Eros & Thanatos


"Besides the instinct to preserve living substance and to join it into ever larger units, there must exist another, contrary instinct seeking to dissolve those units and bring them back to their primaeval, inorganic state. That is to say, as well as Eros there [is] an instinct of death"
Sigmund Freud


Since the first time I heard about it, Freud’s theory regarding the death drive, has been difficult to understand. I can get the sex drive, the pleasure principle, but a desire/inclination toward death and annihilation? It just did not seem right.

From what I have read, Thanatos, pushed towards our own destruction (and in the way, created all the aggressive feeling we experience). For Freud, although at the end Thanatos always prevails, the desirable outcome is for Eros as the counterbalancing force, to keep “winning the battle”. Eros is responsible of civilization, Eros urges us to live, to enjoy life. It sounds very appealing; who could ever be tempted by such a gloomy character as Thanatos?

When talking in relation to the way, dividing it in “states”, some authors (I’m thinking De Wit here) talk about the transit from one state to the next; expressing how it is threatening to leave a state behind, since it “...requires us to relinquish our most fundamental and cherished belief: our belief of what is real, our ideas of who we are, how people are, how God is.” Meditators also talk about a fear of annihilation derived from the disappearing of the self. These words sound pretty much like Thanatos language.

So maybe there is a pull towards annihilation, but is not the kind of death Freud had in mind, but an “Ego death” (Ken Wilber has mentioned this many times). The death of the “me” with which I identify (language turns awkward here). Dying to my idea of who I am, of what feels secure and familiar, dying to my attachments, my desires and my little eccentricities. Change is difficult. I know many times I do not what to change so I can clearly imagine (and almost feel) the fear to renounce to who “I” am. It reminds me Jesus words: “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me”. It is almost ironic. Who would have thought that, while Eros is seductively pulling towards the world, Thanatos is virtuously pulling towards Nirvana!

No wonder why not many get enlightened, Eros has always been a cunning fellow...
But then again, what do I know...
Avidyanath© 2006

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