The death drive and its relationship with the self

The author approaches the death concern, invoking Jungian, Freudian, and Kleinian theories. According to the Jungian viewpoint, death is the primary state of the self, as well as the self, a state in which the tension between opposites is nil. Unlike Freud, who considers the death urge as “silent” and devoid of representation, Jung’s vision of the death instinct includes an archetype which generates representations. Rosemary Gordon believes that the psychic experience of a death state is primary and accessible. However, the consciousness of death will not arise until the structure of the ego has emerged. The Jungian concept of the self confers a bi-polar property upon the psychic experience of death. Thus the desire for dissolution and reunion, in addition to being a symptom of regression, expresses a need for integration and wholeness. The Freudian death wish can thus be seen in light of the valence of the self ; i.e., its gravitational force, in constant tension with the ego. On the basis of this analysis, Rosemary Gordon deduces that aggressiveness, a force for separation and differentiation, cannot arise from the death wish, as Melanie Klein postulated. Lastly, the author points out the dynamism related to the dialectics of the archetypal representation of death-and-rebirth occurring in Jung’s work, challenging the opposition traditionally made between Jungian monism and Freudian dualism.