Contemporary Perspectives on the Freudian Death Drive

Victor Blüml is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst (Vienna Psychoanalytic Society/IPA). He is Assistant Professor at the Department of Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy of the Medical University of Vienna, Austria. His main research interests include personality structure, psychotic phenomena, suicidality, and conceptual issues of psychoanalysis. He has published in numerous publications including psychiatric and psychoanalytic journals. Liana Giorgi is a social and political scientist and psychoanalyst in private practice (Vienna Psychoanalytic Society/IPA). She is the author/editor of Festivals and the Cultural Public Sphere (Routledge 2011), Democracy in the European Union (Routledge 2006), and The Post-Socialist Media: What Power the West? (Avebury 1995). She is currently working on a book on the intellectual exchanges between psychoanalysis, social and political theory.Daru Huppert is a psychoanalyst in private practice in Austria (Vienna Psychoanalytic Society/IPA); he has published numerous psychoanalytic articles on sleep, sexuality, disgust, and shame.

• Introduction: The death drive: A brief genealogy of a controversial concept V. BlümlPart I: TheoryChapter 1: The struggle between good and evil: the concept of the death drive from a Kleinian perspective H. Rössler-SchüleinChapter 2: Laplanche as a reader of "Beyond the Pleasure Principle" F. FrühChapter 3: Unexpected Antecedents to the Concept of the Death Drive: A return to the beginnings J. Wolff BernsteinPart II: Clinical aspectsChapter 4: Is the death drive mute – or do we pretend to be deaf? S. Zwettler-OtteChapter 5: Is the concept of death-drive clinically helpful for psychoanalysts? F. LackingerPart III: CultureChapter 6: Vicissitudes of the Death Drive in Culture E. SkaleChapter 7: In the Name of Janus: Do we Need a Dualistic Drive-theory? A. RuhsPart IV: HistoryChapter 8: The Drive that silences: The Death Drive and the Oral Tradition in Viennese Psychoanalysis D. HuppertChapter 9: On the history of psychoanalysis in Vienna with special focus on the forced emigration of psychoanalysts in 1938 T. Aichhorn Chapter 10: Liselotte Frankl and Hans Herma. Two candidates of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society in 1938 N. PakeschChapter 11: Remembering Dr Otto Brief T. Kunstreich

"Searching, scholarly and thoughtful, this valuable book is essential reading. It is not only for psychoanalysts but for all concerned people. The possibility that an innate principle of self-annihilation is at work in human behaviour and at the level of the species as well as at that of individuals is disturbing. Yet much in our contemporary situation points in its direction. If we do not want to know more, we may destroy ourselves, and many other species besides. But if we understand more, it can be ameliorated."-David Taylor, Hon,. Consultant, Tavistock Clinic; Training & Supervising Psychoanalyst, British Psychoanalytic Society; Visiting Professor, University College London Psychoanalysis Unit, UK