A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF DEATH AND SUICIDE
WITHIN THE POETRY OF
SYLVIA PLATH AND NİLGÜN MARMARA
Pamukkale University The Institute of Social Sciences
Doctoral Thesis
The Department of English Language and Literature English Language and Literature
Ph.D. Programme
Neşe ŞENEL
Supervisor
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Meryem AYAN
October 2020 DENİZLİ
PLAGIARISM
I hereby declare that all information in this document has been presented in accordance with academic rules and ethical conduct. I also declare that as required by these rules and conduct I have fully cited and referenced all material and results that are not original to this work.
iii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to express my deepest gratitude and sincere thanks to my advisor, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Meryem AYAN for her endless patience, permanent support, genuine kindness, creative contribution and valuable criticism that guided me at every stage of this thesis. Throughout the process of writing this dissertation and my Ph.D. education, she has been the source of inspiration and the unit of support for my academic life. Without her continuous assistance and constructive supervision, I would never have finished this thesis. It is sure that one cannot wish for a more helpful advisor.
I also would like to express my sincere gratitude to each of my valuable jury members, Prof. Dr. Feryal ÇUBUKÇU, Prof. Dr. Mehmet Ali ÇELİKEL, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Cumhur Yılmaz MADRAN, and Assist. Prof. Dr. Ayşe Arzu KORUCU for their detailed comments, valuable criticism and insightful suggestions that have enlighted me and this study. I also would like thank to each member of the Department of English Language and Literature of Pamukkale University for their support and motivation. In addition, I owe special thanks and gratitude to my colleague, Gülden PAMUKÇU, whose friendly support kept me motivated and positive all the times.
Additionally, I would like to express my gratitude to TÜBİTAK (The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey) for the financial support they provided during my Ph.D. education and also for their contribution to the academic and scientific development of Turkey through funding and supporting young researchers for further scientific research.
I am yet indebted to my dearest parents and my whole family, who have always been supportive of me throughout my all my ups and downs with the love, patience and faith they have shown from the initial to the final stage of this thesis study.
ABSTRACT
A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF DEATH AND SUICIDE WITHIN THE POETRY OF SYLVIA PLATH AND NİLGÜN MARMARA
Şenel, Neşe Doctoral Thesis
The Department of English Language and Literature The Doctoral Programme in English Language and Literature
Supervisor: Assoc. Prof. Dr. Meryem AYAN October 2020, VI+163 Pages
This thesis study aims to analyze the poetry of two female poets who committed suicide, Sylvia Plath and Nilgün Marmara, within the context of the psychoanalytical perspectives to death and self-destruction. By rendering a psychoanalytical analysis of their poetical lines that are intermingled with pains and traumas centered around the obsession of death and self-destruction, this study attempts to trace and unearth the mutual poetical mechanisms of the unconscious and the human psyche that turn the poetry of both poets into ‘art of dying’ as in the wording of Plath and ‘swan songs’ as in the wording of Marmara. Emphasizing the undeniable attachment between Plath and Marmara, this study also investigates how the poetry of the American poet, Plath, as a predecessor has influenced the poetry of the Turkish poet, Marmara, as a successor and how their poetical approaches to death and suicide display resemblance, parallels and contrasts. By rendering a comparative analysis within the context of suicide, this thesis also aims to reflect that although their social and cultural contexts may vary, both female poets manifest that poetry has been a distinct sphere of both isolation and confrontation with the various psychic ‘demons’ inherent in their self-alienated poetical personas. Through psychoanalyzing their poetic personas in their ‘art of dying’, this study attempts to highlight how Plath and Marmara became both the victims and the victors of their poetry via various psychological scars and existential dilemmas.
v
ÖZET
SYLVIA PLATH VE NİLGÜN MARMARA ŞİİRLERİNDE ÖLÜM VE İNTİHAR ÜZERİNE KARŞILAŞTIRMALI BİR ANALİZ
Şenel, Neşe Doktora Tezi
İngiliz Dili ve Edebiyatı Ana Bilim Dalı İngiliz Dili ve Edebiyatı Doktora Programı
Tez Danışmanı: Doç. Dr. Meryem AYAN Ekim 2020, VI+163 Sayfa
Bu tez çalışmasının amacı, intihar eden iki kadın şair olan Sylvia Plath ve Nilgün Marmara’nın şiirlerini, psikanalizsel ölüm ve özkıyım yaklaşımları bağlamında incelemektir. Bu çalışma, şairlerin ölüm ve intihar saplantılı sancıları ve travmalarıyla bezenmiş şiir mısraları üzerinden psikanaliz çerçevesinde bir analiz sunarak, her iki şairin şiirlerini Plath’in deyimiyle birer ‘ölüm sanatına’ ve Marmara’nın deyimiyle ‘kuğu ezgisine’ dönüştüren karşılıklı şiirsel bilinçdışı mekanizmaların ve psikolojik süreçlerin izini sürüp ortaya çıkarmayı hedeflemektedir. Bu karşılaştırmalı çalışma aynı zamanda Plath ve Marmara arasındaki inkâr edilemez bağlantıyı vurgulayarak, bir öncü olarak Amerikan şair Plath’in şiirlerinin, kendisinin takipçisi olan Türk şair Marmara’nın şiirlerini nasıl etkilediğini ve her iki şairin ölüm ve intihara karşı şiirsel yaklaşımlarının ne yönde benzerlikler, paralellikler ve farklılıklar gösterdiğini incelemektedir. Bu tez çalışması ayrıca, ait oldukları sosyal ve kültürel bağlamları farklılık göstermesine rağmen, her iki kadın şairin de kendisine yabancılaşmış şiir kişilerinin tabiatında var olan çeşitli ruhsal ‘şeytanlarıyla’ hem yüzleşme hem de onlardan korunma alanı olarak şiiri tercih ettiklerini vurgulamaktadır. Şairlerin ‘ölüm sanatlarındaki’ şiir kişilerinin intihar bağlamında psikanaliz incelemesini yapan bu çalışma, Plath ve Marmara’nın farklı psikolojik yaralar ve varoluşsal açmazlar vasıtasıyla şiirlerinin nasıl hem mağduru hem de galibi olduklarını sorgulamaktadır.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PLAGIARISM ... ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ... iii ABSTRACT ... iv ÖZET ... v TABLE OF CONTENTS ... vi INTRODUCTION ... 1CHAPTER ONE
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK:
PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SUICIDE
1.1. An Overview of the Psychoanalytic Approaches to the Concept of Suicide ... 7CHAPTER TWO
PLATH’S AND MARMARA’S
POETICAL APPLICATION OF “THE ART OF DYING”
2.1. “The Art of Dying” within the Poetical Canvas of Plath and Marmara ... 372.2. Plath’s and Marmara’s Biographical Journey: From Birth to Suicide ... 44
CHAPTER THREE
ANALYSIS OF PLATH’S AND MARMARA’S POEMS
3.1. Suicide and Death within the Poetry of Plath and Marmara ... 493.1.1. The Death Instinct and Life Instinct ... 55
3.1.2. The Self-Destructiveness of the Self-Reflection and Self-Alienation ... 61
3.1.3. Suicidal Self: Death as a Rebirth ... 69
3.1.4. Electra Complex Gaze in Plath’s “Art of Dying” ... 80
3.1.5. The Song of a Swan in Marmara’s “Swan Songs” ... 119
CHAPTER FOUR
A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF SUICIDALITY AND DEATH
WITHIN THE POETRY OF PLATH AND MARMARA
4.1. A Comparative Analysis of Suicidality and Death within Plath’s “Art of Dying” and Marmara’s “Swan Songs” ... 125CONCLUSION ... 144
REFERENCES ... 153
CURRICULUM VITAE ... 163
1
INTRODUCTION
Throughout the literary history, suicide has had several distinct connotations. Some referred to suicide as the reflection of a kind of psychological disorder; some denoted suicide as becoming a victim for the cause of God; some referred to suicide as an art, while some others perceived suicide as a revolt and disaffection against life. The concept of suicide has been continually described and analyzed by several disciplines such as sociology, psychology, philosophy, literature etc. Suicide, which is defined by Oxford dictionary as “the action of killing oneself intentionally” (Suicide, n.d.), is essentially the last deliberate choice and self-act of the person regarding his/her life. Whether the reason that pushes the person into self-destruction is any existentialist dilemma, or any psychological, social and political crisis, with all its darkness, uncertainty and misery, the concept of suicide has been a highly tempting topic-in-question for literary circles and the concept has been influencing, specifically, for many artists, poets and authors.
According to Johnson’s dictionary, suicide is “equivalent to destruction, self-murder, destroying one’s own self and destroying one’s own existence” (1755, p. 1052), which explicitly implies that the idea of suicide has had a negative connotation for the individual, society, and especially for the ruling classes, in every civilization throughout history since Greek antiquity. Suicide was mostly regarded as a rebellion against the order, the concept of coexistence, the ego, and against any establishment that includes the relations between the ego and others. Aristotelian understanding of suicide also refers to self-destruction as a deliberate act committed for religious reasons. It also had its negative connotation because it was thought that suicide polluted the city and weakened the economy by the destruction of a beneficial citizen. Moreover, it was regarded as a socially irresponsible act and ultimately it was referred as a crime committed against the state (Olive, 1987, pp. 11-3). Individualist philosophies such as Epicureanism and Stoicism, on the other hand, perceive suicide as a fair act intentionally carried out by the individual (Maris, 1981, p. 23). However, major religions such as Christianity, Islam and Buddhism, which have been influential throughout history, regard suicide as a deadly sin and these religions instill fear in the masses against the deed of suicide through their powerful instructions.
was perceived to be a central heroic act, which was totally masculine, as could well be traced with tragic suicides of Antigone and Cleopatra, whose suicides were perceived as heroic acts of free will and protesting cruelty and immorality. However, after the Age of Reason, suicide turned out to be a sign of weakness and mental instability and it was perceived to be an involuntary act of the weak mind in an age when the faculty of reason and science was ruling over. The 19th century literary works of art portray suicide as a feminized passive act. When the literary depictions of self-destruction after the French Revolution are taken into consideration, it could be detected that through the Romantic period, the literary perception of suicide has totally shifted. While the Aristotelian understanding focused on the action and perceived suicide as heroic and thus as a masculine performance, in the Romantic age through such nominal precursors as Coleridge, now the character was in the focus and thus previously heroic act of self-destruction turned out to be feminine. It could be noticed that voluntary death is depoliticized for both women and men (Gentry, 1992, pp. 2-8). However, as proposed by Durkheim, while the 19th century literary suicide motif features mostly women, the suicide rate was much higher for men (1952, pp. 13-14). This intentional distortion of reality is due to the fact that the 19th century literary depictions of female suicide were created by mostly male writers. Therefore, this deliberate portrayal is a kind of surrender of the female self and female desires to men, which is a sacrifice to death that turns “angels in the house” into dead-living bodies in life (Gilbert et al., 1984, p. 34). Interestingly, the 19th century female literary depictions were either the portrayal of the angels in the house, or the women portrayed as the monster, the witch and the evil nonconformist suicidal one (p. 35). Such a portrayal inevitably caused contradiction for the female author and in such patriarchal contexts the only self-deliberate act for female depictions became self-destruction and suicide.
Starting from the 20th century, however, the concept of suicide has started to receive a much neutral reception mostly because of the debut of the Freudian and post-Freudian psychoanalysis, which regard self-destruction to be inherent within human nature and acknowledges that there is always the probability and ability for the act of suicide for any human being when the self can get beyond his or her subjectivity and when the inherent equilibrium between the self’s death instinct and life instinct is demolished. Therefore, the discipline of psychoanalysis refers to suicide as a natural and probable act for any human being as the person goes through several ambivalent psychic processes that primarily start with the birth, when the person experiences the first
3 traumatic experience with the conflict between death and life. Whether it is about understanding the mystery of this pre-mentioned ambivalence towards suicide, or looking for the depths of birth trauma and relatedly self-destructive tendencies, or in the treatment of clinical suicidal cases, psychoanalysis stands out a distinct school of psychology in finding plausible paths to solve the riddle of suicide. Psychoanalysis further investigates the mechanisms of the unconscious and the human psyche that pushes the selves into self-destruction and it also suggests new reasonable ways in examining and analyzing the myth of self-destruction. Moreover, through raising a self-reflective awareness, psychoanalysis has the power to alter the look that perceives the self as an objectified other and turn it into an enlightened and optimistic understanding. Therefore, the suicidal and death-dominant literary texts as the psychic space of the writers also become an indispensable playground for psychoanalysis to explore the mechanisms of the unconscious and the human psyche that push both the selves and the literary personas into suicide.
In this study, the death-dominant poetry of two female poets who committed suicide, Sylvia Plath and Nilgün Marmara, will be analyzed within the context of the psychoanalytical conceptualization of death and self-destruction because their lines which are intermingled with pains and traumas centered around the obsession of death necessitate detailed psychoanalytical analyses within its own limits. Within the context of psychoanalytical approaches to suicide and death, the aim of this study is to trace the mutual poetical reflections of the mechanisms of the unconscious and the human psyche that turn the poetry of both poets into ‘art of dying’ as in the wording of Plath in her “Lady Lazarus” (Plath, 1981, p. 245) and into ‘swan songs’ as in the wording of Marmara in her “Swan Song” (Marmara, 2006, p. 111). While Plath depicts her poetical walking towards death as “Dying/ Is an art, like everything else. / I do it exceptionally well.” (Plath, 1981, p. 245), Marmara correspondingly portrays her poetry woven with a strong death-wish as “My poems, the swan songs before death, /The black gowned guard secrets/ of my rolling life.” (Marmara, 2006, p. 111). Emphasizing the undeniable attachment between the poets, this study also attempts to unearth how the poetry of the American poet, Plath, as a predecessor has influenced the poetry of the Turkish poet, Marmara, as a successor and how their poetical approaches to death and suicide display resemblance, parallels and contrasts. By taking a comparative approach, this thesis also aims to reflect that although their social and cultural contexts may vary, both female poets manifest that poetry has been a distinct sphere of both isolation from and confrontation with the various psychic
‘demons’ inherent in their self-alienated poetical selves. Through psychoanalyzing their poetic personas in their ‘art of dying’, this study attempts to highlight how Plath and Marmara became both the victims and the victors of their poetry via their various psychological scars and existential dilemmas.
Within the framework of the psychoanalytical theories of suicide and death, this study will attempt to unearth that poems of both Plath and Marmara reflect the sense of disillusionment they experienced with the clash of their spiritual inner selves and material realities of the modern life. Through their poetry, their silent screams uttered against sufferings of life and outcries for death will be comparatively examined. While Plath represents her poetical revolt by reflecting a alienated, reflective and self-destructive “I” with ambivalent parental positioning, Marmara, on the other hand, revolts against the chaotic and malicious pre-determined structure of life by depicting another self-alienated, isolated and suicidal “I” that philosophically questions her existence and places all her fruitful answers in death. Their revolt and outrage against the painful realities of life evenly lead them to have the instinctive to go and transcend beyond the psychic sufferings caused by the harsh realities through their suicidal poetry and then through death, for which Marmara reveals her instinctive as “With sad steps, march forward!” (Marmara, 2006, pp. 173-4) while Plath discloses it as “The dew that flies/ Suicidal, at one with the drive/ Into the red/ Eye, the cauldron of morning” (Plath, 1981, p. 240). Through this study, specifically, the psychic way that their poetic personas ‘marched forward’ through ‘sad steps’ with their ‘suicidal drive’ into death and how they became the victims of the conflict between reality and fantasy; on the other hand, how they have become the courageous poetical victors by exhibiting an anarchic revolt against life within their poetry will be psychoanalytically investigated.
To this end, in the light of the psychoanalytic approach to death and suicide, this study dominantly adopts a Freudian approach for poetry analysis; however, Lacanian approach to suicide with his conceptualization on mirror stage and Jungian perspective through his theorization on mother archetype will also aid the analysis in order to dive deeper into the psyche of the suicidal “I” of both Plath’s and Marmara’s poetry. Therefore, this study primarily analyzes the selected poetry of Sylvia Plath and Nilgün Marmara and ultimately suggests a comparative reading on the poems of both female poets. Their poems which predominantly focus on the theme of self-destruction and death are chosen for the analysis of this study. Rather than psychoanalyzing the suicidality of the poets themselves, the psychoanalytical poetry analysis will basically focus on Plath’s
5 and Marmara’s selected poems of self-destruction and death; however, their biographical details, diary entries and their own literary studies will sometimes inevitably haunt the psychoanalysis of their poems. This especially becomes a must due to the confessional quality of their poetical personas talking through the radical ‘I’, which often feeds upon personal traumas, emotions and experiences. Accordingly, in psychoanalyzing the ‘art of dying’ of Plath and Marmara, this study consists of four chapters and a conclusion.
The first chapter will be allotted to the theoretical framework of psychoanalysis, wherein an overview of the psychoanalytic approaches to the concept of suicide will be investigated. Specifically, the theoretical chapter will focus on Sigmund Freud as the father of psychoanalysis, and his appreciation of self-destruction and death through his conceptualizations on Thanatos, Eros, pleasure principle, libido theory, narcissistic identification and introjection, and mourning and melancholia. The chapter, then, will discuss the pro-Freudian psychoanalyst, Melanie Klein’s approach to suicide via her children’s psychology, where she transfers Freudian death instinct from the philosophical intellection into the phenomenological sphere. The chapter, then, will move from classical psychoanalytical approaches to post-Freudian psychoanalysis and will present a survey of suicide approaches of Winnicott, Horney, Kohut and Fromm, and the chapter will be finalized with the Lacanian approaches to death and suicide. The theory chapter will also trace how the perceptions on self-destruction have evolved within the theoretical framework of psychoanalysis.
In the light of the theoretical framework of psychoanalysis, the second chapter will center upon tracing Plath’s and Marmara’s poetical application of their “Art of Dying”. By discussing the fundamental flow within their confessional and suicidal canvas of their art with specific examples from their poems, the chapter will then focus on their biographical journeys starting with their births and ending with their suicides.
The third chapter of this thesis will be providing the detailed psychoanalysis of the poems. To this end, in the light of the previously elaborated psychoanalytic approaches to death and suicide, this chapter will analyze the selected poetry of Plath and Marmara through discussing various psychoanalytical aspects in retrospect. While the subchapter “The Death Instinct and Life Instinct” will be positioning the demolition of the Freudian Equilibrium of Thanatos and Eros within their poems, “The Self-Destructiveness of the Self-Reflection and Self-Alienation” will take a Lacanian approach in detecting the self-destructiveness of the outer gaze and self-alienation of their poetic personas. The subchapter “Suicidal Self: Death as a Rebirth”, on the other hand,
will be allotted to the analysis of their poetical portrayals of death as rebirth and renewal within the framework of psychoanalytic literary criticism. The subchapter “Electra Complex Gaze in Plath’s “Art of Dying”” will psychoanalytically seek answers in the ambivalent attitude of Plath’s “I” towards both death and the paternal figure, and her self-destructive poetic persona will be analyzed as a Freudian melancholiac and an interrupted mourner with an unaccomplished Electra complex. The final subchapter will attempt to conduct a psychoanalytical reading on Marmara’s approach to her “swan songs” through mythological references, and her poetry will be psychoanalytically highlighted through a potential “swan complex”, which is a term coined by Assoc. Prof. Dr. Meryem Ayan, the supervisor of this study. In this way, the subchapter will seek answers in Marmara’s possibly related psychic positioning with death.
In the light of the previous psychoanalytical reading on their poems, the fourth chapter will attempt to provide a comparative analysis of the poetry of both Plath and Marmara regarding their poetical appreciation of death and suicide in their ‘art of dying’, or ‘swan songs’, the allusion of which ultimately refers to their poems with the central theme of death. Specifically, this chapter will seek psychoanalytical answers regarding how their poems cast similarities, parallels and also differences regarding the psychic path on which their poetic personas outcry for death.
Eventually, all the discussions and comparative analysis on the poems of Plath and Marmara in the previous chapters will be concluded and findings about them will be offered in the conclusion part of this thesis.
Just as Nilgün Marmara reveals her own tender concern regarding her analysis on the poetry and suicide of Sylvia Plath by stating that “I hope I will not fail to analyze a woman who has written her poems on such a unique and distinctive subject with a deep understanding of the concept of death and who has been as successful in her suicide as well as in her art.” (Marmara, 2016a p. 3), this study also carries the very same concerns in rendering an effective analysis on the poetry of both Plath and Marmara, who have been exceptionally victorious in their suicides and their passionate ‘art of dying’.
7
CHAPTER ONE
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK:
PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SUICIDE
1.1. An Overview of the Psychoanalytic Approaches to the Concept of Suicide
Suicide, as a self-destructive act, is a phenomenon which is highly analysed and circulated by various psychoanalytical conceptual frameworks inclusive specifically of Sigmund Freud with classical psychoanalysis, his followers with their revised and expanded Freudian views, and much recent psychoanalytical theories including the object-relations approach and the conceptualization of Jacques Lacan.
From a general viewpoint of psychoanalysis, suicide is perceived to be inherent within human nature and there is always the probability and ability for the act of self-destruction for any human being when the self can get beyond his or her subjectivity with an attempt for self-reflection. This phenomenon of self-reflection is essentially what Lacan discloses in his Ecrits as mirror stage, wherein the infant for the first time acquires the realization of its image in the mirror and gets a new epiphany through entering the imaginary order. The related self-reflective, and thus alienating epiphany causes the child to get a new, yet illusionary acquisition of “wholeness, power and control over the mother and the environment” (Lacan, 2005, p. 3). The idea of creating an external look at the self, again could be observed within the myth of Narcissus, when he cannot physically attain his admirable reflection on the pond and kills himself. The reflective quality of the look again becomes a crucial point within the phenomenology of Jean Paul Sartre, when he proclaims that “it is not some-hiding place that we will discover ourselves; it is on the road, in the town, in the midst of the crowd, a thing among things, a man among men” (1978, p. 6). For Sartre, thus, this external look at the self, not introspection, turns the self into an object among many others and therefore the look of the “other” transforms the self into “a thing among things” (p. 6). The conscious of the self, for Sartre, is thus acquired only through the look at outside and the other. As given with the pre-mentioned perspectives, the concept of the other is permanent within the self and it is also destructive through its power of gazing. And this quality, in its full destructive force within the extremities, would even lead to self-destruction.
Suicide is certainly an extreme act of the limits, breaking the boundaries and disturbing the existence. As suggested by Weisman, a psychiatrist, suicide is even often compared to natural disasters that both “destroy and disturb the worldly well-set boundaries and orders” (1967, p. 266). During any act of suicide, the concepts of life and death, independence and obligation, freedom and dependence, objectivity and subjectivity, disobedience and obedience, devastation and protection all cease to in a black hole as distant and opposed notions. Accepted as the founder of suicidology and basing on his clinical experience, Edwin S. Shneidman proclaims that “the common cognitive state in suicide is ambivalence” (1991, p. 43). It is the state of “ambivalence” that plays the crucial role for any suicidal mind because it marks the common internal attitude towards both self-preservation and self-destruction when there is a strong will to live or to die. Accordingly, Melvin D. Faber asserts that, though paradoxical and mysterious, suicide has the potential to be “life-oriented as well as death-oriented” (1967, p. 31). Shneidman believes that against the Aristotelian dichotomy and binary oppositions as black or white, A or non-A, which have long been within the core of Western thought, it is Freud, who “brought to our unforgettable attention a psychological truth that transcends the Aristotelian appearance of the neatness of logic” (1991, p. 43). Thanks to Freud’s introduction of ambivalence to the psychological studies and his perspective that something can be both black and white; an A and a non-A, Shneidman is able to define the concept of ambivalence and the common internal attitude towards suicide:
This non-Aristotelian accommodation to the psychological realities of mental life is called ambivalence. It is the common internal attitude toward suicide: To feel that one has to stop the pain (and die) and, simultaneously, to yearn (and even plan) for rescue and intervention. (Shneidman, 1991, p. 43)
Within psychoanalytical discourse, suicide is mostly explained around the concept of ‘death instinct’, which is concentrated within the core of human neurosis. The birth itself is directly related to the concept of death and it is essentially perceived as the trauma itself. As Brown elaborates about the death instinct and its centrality of trauma of birth, “It begins with the human infant's incapacity to accept separation from the mother, that separation which confers individual life on all living organisms and which in all living organisms at the same time leads to death” (1985, p. 284). Relatedly, concerning the concepts of mortality and immortality, Hegel also ontologically associates this moment of separation, that is birth, with the moment of death, by asserting “The nature of finite things as such is to have the seed of passing away as their essential being: the hour of
9 their birth is the hour of their death” (1929, p. 142). Therefore, psychoanalysis essentially attributes the commencement of the anxiety of failure to live and die to the moment of birth and renames this situation as birth trauma. For Brown, the long-run Platonic argument for immortality, in this way, is accorded with the “denial that we were ever born” (1985, p. 284).
Whether it is about understanding the mystery of this pre-mentioned ambivalence towards suicide, or looking for the depths of birth trauma and relatedly self-destructive tendencies, or in the treatment of clinical suicidal cases, psychoanalysis stands out a distinct school of psychology in finding plausible paths to solve the riddle of suicide. Psychoanalysis further investigates the mechanisms of the unconscious and the human psyche that pushes the selves into self-destruction and it also suggests new plausible paths in examining and analysing the myth of destruction. Moreover, through raising a self-reflective awareness, psychoanalysis has the power to alter the look that perceives the self as an objectified other and turn it into an enlightened and optimistic understanding.
Sigmund Freud’s initial discussion of suicide manifests itself in his early studies partially and solely through his contextualization of libido theory and melancholia. It is during and after the 1920s that he theoretically and systematically focussed on the concept of self-destruction and embodied the concept with his new wording as “death instinct” (Freud, 1961, p. 32), which is a concept that later further lured the studies of suicide from the perspective of classical psychoanalysis. In his article, “Sigmund Freud on Suicide”, published in 1967, Robert Litman as a psychiatrist for the first time initiated to combine and analyse these Freudian approaches to self-destruction (1967, pp. 324-44). According to Litman’s analysis, before 1910, basing on his clinical experiences, Freud had already put forward his various analyses regarding the features of suicidal tendency or behaviour, which would be summarized as:
… guilt over the death wishes towards others, identification with a suicidal parent, refusing to accept the loss of gratification, suicide as an act of revenge, suicide as an escape from humiliation, suicide as a form of communication and the connection between the death and sexuality. (Lester, 2003, p. 856).
Yet, as Freud writes his famous theoretical text, “Mourning and Melancholia” in 1917, he reveals his first systemized perceptions regarding suicide. He associates the self-destructive behaviour directly to the processes of mourning and melancholia through the concepts of ego-identification, object-cathexis and libido-cathexis. Freud’s initial
approach to suicide, as manifested within the context of melancholia, basically conveys that when a loved object is lost, the person directs and relocates the energy that initially was directed to the loved object to his or her own ego. Herein, as the energy once directed to the loved object is now reserved in the ego, the lost object of desire is now recreated within the self, which is what Freud means for the ego-identification and Litman refers as “ego-splitting” (Litman, 1967, p.330). This introjected desire of the loved object is recreated within and directed towards the self when the loved object is lost. Thus, this ambivalent process may eventually lead to self-destruction “when the person also harbours hostile wishes toward the lost object, for now one can turn this anger toward that part of one’s mind that is modelled upon and symbolizes the lost object” (Lester, 2003, p. 856).
Diving into Freudian approach to mourning and melancholia, it becomes obvious that the distinguishing features of both processes are almost the same (Freud, 1959, p. 153). In his own wording, mourning, which is “the reaction to the loss of a loved person, or to the loss of some abstraction”, and melancholia, which “develops in some people we consequently suspect of pathological disposition”, do both reflect almost identical peculiar mental features, except for fall in self- esteem; yet inclusive of “painful dejection, abrogation of interest in the outside world, loss of capacity to adopt any new object of love and inhibition of all activity” (p. 153).
During the process of mourning and grief, as the loved object no longer exists, “all the libido shall be withdrawn from its attachments to this object” (Freud, 1959, p. 154). Yet, this would create a new struggle of libido-position, which could tensely further cause “hallucinatory wish-psychosis” (p. 154). The process keeps on as time passes and the reality is gained through the “expense of time and cathectic energy” while the existence of the lost object is still maintained in the mind (p. 154). The libido is finally detached from the object after any memory or hope that binds the libido to the object is revealed and revived. According to Freud, when this seemingly natural painful process of mourning is accomplished, “the ego becomes free and uninhibited again” (p. 154).
Within the case of Freudian understanding of melancholia again there appears the concept of loss of any kind. It may be related to loss of a loved object through death, divorce, or any separation. Yet, within this context, the person may not be aware of the loss, or even if s/he knows who s/he has lost s/he may not know “what it is he has lost in them” (Freud, 1959, p. 155). Therefore, Freud associates melancholia with “unconscious loss of a love-object”, while for mourning, there is no unconscious working about the loss
11 (p. 155). Herein, Freud further relates to the potential reasons why the melancholiac develops low self-esteem, different from any mourner and further impoverishes his ego, assisted by the feelings of worthlessness and the related self-accusations. Freud later directs the attention to the fact that the self-accusations of the melancholiac are actually applicable not to the patients but to the lost object of love (p. 158). That is, “the self-reproaches are self-reproaches against a loved object which have been shifted on to the patient’s own ego” (p. 158). Thus, instead of a new object-cathexis, that is withdrawing the libido from the lost object and investing mental or emotional energy in a new one, the free libido is withdrawn within the ego and helped narcissistic “the identification of the ego with the abandoned object” (p. 159). Freud metaphorically calls this process as “the shadow of the object fell upon the ego”:
In this way, the loss of the object became transformed into a loss in the ego, and the conflict between the ego and the loved person transformed into a cleavage between the criticizing faculty of the ego and the ego as altered by the identification. (Freud, 1959, p. 159)
Relatedly, the narcissistic identification with an object and the associated erotic cathexis, awareness of the loss of the object, the insufficient process of object cathexis and identification with the lost object further leads the person to get drown within melancholia. Since the initial narcissistic identification with an object is, in Freudian terminology, an ambivalent love-hate relationship, the same ambivalence of love and hate is also observed within the ego-identification; therefore, the hatred and sadistic feelings felt for the lost-object would also be extremely directed to the ego (Freud, 1959, p. 161-162). Freud makes it clear that “It is this sadism, and only this, that solves the riddle of the tendency to suicide which makes melancholia so interesting- and so dangerous” (p. 162):
The analysis of melancholia now shows that the ego can kill itself only if, owing to the return of the object-cathexis, it can treat itself as an object— if it can direct against itself the hostility which relates to an object and which represents the ego's original reaction to objects in the external world. Thus, in regression from narcissistic object-choice the object has, it is true, been got rid of, but it has nevertheless proved more powerful than the ego itself. In the two opposed situations of being most intensely in love and of suicide the ego is overwhelmed by the object, though in totally different ways. (Freud, 1959, p. 163)
Freud’s later approach to suicide, was shaped through his specification on the existence of death instinct and life instinct, which further was circulated by classical
Freudian psychoanalysts. His theorization mainly draws upon the discussion that the human being has a masochistic instinct for death, which is balanced by his or her life instinct. Externalizing the instinct of death, the human being redirects the internal attitude of this masochistic death instinct through sadism or violence. All the same, when this externalization process of sadism is interrupted or broken through cultural or social forces, this drive is introjected and directed towards the self again and this is where Freud’s concept of death drive paves way for suicide.
In his Beyond the Pleasure Principle as he discusses the death instinct, Freud makes it clear that “the aim of all life is death” (1961, p. 32). Freud simply perceives death as an unavoidable and biological drive and refers to this concept as death instinct/drive and Thanatos, the Greek word for death. During the process of “life’s march toward death” (Ricoeur, 1970, p. 291), Freud places Eros, the Greek word for love, the sexual reflex of life instinct, as an exceptional factor resisting this instinctive drive for death. For Freud, the instincts are the impulses “inherent in organic life to restore an earlier state of things”, and from this formulation death appears as the earliest form of the things:
It seems, then, that an instinct is an urge inherent in organic life to restore an earlier state of things which the living entity has been obliged to
abandon under the pressure of external disturbing forces; that is, it is a kind of organic elasticity, or, to put it another way, the expression of the inertia inherent in organic life. (Freud, 1961, p. 30)
The pleasure principle, in parallel with the life instinct and Eros, for Freud, looks for steadiness and balance yet it is hindered by the drives of destruction, Thanatos and evenly death. Herein, Eros, “the preserver of all things” (Freud, 1961, p. 46), through the libidinal lust for steadiness and equilibrium within the organism, appears as a life force that “holds all living things together” (p. 44). In this way, within the framework of Freudian pleasure principle, Eros, accompanied by life instinct and sexual instincts, stands as an opposition to Thanatos, the death instinct, the final destructive drive. Accordingly, life stands as a fusion between the desire to live and the desire to die. Within this Freudian formulation, sadism, however, stands as a key unit. Thanks to Eros, sadism, that is the externalization of the death instinct, is transformed from “the desire to die into the desire to kill” and in this way, self-destructive drive is relieved and turned into “a useful ally in the erotic task of maintaining and enriching life” (Brown, 1985, p. 80). In his essay The Ego and The Id published in 1923, Freud clearly asserts that life is an
13 equilibrium between Eros and Thanatos by stating that “these two classes of instincts are fused, blended, and alloyed with each other” (Freud, 1989, p. 38). Within this ambivalent fusion of the death and life instincts, however, there arises a new question, which Freud directs in Beyond the Pleasure Principle:
How can the sadistic instinct, whose aim it is to injure the object, be derived from Eros, the preserver of life? Is it not plausible to suppose that this sadism is in fact a death instinct which, under the influence of the narcissistic libido, has been forced away from the ego and has consequently only emerged in relation to the object? (Freud, 1961, p. 48)
Freud places his answer within this fusion in positioning Eros with the sadistic attitude through its “sexual function” (Freud, 1961, p. 48). Combined with the destructive drive, Eros gains the aggressive elements further leading for “the function of overpowering the sexual object to the extent necessary for carrying out the sexual act (p. 48). When the Freudian perspective of the fusion of Eros and Thanatos is taken into retrospect, however, it is identified that his approach is insufficient to prevail against the dichotomy of life and death; thus, his theorization of the innate destructive and preservative drives motivates hopelessness within the battle simply because “Life tries to conquer death; but, more often than not, it losses the battle” (Mikhailova, 2006, p. 21).
The sexual function, for Freud, or in other words the single sexual energy, however, is not the only force in fuelling Eros to act against and resist the death drive. Herein, two sexual powers are conjugated together to rise against the defiance and aggression of Thanatos, for which Ricoeur notes:
The replacement of the libido by Eros points to a very specific purpose of the new instinct theory. If the living substance goes to death by an inner movement, what fights against death is not some thing internal to life, but the conjugation of two mortal substances. Freud calls this conjugation Eros; the desire of the other is directly implied in the emergence of Eros; it is always with another that the living substance fights against death, against its own death, whereas when it acts separately it pursues death through the circuitous paths of adaptation to the natural and cultural environment. Freud does not look for the drive for life in some will to live inscribed in each living substance: in the living substance by itself he finds only death. (Ricoeur, 1970, p. 291)
In this Freudian understanding, it could be proposed that within the context of this life-long polarised battle between death drive and life drive, for the triumph of Eros, the self, or the living substance, is supposed to attach or relate itself to an object in order to survive. Nevertheless, when this attachment turns to be too extreme, the object may now
cease being “a useful ally in the erotic task of maintaining and enriching life” (Brown, 1985, p. 80) against destructive instinctive forces. Instead, the attached object would begin to be a unit further instilling death. Herein, blinking again at Freudian concept of melancholia, the process of ego-identification with the attached object is a key point in paving the way for the human being to self-destruction, which Freud obviously notes in his Mourning and Melancholia as it follows:
..the ego can kill itself only if, owing to the return of the object-cathexis, it can treat itself as an object—if it is able to direct against itself the hostility which relates to an object and which represents the ego's original reaction to objects in the external world. Thus, in regression from narcissistic object-choice the object has, it is true, been got rid of, but it has nevertheless proved more powerful than the ego itself. In the two opposed situations of being most intensely in love and of suicide the ego is overwhelmed by the object, though in totally different ways. (Freud, 1959, pp. 162-163)
Thus, within the framework of object-attachment and the related ego-identification understanding, when a person commits suicide, apart from killing himself or herself, the person also destroys the object which s/he is attached to and identifies with. Thus, the object proves to be more powerful than the ego and it eventually devastates the ego. Within the same line with Freud, since suicide is mostly related to the self-directed hostility, anger, rage or hatred against the introjected object, many theorists refer to suicide as self-directed aggression, retroflexed anger or “murder in the 180th degree”, or “veiled aggression” (Leenaars, 2004, p. 48).
All in all, when Freudian approach to suicide is analysed, it is inevitable to identify that he places a huge role for sadism or sadistic urges in the way that takes the person to self-destruction. Accordingly, in his Mourning and Melancholia, he states:
It is this sadism alone that solves the riddle of the tendency to suicide which makes melancholia so interesting—and so dangerous. So immense is the ego’s self-love, which we have come to recognize as the primal state from which instinctual life proceeds, and so vast is the amount of narcissistic libido which we see liberated in the fear that emerges at a threat to life, that we cannot conceive how that ego can consent to its own destruction… The analysis of melancholia now shows that the ego can kill itself only if, owing to the return of the object-cathexis, it can treat itself as an object—if it is able to direct against itself the hostility which relates to an object and which represents the ego’s original reaction to objects in the external world (Freud, 1959, p. 162-163)
Later, in his The Ego and the Id, Freud maintains his stress upon the unavoidable role of sadism within the context of his discussion on suicides to be committed as
self-15 sacrifices, in which the function of superego or the conscience is inescapably high. For him, sadism gets its roots within the superego, and working together with both sadistic impulses and urges of the superego, it develops severity towards the ego, which may eventually drive it to self-destruction and self-aggression:
How is it that the super-ego manifests itself essentially as a sense of guilt (or rather, as criticism-for the sense of guilt is the perception in the ego answering to this criticism) and moreover develops such extraordinary harshness and severity towards the ego? If we turn to melancholia first, we find that the excessively strong super-ego which has obtained a hold upon consciousness rages against the ego with merciless violence, as if it had taken possession of the whole of the sadism available in the person concerned. Following our view of sadism, we should say that the destructive component had entrenched itself in the super-ego and turned against the ego. What is now holding sway in the super-ego is, as it were, a pure culture of the death instinct, and in act it often enough succeeds in driving the ego into death, If the latter does not fend off its tyrant in time by the change round into mania. (Freud, 1989, p. 53-54)
Now freed and released, the sadistic destructive impulses against the object remain in the id, and they are not embraced by the ego, which in return “struggles against them with reaction-formations and precautionary measures” (Freud, 1989, p. 54). Superego, however, blames the ego for these tendencies. Though the ego guards itself “against the instigations of the murderous id and against the reproaches of the punishing conscience” (p. 54), and within this struggle the ego is in a way accomplished:
It succeeds in holding in check at least the most brutal actions of both sides; the first outcome is interminable self-torment, and eventually there follows a systematic torturing of the object, in so far as it is within reach. (Freud, 1989, p. 54)
According to this perspective, having the death drive on its sphere, the super-ego becomes a destructive power with the help of accompanying and cooperative function of the ego and the id. On one hand, as Freud makes it clear in his The Economic Problem of
Masochism, the id serves as a “libidinal satisfaction” and “an erotic component”, without
which “the subject's destruction of himself cannot take place” (2001, p. 170). On the other hand, the ego serves as an element that further requires punishment and chastisement in order to cope with and relieve the tremendous sense of guilt. Therefore, in addition to suffering and discomfort, the superego also helps the creation of relief and pleasure to the subject. Accordingly, within the context of suicide, the destructive super-ego and the masochistic ego complement one another for an escape from discomfort and also for
vigorously pursuing pleasure and the related erotic satisfaction, as Freud makes his argument clear:
The phenomena of conscience, however, lead us to infer that the destructiveness which returns from the external world is also taken up by the super-ego, without any such transformation, and increases its sadism against the ego. The sadism of the super-ego and the masochism of the ego supplement each other and unite to produce the same effects. It is only in this way, I think, that we can understand how the suppression of an instinct can—frequently or quite generally—result in a sense of guilt and how a person's conscience becomes more severe and more sensitive the more he refrains from aggression against others. (Freud, 2001, p. 169)
Although Freud places much of the blame on the super-ego for its deathliness and destructiveness caused by super-ego’s retributory role, there is much controversy among the following theorists regarding whether the emphasis would on the sadism of the super-ego, or the masochism of the super-ego, or simply both. In his “Mechanism of Depression”, Edward Bibring, as a post-Freudian psychanalyst, for example, asserts that depression and the related suicidality “stems from a tension within the ego itself, from an inner-systemic conflict (1968, p. 164). He advocates the notion that rather than being confronted or chastised by the super-ego, it is the ego’s incapability to keep up with the high-level ambitions and unachievable desires and its rejection to change these unrealistic goals that eventually brings the ego’s death (p. 164).
For Freudian classical psychoanalysts, the concept of suicide refers to multiple, various and ambivalent meanings, ranging from the achievement and the pleasure of the ego to the vigorous pain and suffering that the ego cannot tolerate. Though the reasons of suicidalities change, the whole intentions of self-destruction could be both life-oriented and death-oriented. Suicide is also perceived as an act that causes a tension-free state where the constancy principle returns, and the subject is deep within Nirvana. As Freud’s earlier approach to Nirvana is analysed, it would be gathered that he refers to the concept as homeostasis, the state when all the tensions are released; therefore, he primarily associates the state of Nirvana to his pleasure principle. Yet, later his conceptualization changes and attains the connotation of death. Brown, however, questions this later developed pessimistic Nirvana-death combination of Freud, and he believes that Freud failed to see that it is the state of Nirvana where life and death are both integrated:
Faustian characters as we are, we cannot imagine "rest," "Nirvana," "eternity'' except as a cessation of all activity, in other words, as death. What our argument is reaching for is not death rather than life but a
17 reconciliation of life and death. We have therefore to sustain the possibility
of activity (life) which is also at rest. (Brown, 1985, p. 95)
Thinking that “Freud was always a dualist” (Ricouer, 1970, p. 292), Freudian psychoanalytical approach to suicide mainly manifests two crucial characteristics. Firstly, it is ambivalent and seemingly dualist. Secondly, it is inconsistent. Although Freudian approach basically relies on dualisms and antagonisms of instincts, “the distribution of the opposed terms and the nature of the opposition itself” always opt to change within his theory (p. 292). The new introductions to his approach, like bringing narcissism to the duality of ego instincts and sexual instincts, would not replace the present duality, “but actually reinforces it” (p. 292). The distinction remains the same; narcissistic libido of the ego is on the side of Eros and life, and ego-instincts are polarized against the sexual instincts just as death instincts are polarized against the life instincts. For Ricoeur, the dualisms and distinctions within Freudian understanding often coincide and cut one another with all their ambivalence and create antagonisms:
…the new dualism is located not on the level of purposes, aims, and objects, but on the level of forces; hence we must not try to make the duality of ego-instincts and sexual instincts coincide with the duality of life instincts and death instincts. The latter dualism cuts across each of the forms of the libido…Object-love is both life instinct and death instinct; narcissistic love is Eros un aware of itself and clandestine cultivation of death. Sexuality is at work wherever death is at work. At this point, however, the dualism of instincts has truly become antagonistic, for it is no longer a question of qualitative differences between hunger and love, as in the first theory of the instincts, nor of differences in cathexis, according to whether the libido turns toward the ego or toward objects, as in the second theory of the instincts; the dualism has become what Civilization and Its Discontents will call "a battle of the giants." (Ricouer, 1970, p. 293)
This ambivalent web of polarizations and contradiction, which is ‘the battle of giants’, exists together and becomes meaningful to achieve the fashion to obviously coexist within the everyday life. Eventually, woven within the life, the human subject is not totally safe from finding a way to destroy his or her own existence through self-destruction.
Within Freudian terminology, the human life is a supersensitive equilibrium between the death instinct and life instinct. Though the person is born to destroy the others, the objects and relatedly himself or herself with destructive urges of Thanatos, s/he is also born to love and live with the preservative urges of Eros, the sexual reflex of
life instinct. Herein, however, to quote Ricoeur, “Sexuality is at work wherever death is at work” (1970, p. 293). Sexual drives, or the libido, also become a life-unit further boosting and reviving the death drive. By making use of the death instincts, the libido aims to achieve its libidinal desires and correspondingly it also becomes a means for the ego and the super-ego to accomplish their destructive and deathly urges.
While for clinical psychiatry, suicide is perceived to be a pathological act, for Freudian psychoanalysis it is rather natural for any subject overwhelmed by guilt, seeking punishment. Within the social context, it is mostly the conscience that drives the person into death; within the psychic context, it is the dilemma of the inner conflicts that pushes the person into death; within the biological context, death is a natural phenomenon. Freud simply proclaims that death was an earlier state, and the human mind seeks “a return to an earlier state,", to the inorganic state (1961, p. 34). “The aim of all life is death” he notes, it is intrinsic to life as its origin, finale and objective (p. 32). While Sartre believes that “Death is a pure fact as is birth; it comes to us from outside and it transforms us into the outside” (1978, p. 545), Freud, on the other hand, perceives death as the genesis, aim and end of life and it is totally intrinsic into life (1961, p. 32). Thus, Freudian viewpoint also perceives the human subject, itself, as death, which is inherently, intrinsically and naturally surrounded by death.
Though ambivalent, contradictory and slippery, while Freud produced grand psychoanalytical discourses regarding death and self-destruction, some theorists consider that the theory of death within his theorization is not sufficiently developed and analysed especially for the clinical cases, which is also a general criticism directed to pro-Freudian theorists like Klein:
Freud’s musings on life and death instincts were intended as a philosophical speculation on larger, biological forces in life in general, not as theoretical concepts meant to be applied directly to clinical phenomena (Greenberg & Mitchell, 1983, p. 350)
Brown also touches upon the same line of criticism, stating that Freud was almost “unable to use the death instinct in his own later clinical writings” (1985, p. 81). Also, Yalom focusses on “Freud’s avoidance of death”, claiming Freudian analysis of death instinct is limited within the context of “clinical and theoretical considerations” (1980, p. 59).
19 It is sure that the concept of death, or death instinct within his terminology, was a unit of philosophical muse for the theorizations of Freud; all the same, his clinical handling and experience of death instinct are also regarded as unsatisfactory:
Freud may have used concepts of life and death instincts to illuminate clinical facts, but he never suggested that these forces have a phenomenological basis in experience. For him the life and death instincts were conceived of as properties of biological tissue tending toward the creation and the breaking apart, respectively, of complex biological structures. As such, they give birth to, or are manifested in, libido and destructiveness, which carry out the tasks of connecting things or disconnecting things respectively. For Freud, libido and aggression, not the life and death instincts, are the originators of experience, in the bodily tensions through which they arise. (Greenberg & Mitchell, 1983, p. 351)
Apart from Melanie Klein, Freud’s concept of death instinct is not much appreciated and accepted committedly, rather his concept faced great criticism and suspicion even among most Freudian psychoanalysts. However, Klein integrates Freudian understanding of death instinct as a cornerstone into her theory. Her psychoanalytical contributions are regarded “as largely consistent with Freud’s original investigations and minimize differences”, and thus her approaches are perceived as “extensions and perfections of Freud’s concepts.” (Greenberg & Mitchell, 1983, p. 299). Klein, whose central reformulations centralize upon the nature of the drives and the origin and nature of objects specifically within the children’s psychology, uses death instinct as key concept and expands on the related Freudian approach by introducing a new metapsychological perspective that can be integrated into the daily life. In a way, her approach takes the Freudian death instinct from the philosophical intellection into the phenomenological sphere.
The death instinct that Freud acknowledged in Beyond the Pleasure Principle as a self-destructive urge that stems from aggression, the independent energy, becomes a concept absorbed and expanded by Klein specifically with its focus on aggression. Klein, who initially believed that the child is preoccupied with the mother’s body as a motivation of pleasure and knowledge, changes her viewpoint claiming that the motivation of the child is no more than the aggressive concepts of control, power and destruction: “the dominant aim is to possess himself of the contents of the mother’s body and to destroy her by means of every weapon which sadism can command” (Klein, 1975, p. 236). Accordingly, the Kleinian psychoanalysis acknowledges that death instinct “generates more anxiety than does the life instinct” (p. 57).
In her theoretical text “On the Theory of Anxiety and Guilt”, Klein further expands upon her approach to death instinct when she elaborates on the sources of anxiety. For Klein, starting from and even during the painful and traumatic process of birth, the struggle starts between the death instinct and life instinct, that is the battle between “libidinal and aggressive impulses” (Klein, 1975, p. 62). While the birth represents the struggle between life and death instincts and the process is finalized with the triumph of life, the death instinct continues being its life-long companion. Life, therefore, is a fusion of death instinct and life instinct, the balance of which changes. The first anxiety that the infant faces is accordingly caused by the death instinct:
…anxiety is aroused by the danger which threatens the organism from the death instinct; and I suggested that this is the primary cause of anxiety. Freud's description of the struggle between the life and death instincts (which leads to the deflection of one portion of the death instinct outwards and to the fusion of the two instincts) would point to the conclusion that anxiety has its origin in the fear of death. (Klein, 1975, p. 28)
Getting out of the peaceful womb of the mother, the infant is forced to face death, which terrifies him and causes anxiety in him and this encounter and the related anxiety is only the first of the series of other confrontations with death and the fear of death. Klein reverses Freud’s assertion that “the fear of death should be regarded as analogous to the fear of castration” (qtd. in Klein, 1975, p. 29). For her, the acceptance of the presence of a death instinct additionally confirms the idea that “in the deepest layers of the mind there is a response to this instinct in the form of fear of annihilation of life” (p. 29). And relatedly, death instinct shows up as the first cause of anxiety: “Since the struggle between the life and death instincts persists throughout life, this source of anxiety is never eliminated and enters as a perpetual factor into all anxiety-situations” (p. 29). Born with this intrinsic destructive instinct and with the fear of annihilation and helpless against “the internal and external dangers”, the infant feels death instinct as “an overwhelming attack, as persecution” (p. 31). And s/he straightforwardly directs and reflects the death instinct outwards:
…this experience has the effect of making the external world, including the first external object, the mother's breast, appear hostile. To this contributes the fact that the ego turns the destructive impulses against this primary object. The young infant feels that frustration by the breast, which in fact implies danger to life, is the retaliation for his destructive impulses towards it and that the frustrating breast is persecuting him. In addition, he projects his destructive impulses on to the breast, that is to say, deflects the death instinct outwards; and in these ways, the attacked breast becomes the external representative of the death instinct. (Klein, 1975, p. 31)
21
The maternal breast becomes the primarily encountered object of persecution for the infant and it also poses an internal threat as the frustrating object is again in the ego and internally intimidates the self; that is how the breast turns out to be “the external representative of the death instinct” (Klein, 1975, p. 31). Klein proposes that the same is also the case for the father’s penis and the father, himself, which is also devoured within the phantasy of the child:
The fear of being devoured by the father derives from the projection of the infant's impulses to devour his objects. In this way, first the mother's breast (and the mother) becomes in the infant's mind a devouring objectand these fears soon extend to the father's penis and to the father. At the same time,
since devouring implies from the beginning the internalization of the devoured object, the ego is felt to contain devoured and devouring objects. Thus, the super-ego is built up from the devouring breast (mother) to which is added the devouring penis (father). These cruel and dangerous internal figures become the representatives of the death instinct. Simultaneously the other aspect of the early super-ego is formed first by the internalized good breast (to which is added the good penis of the father), which is felt as a feeding and helpful internal object, and as the representative of the life instinct. The fear of being annihilated includes the anxiety lest the internal good breast be destroyed, for this object is felt to be indispensable for the preservation of life. The threat to the self from the death instinct working within is bound up with the dangers apprehended from the internalized devouring mother and father, and amounts to fear of death. (Klein, 1975, p. 30)
Per this formula, through the breast and the penis, the mother and the father represent the persecuting objects for the infant, and as the child internalizes them, s/he develops a super-ego which is composed of the devouring breast and penis. These internalized dangerous and disturbing figures turn out to be the representatives of death drive. Within this line, Klein’s approach to death instinct shows a gyroscopic or circular feature: the destructive instinct is directed outwards the self, yet it returns with a modification under the disguise of super-ego.
Super-ego, within Freud’s terminology, functions predominantly as a unit of punishment; however, within the Kleinian approach it has a more complicated structure. Though Klein seems to construct the super-ego with death instinct that encroaches into the objects, her construction of the super-ego also preserves love and life. The breast has a good and positive value, carrying the life instinct since it has a nurturing function by supplying food, warmth and security for the infant. Accordingly, the good breast, along with the good penis, is internalized within the infant and they function as the units of life
instincts for the subject. Here comes the ambivalence and complicatedness of Klein’s formula as the infant gets interacted with two polarized positive and negative objects that s/he internalized, the good and bad breast, as well as the good and bad penis:
The activity of the death instinct deflected outwards, as well as its working within, cannot be considered apart from the simultaneous activity of the life instinct. Side by side with the deflection of the death instinct outwards, the life instinct—by means of the libido—attaches itself to the external object, the gratifying (good) breast, which becomes the external representative of the life instinct. The introjection of this good object reinforces the power of the life instinct within. The good internalized breast, which is felt to be the source of life, forms a vital part of the ego and its preservation becomes an imperative need. The introjection of this first loved object is therefore inextricably linked with all the processes engendered by the life instinct. The good internalized breast and the bad devouring breast form the core of the super-ego in its good and bad aspects; they are the representatives within the ego of the struggle between the life and death instincts. (Klein, 1975, p. 32)
The subject now is to protect the self from the interior danger and also guard the good objects from the hazards of the detrimental companions. These two versions of the objects are located in the super-ego and therefore they exist in unsafe juxtaposition to one another, wherein, for Klein, the demolition of the good objects by their detrimental companions seems realistic (1975, p. 32). The infant, therefore, carries the task to “preserve, repair or revive the loved objects” (p. 35) that supply life, from those inholding the death instinct, persecution, causing further “persecutory anxiety” which “in turn reinforce his aggressive impulses and phantasies against the external and internal objects felt to be dangerous” (p. 32). Thus, the related split represents the core of paranoid-schizoid position because the infant, in his or her adult life would develop “fears of persecution”, which is “the feeling that there is a hostile agency which is bent on inflicting on him suffering, damage and ultimately annihilation” (p. 32). However, this splitting also serves as a guard and protection against the prospective annihilation of life.
Klein, like Freud, attempts to refute the idea that childhood is a sphere of idyllic innocence and peaceful serenity. The experience of the Kleinian infant or child is totally scary for him or her; the infant is threatened by surrounding frustrating objects that attempt to destroy and persecute him or her. Totally threatened, the infant, however, strongly desires to destruct his or her ego and self. Yet, s/he evades from this strong destructive desire by externalizing it outwards, wherein it is transformed into various destructive, frustrating, devouring and persecuting objects. The infant is to survive among
