011: Reading & Notes.

http://changingminds.org/disciplines/psychoanalysis/concepts/life_death_drives.htm
(Life & Death drives)

NOTES:
-Eros (the life drive/instinct, libido) is concerned with the preservation of life and the preservation of the species, It thus appears as basic needs for health, safety and sustenance and through sexual drives. It seeks both to preserve life and to create life.

-Thanatos (the death drive/instinct, mortido, aggression) appears in opposition and balance to Eros and pushes a person towards extinction and an 'inanimate state'.
Freud saw drives as moving towards earlier states, including non-existence.
‘The aim of all life is death...inanimate things existed before living ones’ (Freud 1920)
Thanatos is associated with negative emotions such as fear, hate and anger, which lead to anti-social acts from bullying to murder (perhaps as projection of the death drive).

-Eros and Thanatos interact and one can turn into the other, such a flipping of love and hate, crying and laughter. Eating preserves life but destroys that which is eaten.

-Freud's drives are often misunderstood. Eros is seen as simple sexuality and hence as morally perverse, casting the human as base and primitive. The death drive is also unacceptable as it opposes the idea of the sanctity of life and can be seen as excusing or even encouraging suicide.

-Melanie Klein disagreed with Freud in that she believed that we are born with a fragile, brittle, weak and unintegrated Ego, and that the most basic human fear is that of disintegration and deat


NOTES ON ID, SUPEREGO, & EGO:
(from a chat with my friend Max X., New York)
"Basically, the id represents the most base instincts and primal desires of the mind
(10:23:49 PM): the desire and thought processes that involve the desires for food, comfort and sex
(10:24:05 PM): The Ego is the mostly conscious capacity for logic and planning, "higher" thought, what have you
(10:24:21 PM): The Superego is the force that mediates between the two, and is the strongest force in the human mind."
(these will be looked up, but I needed his rough outline to know what I was looking for. He is keen on Freud.)