In Freud\u2019s seminal paper, \u201cThe Ego and the Id,\u201d published in 1923, he distinguished between two instincts: the death<\/i> instinct, \u201cthe task of which is to lead organic matter back to the inorganic state,\u201d and Eros<\/i> which \u201caims at more far-reaching coalescence of the particles into which living matter has been dispersed.\u201d Earlier, Wilhelm Stekel had called the \u201cdeath wish\u201d by the name Thanatos<\/i>. Freud never used this term for the death instinct because of his dislike of Stekel. Freud continued to develop his conception of this duality between Eros and the death instinct, to the point where he wrote in Civilization and Its Discontents<\/i> in 1930:<\/p>\n
The fateful question of the human species seems to me to be whether and to what extent the cultural process developed in it will succeeded in mastering the derangements of communal life by the human instinct of aggression and self-destruction\u2026 Men have brought their powers of subduing the forces of nature to such a pitch that by using them they could now very easily exterminate one another to the last man.<\/p>\n
Freud here suggests that the combination of the death instinct and human ingenuity could lead to the extermination of the human species. This was before<\/i> the possibility of nuclear extermination and before any apprehension about the ability of the planet to sustain human life given man\u2019s destructive effect on the environment and other life forms. <\/p>\n
This raises a question. It is clear that the \u201creturn to inorganic matter,\u201d is the fate of each one of us individually. This is a biological given and each of us must come to terms with our life\u2019s end in our own way. But can it be that the species itself<\/i> harbors a \u201cdeath wish\u201d for the species as a whole? Would that be the final<\/i> Ragnar\u00f6k? This idea has more \u201cexplanatory\u201d power than we might wish to acknowledge.<\/p>\n
Freud concludes his essay with this extraordinary statement:<\/p>\n
And now it may be expected that the other of the two heavenly forces, <\/i>eternal Eros, will put forth his strength so as to maintain itself alongside of his equally immortal adversary.<\/p>\n
It is fascinating that Freud here raises Eros and Thanatos\u2014previously referred to as human instincts\u2014to heavenly forces<\/i> (Freud\u2019s emphasis). Freud here is speaking of Eros as an immortal force beyond the human which will be putting forth his strength so as to \u201cmaintain itself\u201d against Thanatos, its immortal adversary. <\/p>\n
What is it that led Freud to expect<\/i> Eros to exert itself in this way? Whatever it was, something else<\/i> happened to Freud which led him two years later to write in his New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis<\/i>:<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2026our best hope for the future is that the intellect\u2014the scientific spirit, reason\u2014should in time establish a dictatorship over the human mind. Whatever\u2026opposes such a development is a danger for the future of mankind.\u201d<\/p>\n
I wrote in Psyche Speaks<\/i>, some 34 years ago, when first commenting on Freud\u2019s conclusions:<\/p>\n
Here Freud seems to forget his call to Eros and falls into the typical stance of siding with reason against the soul. I feel that Freud\u2019s earlier stance was more correct, that the battle is not between Eros and Logos, but between Eros and Thanatos. Thanatos seems ever present in today\u2019s world. But where is Eros?<\/p>\n
If anything, the world has grown darker since I wrote those words, and Eros seems even less visible and present. Psyche Speaks<\/i> was my effort to point to Eros as what the world needs. In his 1960 letter to Herbert Read, Jung called what was needed, was a \u201cgreat dream.\u201d Jung said that such a great dream has always spoken through the artist <\/i>as \u201cmouthpiece\u201d proclaiming the arrival of the coming guest. It is the artist\u2019s love and passion (the human eros) that needs to be listened to in order to proclaim and welcome the coming guest (the heavenly Eros). In my view, it was the artist in each of us that would be the source of what was necessary to welcome the coming guest. But we seem far from such a realization and manifestation. <\/p>\n
The earlier Freud expects the arrival of the heavenly Eros. The later Jung expects the arrival of the coming guest. I think both great men are talking about the same thing. <\/p>\n
Thus, in the face of the final <\/i>Ragnar\u00f6k, which seems ever more certain, one may either give up in despair, entertain oneself to death, or manifest ever more fully the human Eros that is love and passion and generative creativity. One must perhaps, celebrate both<\/i> the final Ragnar\u00f6k and welcome Eros, the coming guest. <\/p>\n
How this might be done I\u2019ll turn to in the next post.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In Freud\u2019s seminal paper, \u201cThe Ego and the Id,\u201d published in 1923, he distinguished between two instincts: the death instinct, \u201cthe task of which is to lead organic matter back to the inorganic state,\u201d and Eros which \u201caims at more far-reaching coalescence of the particles into which living matter has been dispersed.\u201d Earlier, Wilhelm Stekel […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-coming-soon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ralockhart.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ralockhart.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ralockhart.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ralockhart.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ralockhart.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=140"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ralockhart.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":141,"href":"https:\/\/www.ralockhart.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140\/revisions\/141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ralockhart.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ralockhart.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ralockhart.com\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}