IPA Inter-Regional Encyclopedic Dictionary of Psychoanalysis

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Thanatos or to try to repress or suppress the latter. As for the structural consequences in the psyche, one cannot disregard the relation between Thanatos and the Superego and the moral conscience, the result of identifications, consequent to the Oedipus complex. When Superego absorbs the excesses of this dangerous instinctive/drive ingredient, one can find the paradoxical circumstance that a more severe moral conscience would inhibit aggression more and would lead to a larger internal accumulation of the death drive, harmful to an individual. In Arbiser’s view, Freud follows, to some extent, the widespread popular idea of a more exuberant sexuality or violence in the less educated or sophisticated social groups, which is consistent with his belief of the opposition between instinct/drive and culture. While Freud himself posits the opposition in complex terms of culture attenuating the drives (1921), in Arbiser’s opinion, it is an elementary simplification to present instincts/drives and culture, as the notion of drives itself already implies a radical transformation of the instinctual biological baggage at the request of the human environment.

VI. C. DEATH DRIVE REVISITED IN VENEZUELAN PSYCHOANALYSIS

VI Ca. Guillermo Teruel Guillermo Teruel (1984), a Venezuelan psychoanalyst who was trained in London, suggests that ‘death drive’, or trieb , is the term that corresponds to the human being’s innate destructive capacity. As such, he sees drive as inborn and inherited, while accepting the idea that something external may mobilize aggression. For Teruel all terms other than trieb , such as drive ( pulsión ), instinct ( instinto ), “impulse” ( impulso ), “aggression” ( agresión ), “aggressiveness” ( agresividad ), etc., are euphemisms (mild alternatives, understatements). He points to fundamental quality of this aggressive drive, is that it is frequently silent, and for this reason, analysts do not take any prudent measures to protect themselves from its dangerous quality, found in the projections of psychotic patients and their families. What protects analysts from countertransferentially internalizing and identifying with such destructive-psychotic projections, are the setting, the analytic stance of neutrality and the “reverie” function. Restricting the number of psychotic patients is a measure for protection as well. Because of the death drive, the analyst can become disorganized and lose her capacity to organize the time of the setting. Frustration raised by regression increases instinctual thanatic forces, as could be observed in members of families of people suffering from organic illnesses or disabling traumatisms. Teruel writes that it is an illusion to believe that analysts have vast reservoirs of Eros to protect them and neutralize their own thanatic aggressive components together with those projected into them via projective identification. Analysts are protected by the reinforcement of their suitable love bonds with people and with themselves, and by not moving towards manic grandiosity or omnipotence.

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