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Compare And Contrast Death Driving And Thanatos

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Freud links our unconscious history with the history of the Western civilization. He describes love and death by referring to the Greek mythology, using two specific terms: Eros to describe love and Thanatos to describe death. Eros is the life drive/instinct and is involved in the safeguarding of life. It materializes through the basic needs for health, safety and especially through sexual drives, in order to get pleasure. In fact, the energy originated by this drive is called the ‘Libido’. Its central aim is to try to conserve and to generate life. This life drive generates positive emotions, such as: love, cooperation and collaboration into the society and within the others. It is a love, a creativity, and a self-satisfaction drive. On the contrary, Thanatos is the death drive/instinct, which is found in contradiction with the Eros. ‘The aim of all life is death...inanimate things existed before living ones’ (Freud 1920)
The death drive, Thanatos, is followed by a range of negative emotions, these are: fear, hate and anger. They could lead to anti-social behaviours, which could develop until the murder of an individual. A metaphor used by Freud relies on …show more content…

Freud expressed his concept by saying: 'The goal of all life is death '(Freud,1920). In the individual the death drive is found in the superego, which tries to master the ego and the parts of the self that only seek for love and sex. Therefore, the superego causes a lot of suffering to the individual and makes this relationship between love and hate complicated. On the other hand, in a society, the death drive has precise consequences such as: aggressions and dominance. Freud claims that societies also possess a superego, which makes them wish to have the control over the other groups. Societies use this death drive in a negative way, creating a sense of guilt into the individual, so they could be controlled and their actions could be

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