masses, to be honest. Psychoanalysis is the only road to one's unconscious. Period. Because analysis transformed my life and eliminated all my suffering because my parental family was dysfunctional, there is no reason to believe that others will achieve the results I did. Furthermore, I revised psychoanalysis to suit my needs. I created my personalized methodology. Psychoanalysis is a live growing process, like everything is that that does not die from stagnation.
Wow, mic drop at the end! Such an audacious move to equate Death Drive with the Kantian Moral Law, but I find that the most compelling and productive explication of the concept that I’ve ever heard. I was thinking during the Yuma clip that this selflessness is an ethical choice, and that Charlie Prince is the flip side, a self-lesseness that wants to see the world burn because nothing is invested with value. Awesome video!
I’ll be watching this later but I just wanted to say thank you Professor McGowan. These recent string of videos have been excellent primer material! Thanks again!
28:33 but nietzche also talks about “the downgoer” and going into the depths in this spake Zarathustra which I would argue is symbolic of the death drive
Can you please explain then how one can go beyond self-sabotage and attain the object of desire? I was abandoned by my birth mother. Subsequently, I have sought for love all my life without success. Just reconciling myself to the fact that my unconscious will repeatedly sabotage the possibility of having a satisfying relationships and/or deliberately choosing women who are deeply dysfunctional, is not satisfying and leads to an even more intense desire to self-destruction. I have spent more than forty years in psychotherapy. I am still in agony.
This is great prof. I was also thinking that maybe the reason flirting and teasing creates so much sexual tensión is precisely because it is an elegant play of death drive at its purest. A goal is set and it fails, expectations (of a casual normal conversation) turn into something dirty.
This is really insightful, reminds me of character wants and needs in film. The want is usually something believed to be a cure to a need but really exacerbates or at least fails to deliver. Yet it's what characters consciously want. Their need by contrast being the actual solution to their problems. Which is what repeated failed attempts at the want, or obtaining a want that doesn't deliver, finally reveals to them. That this want is the death drive in action is a fascinating idea. I wonder how it connects with current thinking about the absence of free will as well illustrated by Sapolsky.
I think the best example of drive is reading Lacan. Just when you thought you understood him, you come across something that makes you realize you haven’t understood him. This lack of understanding is what makes you want to keep reading. Lacan was very good at keeping the hole open.
Freud never wrote about the "death drive." His concept was the death instinct. The gradual breakdown of the cellular structure of human beings. It doesn't have to do with a "drive" for death. It is a NORMAL BIOLOGICAL PROCESS. We are gradually in the process of "falling apart. This is what happens when we "grow old."
Todd, If you are not familiar with the films of Atom Egoyan you may want to check them out. His universal theme throughout a catalog of great films is "loss."
Here's my 2 cents (worth probably less than that) and perhaps I am oversimplifying or misreading: What I feel is the ultimate expression of the pleasure principle is the release of tension or the discharge of excitation or a way of resolving conflict and to quote: "to return to the inorganic state" which would be a complete state of rest. So for me the way I see it: the pleasure principle is the death drive, we are seeking, we are desiring the end of that excitation...the excitation itself is creating a conflict of irresolution. Hense the game of the lost object is meant to resolve a lack of control. An inability to resolve. Death is the only way out, however, obvious this is, the drive for self-presevation stands in direct opposition to our desire to end/resolve the conflict in the form of death. In some sense we "just want it to be over". But as little Hans knows when the game is over he does not get the object back.
A better cinematic example of death drive, IMO - Leaving Las Vegas. The movie version provides some reason for the protagonist's self-destructive behavior - the novel, almost no reason.
thank you, this is very interesting. I wondered if there must be some sort of death instinct when I was much younger because I was hyperfocused on dying, inexplicably. I did experience a loss but couldn't understand why that was leading to so much want for violence on myself.
The death drive is not necessarily destruction for its own sake or beyond our control. It is opposed to the life drive - libido or Eros and serves an important function in the psychic economy of retarding or delaying our desire for instant gratification. It is vital to our development and wouldn't exist if it wasn't, due to the selection pressure of evolution.
Seeing this, I now have a much clearer understanding of the oft-debated ending to Sergio Corbucci's Companeros. Franco Nero's character, an international arms dealer, is leaving Tomas Millian's character along with a small band of lightly armed revolutionaries to their fate against an encroaching army of federalies. Upon seeing the army, however, he turns back towards the doomed village and yells "Companeros!", lifting his rifle and rushing back to them and their doomed cause. The death drive. He goes against all his previous beliefs and resymbolizes himself without any reason or explanation. Cut to theme song. Roll credits. One of the best endings of all time.
Thank you for another great lecture, professor McGowan. On the subject of the representation of death drive in screen production, I'm wondering if you have come across the Netflix series, Dark. The show seems to lend itself to a philosophical and psychoanalytical reading which I've never seen anyone do.
Amazing lecture. I have one thought. In the end of the video you talk about the possibility of an ethical way to utilize the death drive. I can't help thinking, however, that this is exactly what is often abused in the modern workplace. It is less and less acceptable for a worker to apply for a job out of self interest (to earn an income). The worker is expected to identify with an organization/companys higher cause. In a way Capitalism abuses the enjoyment associated with the self sacrifice of the working class.
It's a good point. I definitely agree that capitalism exploits the enjoyment in self-sacrifice of the working class and that this is a danger of any thinking about utilizing death drive. My sense is that the only way to avoid this danger to make a space for it, make allowance for it, rather that trying to utilize it.
This idea of people giving themselves too much trouble. It seems like the start adding trouble bit by bit, but then it is overwhelming and they end up suffering. Kinda like people that lift weights at the gym, they add just a bit more than they can handle in order to injure the muscle fibers and grow bigger and better tissues. Then there is this perverse enjoyment of muscle ache the day after, like "yes it feels good that I injured myself in a controlled way". And in a compulsion to push the envelope, people end up hurting themselves to a point where there is serious injury. And here is something that I think Prof. McGowan talks about when dealing with value and economics, that this pain, this suffering is in some sort a mode of making something valuable through sacrifice. That it is by sacrificing something that something becomes valuable. I know that Prof. McGowan might not agree with Marxism and is more of a Hegelian, but this is very similar to the idea of how labor is what gives value to commodities, labor is some sort of sacrifice in a way, a sacrifice of energy, of free time, of resources.
16:29 Wasn't that a bad example? He clearly wanted to save his life, as he had saved his life. There was a clear motivation, he had a clear self that would not allow him to abandon his concept of honor.
What you are basically saying, that why isn't he acting like a psychopath without any concept of self or values. Is this what death drive fo you is? That why aren't we all totally selfish and amoral? Outlaw does not mean that the person is bad, and automatically has no morals and acts only totally in their self interest. That kinda childish interpretation.
I think he was vague about the movies plot. I assume that the main character life wasn't in risk he actually was part of that gang and after this he became outlawed from them
As Professor McGowan says the death drive is ‘malleable’ and lends itself to many interpretations. The three ten to Yuma example seems to equate the death drive with redemption (an opportunity to start over, be “born again” as it were). But why is Glenn Ford's action seen as radical? It could just as easily be seen (especially in the context of 1950s masculinity) as submission to the dominant ideology. Especially as Ford radiates “good guy” despite his actantal function as villain). Is it because: sometimes doing the right thing is the most transgressive thing? Or, given the homosocial undertones evident in the grudging mutual respect between the two, there is an unspoken understanding: Wade (Ford) will escape Yuma again (repetition), and Dan (Van Heflin) won’t care. Isn’t this an allegory of the conspiracy of privilege, like the phony opposition between Republican’s and Democrats that ensures other possibilities (e.g.green socialism) are excluded, seen as impossible? Anyway, thanks for a great lecture.
I see your point for sure. But I think that the reality of the risk that Ben Wade (Ford) is taking is important. He says that he can escape, but he has betrayed his gang, so he won't have their help this time. His death is a very real possibility, which, to my mind, obviates any idea of his privilege.
Thank you for creating this lecture. I’m tempted to disagree with your argument that the drive cannot be conscious. If you can recognize it at play either in retrospect or in the present moment, is it not somewhat conscious? Maybe far less conscious than desire but still conscious to some degree.
On another note, the conclusion that value can only be defined through sacrifice or loss and that the satisfaction derived from perpetual loss is the psychological creation of something to be aimed for / transcendent was immensely satisfying. I struggle with addiction, and I can’t help but think that maybe I kind of love the mental chaos that ensues after a relapse because it reenforces the vision I’ve been building for that healthy, balanced person I want to be. It charges that desire to get to that that currently fictitious place-one that depicts several things I value. God, the mind is so strange
One more question: I struggle with the idea that the death drive is something we should just accept. It might be true that the functioning of the death drive is unconcious but once we are able to understand it cant we be aware of its specific manifestations in our lifes? If we find ourselfes circling some "lost object" surely we can choose to stop this and pursue activities that are productive in our actual (material) lives instead - at least to a certain degree. A person that only derives enjoyment from circling a lost object will be quite insufferable I can imagine.
The point is to see self-destruction within the productive, to pay attention to failure as the form that enjoyment takes. That doesn't preclude acting productively, but I would even claim that it's the basis for it.
Hi Todd, This is all very helpful, thanks so much! One point remains unclear to me, though, in your reading of BtPP: how do you get from death drive as return to an inorganic state, as aiming at the death of the organism, to DD sustaining excitation? This seems to me like a complete 180, and is something that troubles me in Freud's text as well. Is it not possible to read this final notion of the pleasure principle in service of the drive as a linear relation, with the pleasure principle's elimination of excitation ultimately driving towards an inorganic state (no excitation whatsoever)? We could even claim, then, that in the crucial opposition between death drive and sexual drives, the pleasure principle is actually on the side of death drive (but can be instrumentalized for sexual purposes). I should be clear that I actually think the concept is more useful as you describe it (and as Lacan takes it up), but I struggle to find your description in Freud's text. Would really appreciate a bit of clarification if you have the time.
Hi Jessica, Thanks for this. I think that you're right to see that Freud's text doesn't lead directly to the position that I take up here. I would want to claim that the idea was so radical when he came up with it that he didn't fully theorize it correctly right away. He gets closer to this in Civilization and Its Discontents, I think, but even there he's invested in an opposition to Eros that I don't think is theoretically sustainable. Best, Todd
Great video. I have a question though. You stated that drive needs to be unconscious, though the clip of Michael Clayton showed what seems to me to be a consciously made moral decision. Am I missing something here?
Very nice. There is clearly some conscious decision involved. But I would contend that when he sees his car blow up and throws everything into the flames, he's not acting consciously. This is when the decision is made. Afterward, one wrestles consciously trying to be adequate to one's unconscious act, which is what happens in the scene that I showed here.
@@toddmcgowan8233 Ahh gotcha. Yes, I haven't actually seen the movie so I missed the unconscious act. Loved the overall explanation and I think it makes a lot of sense.
Have there been any attempts to give a Darwinian account that takes the death drive as the 'invisible hand'. Or any application of the death drive (as the fundamental force) to something like evolutionary psychology? I would be very interested in reading something that continued Freud's last claim there in beyond the pleasure principle (like a Schopenhauer esque view that instead of demonstrating how everything is an expression of the reproductive force, it is an expression a destructive one)
None that I know of. I would be very interested in reading this as well, but I think that it doesn't exist because the drive to survive and reproduce functions as such an a proiri for Neo-Darwinism. I cannot imagine it without this.
@@toddmcgowan8233 A little late to the party but I have been thinking about this question in relation to an article I just read. It’s from a couple of anthropologists critiquing the book “The Dawn of Everything.” They claim that new evolutionary research is substantial in showing that the human “line” that broke away in relationship to our primate ancestors did so for a few reasons related to their adaptations to the environment and material conditions: cooked food and combined diet (sharing big game kills and relying on gathered foods in the mean time, all amongst bands), females developing year round mating habits beyond other primate females who only have sex when ovulating, new child rearing practices which included eliminating infanticide through mothers gaining trust in other men and women’s care for their children, and that unlike other primates humans began living far beyond the age of menopause, which not only meant elders could pass along knowledge but also care for their young. Now I am not an anthropologist, psychoanalyst or critical theorist but it is fun to think about the ways all of these adaptations for survival could be related to excess, especially as they “move beyond” survival and reproduction by somehow serving it. Not eating the food right away but setting it on fire first, sharing the animal you killed and have claim to with others, caring for other peoples kids, establishing an adaptive role of elders who are beyond the ability to reproduce and beyond “fitness”, and, of course, excessive sex. They are bringing in this evidence for the critique of the previously mentioned book to argue that egalitarianism is actually the foundation of our evolutionary heritage, insofar as it exceeds biological mechanisms of dominance, aggression, and competition. They seem to draw more egoistic claims, that our conscious ability to suppress or sublate these and create “social” standards that limit competition and punish transgressions are what allowed humans to evolve and are defining of our species. I am curious how the picture this paints of evolution itself plays into the idea of an overarching (or more aptly “under” arching) unconscious drive which continuously rewarded the species for their excesses. I know I have read some things about our evolutionary development of play and creativity which would seem to be compatible with humans as creatures of excess enjoyment which goes beyond “mere” survival. I wonder if another way to think of it through the lens of excitation could be the immediate gratification of pleasure, the immediacy of rewards in survival with the introduction of some form of mediation through the “ethical” and development of desire in that way as actually serving the species long-term in its immediate goals. Playing with Kierkegaard’s spheres a bit here with his notion that immediacy is not countered by the ethical but subsumed in it, while the suspension of the ethical (the excesses of the species as the ethical was established) continued to inform the development of the species. I know many species beyond humans engage in play, sex and caretaking, in some form of “excess” that would on the surface seem to move beyond survival so I’m not really trying to make an argument here, just offering some reflections. The aforementioned mentioned article: All Things Being Equal by Nancy Lindisfarne and Jonathan Neale. Published on “the economist.” As an aside, thanks for the video Todd. I am a counselor in training with a prior background in academic theology. I have been trying to break my way into Lacan bit by bit and have enjoyed listening to you and Ryan on Why Theory. Not exactly sure why that’s relevant but I guess I just wanted to say I’m grateful for the perspectives you bring to the world and I believe this theory has power for translation into the applied world but sometimes that seems like the hardest barrier to traverse.
Death drive is when we go to sleep each evening. A form of dying. Blank slate. Clearing the blackboard. Dreams fill the space. Then one wakes up to a new beginning, a new day, blank slate. New conflicts, new struggles. This is LIFE itself.
@@RichardKoenigsberg death drive is not a mode of tabula rasa or creation ex nihilo, it is what insists as life in what is otherwise homeostatic equilibrium
I dont think death drive is equal to kantian moral law. Death drive can be just for the sake of auto-distruction and self sabotage without ethical meaning. I dont know where it comes from in such cases, but there are instances where it happens and is not *necesarily* for the sake of ethics and morale.
Supporting your ideas with clips from fictional movies seems kind of weak. I think examples of the death drive being played out in real life would be more convincing.
But for Aristotle, history is always and only just particular history. One can never draw universal conclusions from it. Art, in contrast, tries to apprehend the universal. Even in its failure to do so, it reveals.
@@toddmcgowan8233 What does Aristotle have to do with the fact that you’re using fiction to support the real world points you’re attempting to make? What does history have to do with that? I’ve heard other people discuss this idea while using examples of how it manifests in the real world. I find such examples much more convincing than movie clips where people do things they don’t normally do.
Todd! This is one of the best formulated vids ever put together. If there is any truth to the death drive, then it’s at the core of all we do as humans. How can that not be one of the most important things to discuss? Thank you for discussing it and dissecting it so brilliantly. Amazing!!
Thank you so much, Todd. One of the best explanations of death drive I've ever heard. Love your videos and Why Theory podcast. Explaining the death drive in relation to symbolic suicide has really helped me work towards the end of my screenplay which I'm writing as part of my PhD, exploring Lacan's theory of desire.
Thanks!!!
Without a doubt, the best explanation(s) of the Death Drive. Thank you, sir.
I think this is probably the best video on death drive because it lays down the ramifications and ties them down with examples.
Most people only do one or the other, but you did both.
Thanks. I'm really glad to hear that you thought it was effective.
Todd THANK YOU for this. I'm so fascinated with death drive and this is an enormously helpful presentation. I love your podcast Why Theory and seriously so grateful for all your work.
Thanks for the generous note. That's very gratifying.
I've had plenty of unintentional self-destruction, yet nowhere did the Death Drive enter into my analysis. There are dozens of reasons that humans pass through periods of unhealthy behavior. If a person is not emotionally stable enough to confront themselves, perhaps they should pass on psychoanalysis. After all, it's not meant for the masses, to be honest.
Psychoanalysis is the only road to one's unconscious. Period. Because analysis transformed my life and eliminated all my suffering because my parental family was dysfunctional, there is no reason to believe that others will achieve the results I did.
Furthermore, I revised psychoanalysis to suit my needs. I created my personalized methodology.
Psychoanalysis is a live growing process, like everything is that that does not die from stagnation.
Wow, mic drop at the end! Such an audacious move to equate Death Drive with the Kantian Moral Law, but I find that the most compelling and productive explication of the concept that I’ve ever heard.
I was thinking during the Yuma clip that this selflessness is an ethical choice, and that Charlie Prince is the flip side, a self-lesseness that wants to see the world burn because nothing is invested with value.
Awesome video!
This was awesome. It was so personal to me. It rescued me today
Thank you for this video! I've been trying to read up on this, and this gives the big picture of death drive. These videos are invaluable!
I’ll be watching this later but I just wanted to say thank you Professor McGowan. These recent string of videos have been excellent primer material! Thanks again!
Gj
Great lecture! This is so helpful. Thank you, Todd.
Clear, concise, and important information! Loved the lecture!
Thank you
28:33 but nietzche also talks about “the downgoer” and going into the depths in this spake Zarathustra which I would argue is symbolic of the death drive
Can you please explain then how one can go beyond self-sabotage and attain the object of desire? I was abandoned by my birth mother. Subsequently, I have sought for love all my life without success. Just reconciling myself to the fact that my unconscious will repeatedly sabotage the possibility of having a satisfying relationships and/or deliberately choosing women who are deeply dysfunctional, is not satisfying and leads to an even more intense desire to self-destruction. I have spent more than forty years in psychotherapy. I am still in agony.
Laurence I’m sorry to hear this about you. This is something I’d love to find out as well.
Thanks Todd - really inspiring. Derek
The best video I have seen so far on death drive. Thank you.
This is explanation is so powerful and lucid, thank you!
Brilliant, thanks for teaching some new insights I hadn't heard before. I'll look into these things more.
This is great prof. I was also thinking that maybe the reason flirting and teasing creates so much sexual tensión is precisely because it is an elegant play of death drive at its purest. A goal is set and it fails, expectations (of a casual normal conversation) turn into something dirty.
How does that work? Thats interesting
Ooo, fun thought
This is really insightful, reminds me of character wants and needs in film. The want is usually something believed to be a cure to a need but really exacerbates or at least fails to deliver. Yet it's what characters consciously want. Their need by contrast being the actual solution to their problems. Which is what repeated failed attempts at the want, or obtaining a want that doesn't deliver, finally reveals to them. That this want is the death drive in action is a fascinating idea. I wonder how it connects with current thinking about the absence of free will as well illustrated by Sapolsky.
I think the best example of drive is reading Lacan. Just when you thought you understood him, you come across something that makes you realize you haven’t understood him. This lack of understanding is what makes you want to keep reading. Lacan was very good at keeping the hole open.
I like your point of view！！！！！！！！（It‘s the same when we're dating， isn't it？
The ego is definitely the devil, that's for sure. Thanks for this comprehensive lecture!
This is a superb lecture.
Thank you, Todd. Brilliant as always.
I really enjoyed the lecture and found it informative, clear and helpful. Thank you.
Great series of videos!! Big fan of the podcast as well.
Its interesting when you compare Veblen's idea of Conspicuous Consumption. People often go in to debt to show off how rich they are.
Freud never wrote about the "death drive." His concept was the death instinct. The gradual breakdown of the cellular structure of human beings. It doesn't have to do with a "drive" for death. It is a NORMAL BIOLOGICAL PROCESS. We are gradually in the process of "falling apart. This is what happens when we "grow old."
Todd, If you are not familiar with the films of Atom Egoyan you may want to check them out. His universal theme throughout a catalog of great films is "loss."
Great filmmaker, especially Sweet Hereafter. You're exactly right.
Here's my 2 cents (worth probably less than that) and perhaps I am oversimplifying or misreading: What I feel is the ultimate expression of the pleasure principle is the release of tension or the discharge of excitation or a way of resolving conflict and to quote: "to return to the inorganic state" which would be a complete state of rest. So for me the way I see it: the pleasure principle is the death drive, we are seeking, we are desiring the end of that excitation...the excitation itself is creating a conflict of irresolution. Hense the game of the lost object is meant to resolve a lack of control. An inability to resolve. Death is the only way out, however, obvious this is, the drive for self-presevation stands in direct opposition to our desire to end/resolve the conflict in the form of death.
In some sense we "just want it to be over". But as little Hans knows when the game is over he does not get the object back.
A better cinematic example of death drive, IMO - Leaving Las Vegas. The movie version provides some reason for the protagonist's self-destructive behavior - the novel, almost no reason.
Sacrifice and bliss - Joseph Campbell
my opinion is that the death drive raises its head when you try to supress your anger
Seeking death (masochism) is different than the inevitability of death: the death instinct:: breakdown of cellular structure.
I just watched Groundhog Day. Perfect!
thank you, this is very interesting. I wondered if there must be some sort of death instinct when I was much younger because I was hyperfocused on dying, inexplicably. I did experience a loss but couldn't understand why that was leading to so much want for violence on myself.
The death drive is not necessarily destruction for its own sake or beyond our control. It is opposed to the life drive - libido or Eros and serves an important function in the psychic economy of retarding or delaying our desire for instant gratification. It is vital to our development and wouldn't exist if it wasn't, due to the selection pressure of evolution.
Seeing this, I now have a much clearer understanding of the oft-debated ending to Sergio Corbucci's Companeros. Franco Nero's character, an international arms dealer, is leaving Tomas Millian's character along with a small band of lightly armed revolutionaries to their fate against an encroaching army of federalies. Upon seeing the army, however, he turns back towards the doomed village and yells "Companeros!", lifting his rifle and rushing back to them and their doomed cause. The death drive. He goes against all his previous beliefs and resymbolizes himself without any reason or explanation. Cut to theme song. Roll credits. One of the best endings of all time.
This was so good! Thank you.
Amazing lecture.
Hello dear Todd McGowan. Are you aware of the huge Lacan exhibition taking place at the Centre Pompidou Metz in the east of France?
Excellent explication of the death drive
Thank you for another great lecture, professor McGowan. On the subject of the representation of death drive in screen production, I'm wondering if you have come across the Netflix series, Dark. The show seems to lend itself to a philosophical and psychoanalytical reading which I've never seen anyone do.
I haven't seen it but have had many people, including my son, recommend it to me. I'll check it out and try to post something.
This was extremely helpful. Thanks.
Great lecture, thanks Todd, I love why theory
Amazing lecture. I have one thought. In the end of the video you talk about the possibility of an ethical way to utilize the death drive. I can't help thinking, however, that this is exactly what is often abused in the modern workplace. It is less and less acceptable for a worker to apply for a job out of self interest (to earn an income). The worker is expected to identify with an organization/companys higher cause. In a way Capitalism abuses the enjoyment associated with the self sacrifice of the working class.
It's a good point. I definitely agree that capitalism exploits the enjoyment in self-sacrifice of the working class and that this is a danger of any thinking about utilizing death drive. My sense is that the only way to avoid this danger to make a space for it, make allowance for it, rather that trying to utilize it.
This idea of people giving themselves too much trouble. It seems like the start adding trouble bit by bit, but then it is overwhelming and they end up suffering. Kinda like people that lift weights at the gym, they add just a bit more than they can handle in order to injure the muscle fibers and grow bigger and better tissues. Then there is this perverse enjoyment of muscle ache the day after, like "yes it feels good that I injured myself in a controlled way". And in a compulsion to push the envelope, people end up hurting themselves to a point where there is serious injury.
And here is something that I think Prof. McGowan talks about when dealing with value and economics, that this pain, this suffering is in some sort a mode of making something valuable through sacrifice. That it is by sacrificing something that something becomes valuable. I know that Prof. McGowan might not agree with Marxism and is more of a Hegelian, but this is very similar to the idea of how labor is what gives value to commodities, labor is some sort of sacrifice in a way, a sacrifice of energy, of free time, of resources.
16:29 Wasn't that a bad example? He clearly wanted to save his life, as he had saved his life. There was a clear motivation, he had a clear self that would not allow him to abandon his concept of honor.
What you are basically saying, that why isn't he acting like a psychopath without any concept of self or values. Is this what death drive fo you is? That why aren't we all totally selfish and amoral? Outlaw does not mean that the person is bad, and automatically has no morals and acts only totally in their self interest. That kinda childish interpretation.
I think he was vague about the movies plot. I assume that the main character life wasn't in risk he actually was part of that gang and after this he became outlawed from them
As Professor McGowan says the death drive is ‘malleable’ and lends itself to many interpretations. The three ten to Yuma example seems to equate the death drive with redemption (an opportunity to start over, be “born again” as it were). But why is Glenn Ford's action seen as radical? It could just as easily be seen (especially in the context of 1950s masculinity) as submission to the dominant ideology. Especially as Ford radiates “good guy” despite his actantal function as villain). Is it because: sometimes doing the right thing is the most transgressive thing? Or, given the homosocial undertones evident in the grudging mutual respect between the two, there is an unspoken understanding: Wade (Ford) will escape Yuma again (repetition), and Dan (Van Heflin) won’t care. Isn’t this an allegory of the conspiracy of privilege, like the phony opposition between Republican’s and Democrats that ensures other possibilities (e.g.green socialism) are excluded, seen as impossible? Anyway, thanks for a great lecture.
I see your point for sure. But I think that the reality of the risk that Ben Wade (Ford) is taking is important. He says that he can escape, but he has betrayed his gang, so he won't have their help this time. His death is a very real possibility, which, to my mind, obviates any idea of his privilege.
@@toddmcgowan8233 Thanks for your reply, Professor.
Great work here. Thanks for this
Losing more slowly 🔥
Thank you for creating this lecture. I’m tempted to disagree with your argument that the drive cannot be conscious. If you can recognize it at play either in retrospect or in the present moment, is it not somewhat conscious? Maybe far less conscious than desire but still conscious to some degree.
On another note, the conclusion that value can only be defined through sacrifice or loss and that the satisfaction derived from perpetual loss is the psychological creation of something to be aimed for / transcendent was immensely satisfying.
I struggle with addiction, and I can’t help but think that maybe I kind of love the mental chaos that ensues after a relapse because it reenforces the vision I’ve been building for that healthy, balanced person I want to be. It charges that desire to get to that that currently fictitious place-one that depicts several things I value. God, the mind is so strange
I believe at around 20:30 you say "whereas desire is inherently satisfied." Nice slip?
Yes, thanks for pointing it out. Unfortunately, I had to fix it.
One more question: I struggle with the idea that the death drive is something we should just accept. It might be true that the functioning of the death drive is unconcious but once we are able to understand it cant we be aware of its specific manifestations in our lifes? If we find ourselfes circling some "lost object" surely we can choose to stop this and pursue activities that are productive in our actual (material) lives instead - at least to a certain degree. A person that only derives enjoyment from circling a lost object will be quite insufferable I can imagine.
The point is to see self-destruction within the productive, to pay attention to failure as the form that enjoyment takes. That doesn't preclude acting productively, but I would even claim that it's the basis for it.
Hi Todd,
This is all very helpful, thanks so much! One point remains unclear to me, though, in your reading of BtPP: how do you get from death drive as return to an inorganic state, as aiming at the death of the organism, to DD sustaining excitation? This seems to me like a complete 180, and is something that troubles me in Freud's text as well. Is it not possible to read this final notion of the pleasure principle in service of the drive as a linear relation, with the pleasure principle's elimination of excitation ultimately driving towards an inorganic state (no excitation whatsoever)? We could even claim, then, that in the crucial opposition between death drive and sexual drives, the pleasure principle is actually on the side of death drive (but can be instrumentalized for sexual purposes). I should be clear that I actually think the concept is more useful as you describe it (and as Lacan takes it up), but I struggle to find your description in Freud's text. Would really appreciate a bit of clarification if you have the time.
Hi Jessica,
Thanks for this. I think that you're right to see that Freud's text doesn't lead directly to the position that I take up here. I would want to claim that the idea was so radical when he came up with it that he didn't fully theorize it correctly right away. He gets closer to this in Civilization and Its Discontents, I think, but even there he's invested in an opposition to Eros that I don't think is theoretically sustainable.
Best,
Todd
Great video. I have a question though. You stated that drive needs to be unconscious, though the clip of Michael Clayton showed what seems to me to be a consciously made moral decision. Am I missing something here?
Very nice. There is clearly some conscious decision involved. But I would contend that when he sees his car blow up and throws everything into the flames, he's not acting consciously. This is when the decision is made. Afterward, one wrestles consciously trying to be adequate to one's unconscious act, which is what happens in the scene that I showed here.
@@toddmcgowan8233 Ahh gotcha. Yes, I haven't actually seen the movie so I missed the unconscious act. Loved the overall explanation and I think it makes a lot of sense.
Thank you so much. This is priceless))
Eros is binding with other human beings, which works against the death drive.
Wouldn't it make more sense if the death drive was correlate to kierkegaard's leap of faith than the kantian moral law? I wonder if you agree.
The death INSTINCT.
Hi Todd, great series, thank you so much! What software do you use to make these?
Camtasia. I like it a lot.
Have there been any attempts to give a Darwinian account that takes the death drive as the 'invisible hand'. Or any application of the death drive (as the fundamental force) to something like evolutionary psychology? I would be very interested in reading something that continued Freud's last claim there in beyond the pleasure principle (like a Schopenhauer esque view that instead of demonstrating how everything is an expression of the reproductive force, it is an expression a destructive one)
None that I know of. I would be very interested in reading this as well, but I think that it doesn't exist because the drive to survive and reproduce functions as such an a proiri for Neo-Darwinism. I cannot imagine it without this.
@@toddmcgowan8233
A little late to the party but I have been thinking about this question in relation to an article I just read. It’s from a couple of anthropologists critiquing the book “The Dawn of Everything.” They claim that new evolutionary research is substantial in showing that the human “line” that broke away in relationship to our primate ancestors did so for a few reasons related to their adaptations to the environment and material conditions: cooked food and combined diet (sharing big game kills and relying on gathered foods in the mean time, all amongst bands), females developing year round mating habits beyond other primate females who only have sex when ovulating, new child rearing practices which included eliminating infanticide through mothers gaining trust in other men and women’s care for their children, and that unlike other primates humans began living far beyond the age of menopause, which not only meant elders could pass along knowledge but also care for their young.
Now I am not an anthropologist, psychoanalyst or critical theorist but it is fun to think about the ways all of these adaptations for survival could be related to excess, especially as they “move beyond” survival and reproduction by somehow serving it. Not eating the food right away but setting it on fire first, sharing the animal you killed and have claim to with others, caring for other peoples kids, establishing an adaptive role of elders who are beyond the ability to reproduce and beyond “fitness”, and, of course, excessive sex.
They are bringing in this evidence for the critique of the previously mentioned book to argue that egalitarianism is actually the foundation of our evolutionary heritage, insofar as it exceeds biological mechanisms of dominance, aggression, and competition. They seem to draw more egoistic claims, that our conscious ability to suppress or sublate these and create “social” standards that limit competition and punish transgressions are what allowed humans to evolve and are defining of our species. I am curious how the picture this paints of evolution itself plays into the idea of an overarching (or more aptly “under” arching) unconscious drive which continuously rewarded the species for their excesses. I know I have read some things about our evolutionary development of play and creativity which would seem to be compatible with humans as creatures of excess enjoyment which goes beyond “mere” survival. I wonder if another way to think of it through the lens of excitation could be the immediate gratification of pleasure, the immediacy of rewards in survival with the introduction of some form of mediation through the “ethical” and development of desire in that way as actually serving the species long-term in its immediate goals. Playing with Kierkegaard’s spheres a bit here with his notion that immediacy is not countered by the ethical but subsumed in it, while the suspension of the ethical (the excesses of the species as the ethical was established) continued to inform the development of the species.
I know many species beyond humans engage in play, sex and caretaking, in some form of “excess” that would on the surface seem to move beyond survival so I’m not really trying to make an argument here, just offering some reflections.
The aforementioned mentioned article: All Things Being Equal by Nancy Lindisfarne and Jonathan Neale. Published on “the economist.”
As an aside, thanks for the video Todd. I am a counselor in training with a prior background in academic theology. I have been trying to break my way into Lacan bit by bit and have enjoyed listening to you and Ryan on Why Theory. Not exactly sure why that’s relevant but I guess I just wanted to say I’m grateful for the perspectives you bring to the world and I believe this theory has power for translation into the applied world but sometimes that seems like the hardest barrier to traverse.
Thank you todd
Couldn’t excessively enjoying what you don’t have be suicidal?
9:02 all organic beings are trying to f...
That was pretty Freudish)))))
Of course, the pleasure principle and death drive are the same.
No contradiction between Darwin and Freud. Animals strive to survive and reproduce, until they age and no longer can survive and reproduce
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Pleasure = reduction of tension. Orgasm.
Make life harder = death drive principle
Hi, Todd.
I LOVE YOU
Death drive is when we go to sleep each evening. A form of dying. Blank slate. Clearing the blackboard. Dreams fill the space. Then one wakes up to a new beginning, a new day, blank slate. New conflicts, new struggles. This is LIFE itself.
What the fuck is ", SLEEP" 🤔
Wrong
@@vinayarun2287 Brilliant.
@@RichardKoenigsberg death drive is not a mode of tabula rasa or creation ex nihilo, it is what insists as life in what is otherwise homeostatic equilibrium
One doesn't have to "try" to die. Every living creature IS GOING TO DIE. Entirely biological. No fantasy psychic concepts needed.
....but there is power in losing..Every woman knows this.
What a load of cobblers
Called MASOSHISM. Also has a sexual component.
I dont think death drive is equal to kantian moral law. Death drive can be just for the sake of auto-distruction and self sabotage without ethical meaning. I dont know where it comes from in such cases, but there are instances where it happens and is not *necesarily* for the sake of ethics and morale.
how fucked up is this??????
spoiler... extremely
Supporting your ideas with clips from fictional movies seems kind of weak. I think examples of the death drive being played out in real life would be more convincing.
But for Aristotle, history is always and only just particular history. One can never draw universal conclusions from it. Art, in contrast, tries to apprehend the universal. Even in its failure to do so, it reveals.
@@toddmcgowan8233 What does Aristotle have to do with the fact that you’re using fiction to support the real world points you’re attempting to make? What does history have to do with that?
I’ve heard other people discuss this idea while using examples of how it manifests in the real world. I find such examples much more convincing than movie clips where people do things they don’t normally do.
@@toddmcgowan8233 I mean, I could deliver a lecture about human flight and use clips from the Superman franchise, couldn’t I?
@@toddmcgowan8233 fiction reveals truth that reality obscures- RWE. Thanks for the content Prof.
@@crazyasspsychokillaExactly. Keep thinking Neo, keep thinking 😂