Overview
In Freudian psychology, the death drive is the concept that all living things have an intrinsic desire to achieve a permanent state of peace by reverting to a state of non-living inanimacy.
History and Etymology
Freud’s early psychological theories proposed that humans are wired to seek pleasurable experiences while avoiding painful ones, which he termed the pleasure principle. Dreams were proposed as unconscious projections of one’s inner desires. However, in Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920), he revised this model after failing to reconcile this principle with the existence of nightmares or children playing with tragic concepts with no pleasurable reward from doing so. Adults also seemed to make conscious decisions that seemed to be entirely against the pursuit of pleasure, suggesting another unconscious motive underneath to Freud. For instance, people might provoke others into lashing out at them in ways that evidently caused much more pain than might be offset by latent sadistic pleasures. Freud’s perspective on the human condition shifted away from the idea of seeking a balanced equilibrium that invoked constant pleasure to the idea of reproducing before seeking an end of its own volition.
Commentary
Vibhava-Tanha
Freud borrowed from “the Nirvana Principle” from Barbara Low in 1920, who committed a massive category error in interpreting Nirvana as a desire to escape consciousness rather than awaken into unconditional freedom. He connected his death drive to the Nirvana principle as a biological/materialist mechanism for the mind to achieve the psychological relief of inanimacy. Buddhism actually does propose a concept that’s much closer to the death drive: vibhava-tanha, which refers to the type of craving for self-destruction and self-annihiliation in order to escape unwanted states or conditions.
Mad Men
The very first episode of Mad Men features a psychologist mentioning the death drive during a discussion about the motivation of consumers in choosing to use harmful products like cigarettes. She argues that people smoke because of the health warnings, not in spite of them, because the thrill of risky self-destructive behaviors appeals to a latent death drive within us. To pull from the episode’s script:
Greta: “Before the war, when I studied with Adler in Vienna, we postulated that what Freud called ‘the Death Wish’ is as powerful a drive as those for sexual reproduction and physical sustenance.”
Don: “Freud, you say - which agency is he with?”
Salvatore: “So we’re supposed to believe people are living one way and secretly thinking the exact opposite? That’s ridiculous.”
Don: “Dr. Guttman, psychology is terrific at a cocktail party, but it happens people were buying cigarettes before Freud was born. The issue isn’t, ‘why should people smoke’ — it’s why should people smoke Lucky Strike. Suggesting our customer have a, what did you call it - a ‘Death Wish’? Well, I just don’t see that on a billboard.”
The line delivered by Salvatore is comical, as he’s depicted overtly as a stereotypical closeted gay man in an era where that would kill his career and reputation. Nevertheless, a recurring theme in the show is precisely about the active and passive self-destruction of the characters amidst spectacular success and privilege. Don Draper dismisses the notion of a death drive despite his trajectory, illustrated in the opening of the show, being one of sabotaging his career, his family, and his reputation as a creative genius. The show’s focus on advertising in the post-WWII economic boom characterized by consumerism and financial success shows the shallow limits of these consolation prizes for unresolved trauma, suggesting that underneath excess consumerism lies an unconscious culture of self-destruction. Don’s success in advertising is directly a result of his projections of unmet needs that he seeks to fill with a superficial persona that is always running from something as much as it’s chasing something. When no amount of success or material gain is able to satisfy his inability to be content within himself, he turns to drinking and sex, though the transactional nature of his materialist persona means he never arrives at a secure relationship with himself.