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VI. E. DEVELOPMENT OF THE CONCEPT IN MEXICAN PSYCHOANALYSIS
VI. Ea. Juan Vives Rocabert Juan Vives Rocabert of the Asociación Psicoanalítica Mexicana , author of the book “Death and its drive” [“La muerte y su pulsión”] (2013), introduces the concept of the death drive from biological, religious and philosophical perspectives. However, as his book deals with the Freudian concept of the death drive, he points out a conceptual distinction between the notion of death in the biological domain, and the concept of the death drive of a purely psychoanalytic lineage. Reviewing his book, Patricia Reyes of the Asociación Psicoanalítica de Guadalajara , (2015) notes that a central question remains as a backdrop throughout the book: Does the death of the individual obey, among other causes, the death drive, as opposed to the Eros. Rocaberts’ starting point is to determine if the death drive corresponds to the general concept of the drive, that is, if it is characterized – analogous to the sexual drives – by pressure/intensity, source, object and aim. He follows a conceptual path that starts form the notions of the Nirvana principle and the tendency towards complete discharge (contrary to the principle of constancy and the laws that govern the pleasure principle). Rocabert further explores correlations between psychoanalytic conceptualization of the drive and death drive with the contemporary notions of the ‘genetic program’ and the ‘programmed death’ of the molecular biology. Death and death drive are understood by as unavoidable complements of the other great force that ensures the perpetuation of the species: the sexual drives and psychosexuality. The concept of the death drive is seen as indispensable in the study and the explanation of clinical phenomena, such as the compulsion to repeat, the transference, the negative therapeutic reaction, the unconscious feeling of guilt, melancholia and suicide, as well as other veiled forms of self-destruction such as addictions, anorexia and bulimia, and psychosomatic conditions, among others. In his reviewing and revising the concept of drive and its development, Rocabert focuses particularly on the third stage of the drive theory of the life drive - death drive dualism. He depicts specifically the way how the economic point of view is placed into a structural perspective: Eros binds, connects, forms structures, while Thanatos unbinds, disconnects, and destroys. Several pertinent methodological questions are contemplated, e g.,: How could the death drive invest something if its definition is that of a divesting force, which destroys bonds? On such methodological grounds he also questions the conceptualization of the ‘merging and unmerging’ of the drives. As per Freud, the drives can never be found in a pure state and an instinctual impulse can become conscious only through its derivatives: the presentations and representations. Therefore, Rocabert theorizes that every one of its actions, thoughts and affects will contain variable doses of the drives that inhabit human psyche. This allows to formulate a concept of a single neutral energy that can be colored by love or hate, by life or death; it would be a featureless energy whose quality would be added later . Rocabert considers such a position to
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