A drive or instinct is a compelling motivation which arises at the boundary between the body and the mind. It exerts a constant pressure which can be temporarily sated by gratifying the wishes that it gives rise to, but cannot ever be completely banished. Of note, when a drive is gratified, the emotion one feels is the positive feeling we understand as "pleasure". As an example, hunger would be a derivative of the life instinct. (While we can never directly experience a drive, which is a hypothetical construct, we can observe its derivatives, in feelings, behaviors, etc.) The longer one goes without food, the more insistent the feelings of hunger become, until the person finds a way to gratify the drive; once the person has eaten, there is a feeling of satisfaction (a positive emotional experience), the force of the drive diminishes and remains at a low, imperceptible level, until the body makes its needs known once again by evoking feelings of hunger. Most people can readily understand hunger and thirst as instinctually driven. Most of us can appreciate how adult sexuality can also feel as if it is driven by deeply rooted internal sources. Many religions, with fundamentalist Islam being of special concern these days, treat men as if they are completely at the mercy of their instinctual sexual drives; just as with Victorian gentry, the mere sight of a woman improperly covered is enough to provoke a man to lose all rationality and become the victim of his own sexual impulses. A less problematic (derivative) expression of libido would be the powerful wish most people have to love, marry, and have children. Parents recognize that having children changes them in innumerable unforeseen ways. Their freedom of action is severely constricted once they have their first child. They must make many sacrifices; for weeks to years, they will give up sleep, material comforts, nights out, in order to nurture the new life that is so dependent on them. In the most primitive terms, our offspring are the natural outcome of our libidinal drives, though we have the luxury, time, and material comfort in our culture to nurture loving, intimate relationships so that children are not merely an expression of a biological imperative.
Thanatos is more problematic. We see it overtly in the Islamist nihilists who proclaim that their strength is that they "love death" while our weakness is that we "love life". People who are willing to blow themselves up in order to kill innocent strangers indeed seem to be acting out the deepest strain of Thanatos, the death instinct.
In our own culture, the two trends of life and death vie in a complex, dynamic equilibrium. The battle is seen in the different approaches to the sad case of Terri Shiavo, but it is also a factor in many of the other hot issues of our time, not always in obvious ways.
The nature of an instinct is to be unconscious in its workings to the individual. I become aware of my hunger and if I am not conflicted about it, I will eat. A person who has more of a struggle with their own death instinct (an outcome of multiple, complex psychological processes) may have a different response to their hunger. They may keep themselves unaware of their hunger; they may find themselves struggling with terrible guilt over their eating habits; often, anorexia (which apparently lead to Terri Shiavo's current state) is the outcome. It is easy to see the life and death struggle of the anorexic patient, but what of the same struggle in attenuated forms in our culture?
Since instincts, by definition, are unconscious constructs that cannot be directly observed, we must infer their workings from the behavior of people. As an exercise in applied Psychoanalysis, one can attempt to discern the workings of instinctual drives in the behavior of societies. For example, while Nazi Germany could be thought of as a culture that fancied itself as being devoted to life instincts (they were building a "thousand year Reich" composed of "perfect" Aryans) their love affair with death was manifest from the beginning. They were going to kill, to use death, to perfect the race. They started with the brain damaged, then moved on to those who were drains on society (mentally ill, retarded) and with the most "rational" and scientific of intentions slipped down the slope to horrors. Beyond the death of so many others, their desire for gratifying Thanatos lead to their own destruction. Hitler had little need to invade Russia when he did; his general staff warned him of the dangers of doing so, yet he could not stop himself, and this, along with Japan's ultimately foolish attack on Pearl Harbor, eventuated in their destruction. While the Japanese and Germans were confident in their ability to defeat "inferior" Russians and Americans, their unconscious, perhaps under the influence of Thanatos, lead them to underestimate their enemies and they failed.
Returning to Terri Schiavo's sad situation, one is almost forced to wonder: why do so many seem to find such glee and pleasure in her impending death from dehydration? If one feels she would never want to live in this state and is suffering, how could you justify denying her food and water; isn't it cruel and unusual punishment for someone who has done nothing wrong? On the other hand, if she is completely insensate, then her wishes not to suffer are not at issue; perhaps we might expect people to be empathetic to the suffering of those who love her and want her to stay alive. Finding delight in her death, being outraged and furious at those who want her kept alive and have used all legal means to do so, speaks of an inordinate element of unconscious drive expression. This is not to say that some of the same hasn't shown up on the "pro-life" side of the ledger. Those who are suggesting Governor Bush should ignore the courts and use force to save Terri or who threaten violence against those who are "killing" her, are equally guilty of expressing a bit too much Thanatos in their avowed support of libido. On balance, however, and despite the slant usually provided by the MSM, the violent conservative is much less common than the violent liberal these days; furthermore, the most extreme on the right (like David Duke, Randall Terry) are much further from the mainstream of the Republican party than the extreme left (represented by people like Micheal Moore, Howard Dean & the Daily Kos).
There are multiple important issues involved in this case, and I will be returning to this topic as part of my larger discussion of the evolving balance between Thanatos and Libido in our culture as well as within the individual, with a particular view toward how the personal and the political intersect.
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