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of one of the aims of the expressions of the unmitigated death drive (pure destruction) is accompanied by an extraordinarily high degree of pleasure. Starting with pointing out what he considered contradictions in Freud’s theorizing, Gioia intiated inquiry into, and reformulations of (up till that point) commonly held views of aggression. The basic thesis of his reformulation was that harmful conditions are not necessarily the result of a univocal aggressive wish, but rather the interplay between the conditions of existence and the intentionalities of the subject, which one can assume are always primarily directed towards satisfaction in the first place (pleasure principle) and then the preservation of life. VI. Bb. Willy Baranger For Willy Baranger (1977), Gioia’s observations are sharp to the point of “allowing a clearer comprehension of the difficult points that are abundant in the theory of the death drive” (p. 307) He goes on to claim that the death drive constitutes “one of the basic concepts of the psychoanalytic approach, perhaps one of its definitional concepts” (p.307). He agrees with Gioia that the support Freud sought in biology for his idea of the death drive runs against the proverbial complexity of Freud’s thought. Together with Gioia, he also thinks that the concept of the death drive tends to crack the 1915 metapsychological building. However, he consents that the concept of drive or trieb refers to a basic overriding principle of psychic dynamics intended to be the rationale for the existence of the psychic conflict. For Baranger, what Freud calls death drive is the origin of hate, of self-destructiveness, of aggressiveness, of the need for the repetition of the traumatic, of what has failed, of the satanic. VI. Bc. Ángel Garma One of the founders of the Argentine Psychoanalytical Association and its first president Ángel Garma , (1977) for his part, unlike Gioia, sees Freud’s hypothesis of the death drive as “brilliant, in general well supported and of great psychoanalytic usefulness” (p. 310). He understands Freud’s life and death drives as resulting from what was internalized from the phylogenetic development in the environment in a way in which what was most favorable was being ‘pushed’ for persistence and integration, and what was most unfavorable, was being ‘pushed’/driven into disintegration. The hereditary internalization of external aggressive circumstances, infantile and present, instigates individuals into self-destruction, and development into old age and death. That is what Garma calls death drive’s investment and representation in the Superego (p. 314). Following his research into psychosomatic conditions (i.e., headaches), (Garma 1962), he finds 1. a decrease of the submission to the superego; 2. acceptance of the instincts, especially of the death instinct, and 3. consequent diminution of the splitting between mind and body brought about by the ego's defence mechanisms, among the most prominent curative factors of psychoanalytic treatment (1962, p. 224).
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