Adrian Carr
Death, like taxes, is said to be inevitable. Yet, in Western societies at least, the topic of death and mortality is not something that is easily talked about in general conversation. When it is discussed it is often couched in euphemism and, commonly, in a context that suggests that the finality of it might be transcended in a spiritual sense. Perhaps, even in the sense of being immortal through the written word. Such is our general avoidance and repulsion for the topic of death that Beverley Clack has recently argued that in Western societies "human culture … is … defined by the attempt to overcome the knowledge of human mortality" (Clack, 2002, p. 61). Plastic surgery, cosmetics and the like are employed to keep us looking young, thus avoiding the obvious signs of mortality.
Death is often conceived as simply a single event, hopefully after a long time — an event that occurs "peacefully". It is dealt with in an almost asocial kind of manner with a feeling that it is a private event to be hidden away from more public discourse. Death also seems to be viewed as something that is unrelated to what we are doing in our lives and in our organisations. Well, at least in the organisation discourse there appears to be little discussion that suggests otherwise. In fact, it is rare to see anything written in the organisation discourse on this topic except in the instance of an obituary notice for a very significant organisation theorist — and, even this form of recognition is rare. Burkard Sievers is a notable exception. He makes the simple observation that it "is obvious that through our common neglect of death and mortality our life is losing its frame" (Sievers, 1990, p. 321). The idea that life and death are intertwined in the living, appears largely to be a foreign concept. Similarly neglected is how this intertwined relationship gets played out and manifests itself in our working lives and in the manner in which we regard our organisations. In regard to the latter, organisations, as entities, seem to have an air of immortality, or at least that seems to be what we project onto their existence.
The death instinct is one of the most controversial of all meta-psychological concepts and many within the psychoanalytic, or psychodynamic , community have refrained from exploring its significance. Some, within this community, have refrained from exploring the significance of this concept as they perceive it to be ambiguous. Others seem disinclined for reasons associated with feelings of being repelled by the name itself. Whatever the reasons, the concept of the death instinct is one that remains relatively unexplored in the social sciences and is certainly rarely mentioned in organisation studies and management discourses. Notwithstanding, there have been some both within and outside the psychodynamic community who have attempted to elaborate upon the concept of the death instinct. Some of those elaborations will be discussed with the intention of highlighting how this theorizing might be relevant to understanding certain behaviors in organisations.
In this paper the psychodynamic
processes associated with contemplating our mortality are discussed. More
specifically, the psychoanalytic notion of the death drive, or Thanatos
as Freud casually dubbed it (it might be recalled from Greek mythology
that Thanatos was the 'angel' of death). To commence our appreciation of
the psychodynamic conception of the death instinct, or Thanatos, we need
to direct our attention to the historical context in which it was
developed and, in particular, to the work of Sabina Spielrein.
The notion of a death instinct: Sabina Spielrein and the Jung -Freud machinations
The notion of a "death instinct" is one that entered the language of psychodynamics around 1910, through the work of Sabina Spielrein. It was a phrase, as we will shortly discover, that Spielrein created and used in context of a perceived linkage with Sigmund Freud's notion of a sexual instinct. It is Spielrein's work in relation to a death instinct for which she is best known, but even this recognition has been slow in coming. Freud mentions her work by way of 'minor' footnotes in his own work (see Freud, 1900/1988, p. 210, footnote 2 added 1914; Freud, 1913/1986, p. 50, footnote 1; Freud, 1920/1984, p. 328, footnote 2 — this footnote is the only citation to her work in relation to the death instinct). It wasn't until the publication of the Freud-Jung letters in 1974 (McGuire, 1974/1991), that we get a glimpse of her significance to psychodynamic theory. Many documents related to her life, work and relationship with Jung and Freud were only recently discovered and have led to scholarly tomes from Aldo Carotenuto (1980/1982) and John Kerr (1994).
These documents, and the works of Carotenuto and Kerr, tell us that Spielrein was born into a Russian Jewish family on 7 November 1885 in Rostov-on-Don. Her mother was a university graduate and her father a businessman. In August 1904, she was admitted as a patient to the Burghölzli Hospital in Zurich — a psychiatric hospital. At this hospital she became Carl Jung's first analytic case. Jung diagnosed her illness as hysterical psychosis. Spielrein was discharged from this hospital in June 1905, but continued analysis with Jung and she also enrolled in the medical school at the University of Zürich. Jung and Spielrein had a 'romantic' involvement during 1908 and into 1909. It was Jung who broke off the relationship. Spielrein had declared to Jung that she wanted his child. Jung and Spielrein had both advised Sigmund Freud of their relationship. Jung, at this time, was a disciple of Freud's and was seen as Freud's anointed successor to lead the psychoanalytic community. After graduating from medical school in 1911, Spielrein moved to Vienna and joined Freud's psychoanalytic group. The 'inappropriateness' of the affair between Jung and Spielrein is speculated as being one of many compounding reasons for the professional and personal split between Jung and Freud in 1913. Spielrein married a Russian Jewish doctor, Pawel Scheftel, in 1912. In 1913 they had a daughter named Renata and in 1925 another daughter they named Eva. After spending time in Germany and Geneva, Spielrein returned to Russia in 1923 and taught at the North Caucasus University, Rostov-on-Don. Her husband had suffered from a progressive disease which, reputedly, drove him insane and eventually resulted in his death in 1938. In 1941 Spielrein, along with her daughters and a group of other Jews, were herded into a synagogue and shot by German troops who were occupying Rostov at that time. Apart from her influence on the work of Jung and Freud, in her lifetime she also influenced many other prominent social scientists including; Jean Piaget, who "underwent didactic analysis with her" (McGuire, 1974/1991, p. 150; Vidal, 2001; Wehr, 2001, p. 141); Alexander Luria; and, Lev Vygotsky.
Spielrein was puzzled by the
question: "Why does this most powerful drive, the reproductive instinct,
harbour negative feelings in addition to the inherently anticipated positive
feelings?" (Spielrein, 1912/1994, p. 155). She, along with her contemporary
psychoanalytic colleague Wilhelm Stekel (1911), had noted that sexual wishes
that appeared in dreams, myths and stories were often associated with images
of death. In contemplating her puzzling question, Spielrein commenced the
expression of her thoughts with a summary of what she took to be "biological
facts" and then specifically linked that summary with an argument about
"destructive-reconstruction events". She argued that at conception:
The male component merges with the female component that becomes reorganized and assumes a new form mediated by the unfamiliar intruder. An alteration comes over the whole organism; destruction and reconstruction, which under usual circumstances always accompany each other, occur rapidly. … The joyful feeling of coming into being that is present within the reproductive drive is accompanied by a feeling of resistance, of anxiety of disgust. … this (latter) feeling directly corresponds to the destructive component of the sexual instinct. (Spielrein, 1912/1994, p. 157)
Spielrein thought that the
destructive component of the sexual instinct was in fact "an expression
of a sexual wish for dissolution" (Kerr, 1994, p. 300). In making this
argument, Spielrein had in mind the work of Élie Metchnikoff, an
expatriate Russian who became head of the Pasteur Institute in Paris and
was a Nobel Prize winner in 1908. Metchnikoff, in his 1903 book The
Nature of Man, had suggested that there may indeed be a natural
desire to die which becomes most evident in later life. However, in contrast
to Metchnikoff, rather than being separate from a 'life' (sexual) instinct,
Spielrein came to the conclusion that thoughts about death were an ever-present
component in the sexual instinct itself. Moreover, Spielrein viewed this
destructiveness as not simply fueled by, or an act of, hatred, but may
be a necessary requirement to allow the emergence of something new. "Close
to our desire to maintain our present condition, there lies a desire for
transformation" (Spielrein, 1912/1994, p. 163).
Drawing upon mythology, Spielrein found further illustrations of how destruction is a cause of "coming into being". Spielrein bridged the gap between the psychological and the mythological spheres through what might be taken as Wagnerian love, where the act of procreation requires self-destruction (see Appignanesi & Forrester, 1992/1993, p. 218). Using the mythological examples of The Flying Dutchman, Tristan und Isolde, Siegfried and Götterdämmerung as well as reference to Adam and Eve, Spielrein argues for the inevitability of love leading to destruction as a transformational act. She concludes that: "Death is horrible; yet death in the service of the sexual instinct, which includes a destructive component, is a salutary blessing since it leads to a coming into being" (Spielrein, 1912/1994, p. 183). In laying the ground for this conclusion, Spielrein (1912/1994, p. 174) suggests the two components of the sexual instinct are such that "the impulse of the positive component simultaneously summons forth the impulse of the negative component and opposes it". More broadly, she draws upon Freud's work to assert that: "In seeking the causa movens of our conscious and unconscious self, I believe that Freud is correct when he accepts striving for pleasure and suppression of displeasure as the bases of all psychic productions" (Spielrein, 1912/1994, p. 159). For Spielrein, the whole notion of the individual should first and foremost to be conceived as "dividual" (Spielrein, 1912/1994, p. 160) i.e., many illnesses and human behaviour are characterised as having, often simultaneously, two antagonistic tendencies. The two components of the sexual instinct being a case example.
On the 26th November 1910, Spielrein notes in her diary that she was worried "that Jung may steal her idea on the death instinct" (Kerr, 1994, p. 313). It seemed that Jung wished to appropriate the idea to add to a review he had already prepared on an address by Eugen Bleuler that was to be given to a meeting of Swiss psychiatrists. The topic of Bleuler's address was a theory about ambivalence where he was to argue that there was an intrinsic balance between every specific emotion and its specific opposite. The address was to be published in the journal Jahrbuch with a response from Jung. It seems that Jung felt that Spielrein's two component notion of the sexual instinct — destructive/dissolving and transforming — would add nicely to explain what Bleuler had neglected in his explanation of ambivalence, namely the relationship to the realm of the sexual. However, it appears that at Spielrein's insistence Jung's review did not include any reference to Spielrein's notion of the sexual instinct.
Three days after making this
entry into her diary, Spielrein gave an address to the Vienna Psychoanalytic
Society on the topic "On Transformation". The report on Spielrein's address
in the minutes of the Society, written by Otto Rank, noted that:
Taking as her point of departure the question of whether a normal death instinct exists in Man [Metchnikoff], Dr. Spielrein endeavors to prove that the component of death is contained in the sexual instinct itself; inherent in that instinct is at the same time a destructive component which is indispensable to the process of coming into existence. The fact that we do not customarily take note of this tendency toward self-destruction is explained in terms of Jung's scheme, according to which two opposing components are the root of all volition; and it is always by very little that one of them prevails. Thus, it usually seems to us that the instinct for becoming prevails; yet, on the basis of a slight shift in the other direction, we see in the sexual instinct only a destructive force. (Kerr, 1994, p. 368)
Rank's reference to "Jung's
scheme" is a curious one , in as much as the two opposing components "scheme"
was in fact Bleuler's more general theory of ambivalence, which Jung had
criticized as being a "biological straitjacket" (Kerr, 1994, p. 369). Spielrein's
conception of the two components of the sexual instinct was significantly
more subtle than Rank's 'blunt' reductionism would suggest. It was not
so much a death instinct per se, but an ever presence within the sexual
instinct such that "sexuality brought with it such themes
as that of dying in the arms of the beloved. Which is a different thing"
(Kerr, 1994, p. 501, italics is original emphasis). To be fair to Spielrein,
the emphasis was on noting the destructive component of the sexual instinct
rather than 'death'. Spielrein clearly viewed the destructive component
of the sexual instinct as something that is implicated in the service of
allowing the emergence of something new. At this time, and indeed even
later, the subtlety of this conception and of its co-presence, dialectic
and coalescence appears to be not fully appreciated by many within
the psychodynamic community (see Kerr, 1994, pp. 501-502). At this juncture,
it should be noted that while Spielrein was the person to inject the term
'death instinct' into the psychoanalytic community, it was not conceived
of as merely a separate 'literal' entity as such, but an ever-present destructive/dissolution
component of the sexual instinct that was implicated in facilitating the
birth of something new.
The notion of a death instinct: Sigmund Freud's contribution
Many within the Vienna Psycho-Analytic Society read Spielrein's argument as particularly related to the sado-masochistic components of sexuality (see Appignanesi & Forrester, 1992/1993, pp. 218-19). Indeed, Freud's footnote acknowledgement of Spielrein's concept of the death instinct is one in which he also reads into her work "the sadistic component of the sexual instinct as 'destructive' " (Freud, 1920/1984, p. 328, footnote 2). Freud also observes, in that same footnote, that "these discussions … give evidence of the demand for a clarification of the theory of the instincts such as not yet been achieved". As some have noted, this reading of Spielrein's work amounted to a significant "distortion" (Appignanesi & Forrester, 1992/1993, p. 220), completely ignoring the transformative principle that was linked to the destructive component of the sexual instinct.
It is in his 1920 work, entitled Beyond the Pleasure Principle, that Freud (1920/1984) starts to discuss the notion of a death instinct within a clarification of a theory of the instincts. He does however, very shortly after this work, feel the need to expand even further upon these ideas due to his revised theory of the topography of the mind. This expansion of his views is articulated in his volume entitled The Ego and the Id (1923/1984) with Section IV — "The two classes of instinct" — containing a more elaborated account within the context of his revised theory of the mind.
In his second theory of the mind, Freud (1923/1984; 1926/1983; 1933/1988; 1940/1986) posited a topography of the now famous realms or provinces he dubbed the id, ego, and superego. This topography, presented in his “unassuming sketch” (Freud, 1933/1988, p. 11), was not meant to be taken as a literal pictorial representation, as he insisted that psychical processes have an intangible quality (Freud, 1933/1988, p. 112). The metaphorical fiction called the mind, and its fictive constructs, gave Freud an imagery to capture what he believed to be specific and interactive processes. The ego is, according to Freud, that realm of the mind that uses logic, memory, and judgment appropriately to seek and to satisfy the unconscious biological urges, drives, or instincts of the id. The ego must resolve whether to satisfy the demands of the id, postpone satisfaction, or suppress the demands. It must take into account the reality of the external world, i.e., the conditions this external world imposes upon the form/expression and appropriate timing for the satisfaction of the demands of the id — thus, operating in accordance with what Freud dubbed the "reality principle". In making such a decision another aspect that needs to be considered by the ego is the social acceptability and constraints involved in carrying through the demands of the id. These societal “rules” are part of the realm of the superego. The superego takes on the rules of conduct that are demanded by parents (through the Oedipus or Electra complex) and other significant authority figures. Through the process of identification the superego gains its script, which guides the ego in its functioning in both a positive and negative manner. Badcock elegantly captures this important dynamic when he says, “The superego provides a sense of moral and aesthetic self-judgement (conscience and values, in other words), both in a positive sense as acting as an ego-ideal and in the negative one in performing the role of censor of the ego’s wishes ... Failure to meet the demands of the superego creates feelings of moral anxiety” (Badcock, 1988, p. 122, original emphasis; see also Carr, 1994, p. 211; Laplanche & Pontalis, 1988, p. 145).
Principally from the "conjunction" (Freud, 1923/1984, p. 350) of the two works, Beyond the Pleasure Principle and The Ego and the Id, we can gain a fairly comprehensive view of how Freud viewed the death instinct. This is not to say that this comprehensive view was to be easily understood by his followers for these works are expressed in a convoluted and somewhat ambiguous manner. For example, there are revisions of his ideas within the same work and there are glides of logic in the chains of connection of one idea with another — connections which, in some cases, are themselves very questionable. "One has to read between the lines and, to some extent, criticise and reinterpret what Freud wrote" (Lind, 1991, p. 60). Without reading too much between the lines, or mapping all the twists and turns within his own works, we can note, in 'bold relief' as it were, Freud's emergent view of the death instinct.
In keeping with his revised theory of the mind, Freud clearly viewed the death instinct as a class of instincts emanating from the id. The death instinct was conceived as being involved in a psychodynamic relationship with Eros. Freud often employed ideas and figures from classical mythology to give a more embodied sense to his more abstract ideas. Again from Greek mythology, Eros is the god of love and the term is generally associated with love. Freud uses the term Eros as a synonym for the "life instinct" — which was itself a conflation of what Freud had previously referred to as the sexual instinct. In this context Freud uses the term Eros as standing in 'opposition' to Thanatos, the death instinct. The term Thanatos is not used by Freud in his works, but according to his close friend, colleague and official biographer, Earnest Jones, Freud used the term in everyday conversation as shorthand to refer to the death instinct (see Jones, 1957, p. 295). Thanatos is a term that certainly captured the implied relationship that Freud claimed existed between the life instinct and the death instinct, in as much as they were to be thought of as adversaries. Freud had a particular view about the nature of this adversarial relationship. He argued that the life instinct "seeks to force together and hold together the portions of living substance" (Freud, 1920/1984, p. 334), whereas the death instinct is to be found in the pull toward dissolution, fragmentation and often "expressing itself as an instinct of destruction" (Freud, 1923/1984, p. 381). The death instinct "rushes forward so as to reach the final aim as swiftly as possible", the life instinct "jerks back to a certain point to make a fresh start and so prolong the journey" (Freud, 1920/1984, p. 313). For Freud, Eros (the life instinct) is a class of instincts that comprise both "the uninhibited sexual instinct proper" and "the self-preservative instinct" (Freud, 1923/1984, p. 380). In contrast Thanatos (the death instinct) is a class of instincts that has as its task "to lead organic life back into the inanimate state" (Freud, 1923/1984, p. 380).
Sigmund Freud, and so too his
daughter Anna Freud (see Anna Freud, 1952/1992, pp. 51-64), stressed that
while instinct theories are really in the realm of biology, psychology
is concerned with such theories in so far as they make a "constant claim
on the mind and urges the individual to take certain actions" (Anna Freud,
1952/1992, p. 58). Of particular interest was the manner in which "the
two classes of instinct are fused, blended, and alloyed with each other"
(Freud, 1923/1984, p. 381, italics is added emphasis) such that they manifest
themselves in psychological representation. Freud (1920/1984; 1923/1984)
noted a number of important manifestations in the manner in which the death
instinct, as a class of instincts, becomes expressed in psychological and
behavioural terms. These were that the death instinct:
Freud cheerfully admits
that "since the assumption of the existence of the instinct is mainly based
on theoretical grounds, we must also admit that it is not entirely proof
against theoretical objections" (Freud, 1930/1985, p. 313). Elsewhere he
notes that "the theory of the instincts is so to say our mythology. Instincts
are mythical entities, magnificent in their indefiniteness. In our work
we cannot for a moment disregard them, yet we are never sure that we are
seeing them clearly" (Freud, 1933/1988, p. 127).
Freud's dual-instinct theory in which there are two classes of instinct, life and death, is in sharp contrast to that of Spielrein who, as we previously noted, put forward the view that the death instinct was ever-present as a destructive/dissolution component of the sexual instinct and was implicated in facilitating the birth of something new. For Freud, the manner in which the death instinct, as a class of instincts, becomes manifest in psychological and behavioural was much broader than that conceived by Spielrein. The emphasis in Spielrein's work was such to give prominence to the destructive aspect of the 'death' instinct. Freud also viewed the death instinct as "expressing itself" as a significant "instinct of destruction" (Freud, 1923/1984, p. 381, italics is original emphasis). He was drawn to comment further about the death instinct expressing itself in the aggressive and destructive behaviour displayed in World War 1.
In his volumes Civilization and Its Discontents (1930/ 1985) and Why War? (1933/1985), Freud expanded upon the relationship of his topographic of the psyche and the expression of the death instinct as an instinct of destruction. He argued that repression, in the form of the reality principle and in the prohibitive aspect of the superego, was a necessary form of social control to curb primitive sexual and aggressive or destructive impulses. Contrary to many simplified views on Freud's ideas about the liberation from inner repressive regimes, good mental health was not seen as the absence of repression, but rather "the maintenance of a modulated repression that allows gratification while at the same time preventing primitive sexual and aggressive impulses from taking over" (Mitchell & Black, 1995, p. 19). It is the external world and culture, imprinted in the psyche, that help us save ourselves from the excesses of these primitive impulses.
Thus it must be understood that
the death instinct, like the life instinct, while seeking expression, is
subject to repressive psychodynamics which are themselves culturally shaped.
This particular line of argument was to become extremely important for
some philosophical and cultural commentators who came after Freud, such
as Herbert Marcuse (1955, 1964), who tried to understand how the psyche
was subject to exploitative forms of manipulation. As was noted in the
introduction, many within the psychoanalytic community have either ignored
or failed further to develop the idea of a death instinct. A significant
exception is the work of Melanie Klein. It is to the work of Klein that
I now wish to direct our attention to complete the clinical
appraisal of the notion of a death instinct.
The notion of a death instinct: The Kleinian turn
Melanie Klein was a psychoanalyst who was born in Vienna in 1882 and died in 1960. Klein, along with Anna Freud, was a pioneer of child analysis in the psychoanalytic community. Klein's work was extremely influential in the foundation of what has become known as the object-relations school of psychoanalysis. While accepting much of the (Sigmund) Freudian orthodoxy, Klein radically departed from it in relation to the assumption that instincts or drives were simply to 'function' as energy to be discharged in some manner. For Klein, a drive always presupposed an object. Freud, of course, also emphasized objects but in the context of them being targets for the discharge of instincts. Klein, however, viewed the object in a much more interactive manner with the psyche such that objects, and the fantasies and memories they trigger may be a source of persecution or, on the other hand, reassurance.
Throughout Klein's collected works (see Klein, 1975a-d), her vision of human experience was one based upon two primitive modes of relating to the world: one is an adoring, caring and loving mode, the other is characterised by destructiveness, envy, spite and hatred. In contrast to Freud, Klein argues that we are born with an ego rather than it being a later outgrowth of the id, responsible for mediating the demands of the id with the outside environment. Klein argues that the primitive developing ego struggles to deal with the ever-present anxiety that seems to come from the threat of fragmentation and disintegration. The fear of total disintegration is seen synonymously as a fear of death. Freud did not accept the idea of an infant or child having any comprehension of death and, indeed, saw it developing later in life as an extension of a fear of castration. Klein viewed the death and life instincts, or drives, as generating conflict that requires the initial defence mechanisms of splitting, projection and introjection. Subsequently the ego seeks to split off death and life drives and projects outward.
Klein explains this Manichaean world of the infant in terms of the importance of resolving the ambiguity and conflict posed by the mother's breast. The breast is a good object and bad object at one and the same time. The breast gratifies and frustrates and the infant will simultaneously project both love and hate onto it. On the one hand the infant idealises this ‘good’ object but on the other hand the ‘bad’ object is seen as terrifying, frustrating and a persecutor threatening to destroy both the infant and the ‘good’ object. The infant projects love and idealises the good object, but goes beyond mere projection in trying to induce in the mother the feelings toward the bad object for which she must take responsibility — a process called projective identification. The good object also inspires a degree of envy in as much as the infant's need and dependence upon it — experiencing it as being outside its control. Part of the defence is somewhat schizoid: to exaggerate the difference between good and bad objects such that they are more clearly defined. This early stage of development, characterised by fear and suspicion of the breast, Klein termed the paranoid-schizoid position, highlighting “the persecutory character of the anxiety and ... the schizoid nature of the mechanisms at work” (Laplanche & Pontalis, 1988, p. 298). As early as the third month of life, the infant may come to the realisation that it both loves and hates the same breast which Klein refers to as the depressive position. The infant may, as another defence mechanism for this less developed ego, seek to deny [or as Freud (1940/1986) terms ‘disavowal’] the reality of the persecutory object. It is the good breast that becomes the core around which the ego seeks to develop as if it were the grain of sand that yields the pearl (see Klein, 1975c, pp. 178-180). The experience of envy of the good breast is, however, a potential source of interference in that process. While in normal development we pass through this phase, this primitive defence against anxiety (i.e., the paranoid-schizoid position) is a regressive reaction that, in the sense of always being available to us, is never transcended .
Klein attributes greater significance to the first year of life than childhood as a whole and the phantasies and feelings from these earlier experiences are considered highly significant in the manner in which we relate psychologically to the objects that surround us. In this period of the early development of the infant, Klein views the death instinct, or drive, as a purely destructive force that induces anxiety about disintegration and imminent annihilation. In this formulation, envy becomes a major psychological expression of the death instinct. In the paranoid-schizoid position, having contained hatred and destructive urges of the death instinct in the 'bad' object, the good object is supposed to emerge from the split as a place of refuge and core for development of the ego. The death instinct does not yield to the split and, in the form of envy, becomes a damaging force; for it seeks to eliminate the good objects around which the ego seeks to develop and, in so doing, destroying hope. Klein in fact declares that of the seven 'deadly sins', envy is "unconsciously felt to be the greatest sin of all, because it spoils and harms the good object which is the source of life" (Klein, 1975c, p.189). Envy is one of the death instincts destructive impulses that seeks to eliminate the tension created by the split itself — eliminate the good object and one eliminates the discomfort of the tension. The problem is that, in the Kleinian rendering of human development, the aggressive impulses become one way traffic in a manic defence in which the ego is deprived of the essential core for its development. Thus envy poses a barrier to the integrative processes that are involved in the depressive position.
In the broadest possible conception,
if Freud's view of the death instinct could be regarded as a drive discharge
theory, Klein's version would be characterised as an anxiety theory. It
is in the attempt to escape the persecutory anxiety that is generated by
the death instinct, Klein argues that the primitive ego will seek to split
off and project these impulses outside the self in an act that 'creates'
the bad breast. The projection of these impulses outside the self provides
one avenue of escape and in so doing:
a relationship to the original bad object has been created from the destructive force of the death instinct for the purpose of containing the threats posed by that instinct. There is a malevolent breast trying to destroy me, and I am trying to escape from and also destroy that bad breast. (see Mitchell & Black, 1995, p. 93)
Of course, as we have already
noted, the immediate complication from the creation and attempted destruction
of the bad breast is the subsequent realisation that the bad and good breast
belong to an integrated object, the mother. In the sense of the depressive
position that Klein comes to describe, the infant experiences others as
whole objects and anxiety is fuelled by concern for the impact of any aggressive
action toward the loved whole object. Thus:
The frustrating whole object who has been destroyed is also the loved object toward whom the child feels deep gratitude and concern. Out of that love and concern, reparative fantasies are generated, in a desperate effort to heal the damage, to make the mother whole once again. (see Mitchell & Black, 1995, p. 95)
In adult life the frustration
and threat posed by others may become such that we feel threatened and
in the circumstances the object is not experienced as a 'whole' integrated
object but as a bad object and as a defence we may retreat into the paranoid-schizoid
position. The paranoid-schizoid position, that involves the psychodynamic
processes of projection, projective identification and splitting, has been
noted by many writers as significant not only at an level of the individual,
but also at the level of social movements and that of broader group dynamics.
Carr (1997), for example, has noted these dynamics in a 'reading' of the
aftermath of the Oklahoma bombing. Swogger (1994) noted the same psychodynamics
in an appraisal of the environmental movement and argued:
As pointed out by Horwitz (1983) and others, projective identification involves another step beyond blaming: inducing the target of the projection to experience the projected feelings. In face-to-face situations this may involve subtle nonverbal communication or various interpersonal ploys. In public situations, projective identification may involve forms of attack or accusation; legal, financial, or regulatory threats; or manipulation and exaggeration of guilt. ... Wholesale processes of projection and projective identification lead to ‘splitting’ at the social level: whole classes of people, groups, or organizations are condemned while others may be idealized. The world is composed of ‘us’ and ‘them’. (Swogger, 1994, p. 71)
In such social movements
we may find that the leader/authority figure becomes idealised as the group
members, through the process of splitting, collude in their fantasies and
simultaneously deny individually and collectively ‘bad’ parts in themselves
and their leader.
Klein's rendering of the death
instinct emphasises its destructiveness and how that destructiveness is
fuelled by hatred. In contrast to the view of Spielrein, consideration
of a motivation to give birth or to allow the emergence of something new
is certainly not part of the Kleinian vision. Before we consider how these
clinical conceptions of the death instinct are relevant and get played
out in behaviour in work organisations, it is instructive briefly to consider
the work of Herbert Marcuse to understand how the clinical conception of
the death instinct has broader significance, and, in particular, how these
formulations provide insight into the antagonistic character of society.
The notion of a death instinct: The Marcusian turn
Herbert Marcuse, a member of the critical social thinkers known as the 'Frankfurt School', takes up Freud's notion that repression was a necessary form of social control required to curb Eros i.e., sexual impulses, on the one hand, and on the other, the aggressive and destructive emanations of Thanatos, the death instinct. However, Marcuse (1970) suggested that Freud's view was "in need of a decisive correction" (p. 20) such that repression needed to be recognised as both a psychological and a political phenomena. Moreover, he argued that the repressive constraints embedded in the psyche may exceed reasonable bounds such that the death instinct comes to have dominion unnecessarily over Eros. In putting forth his views, Marcuse makes a number of significant extensions of Freud's basic concepts but, in so doing, provides a richer form of analysis as to how social structures in society gain a psychodynamic presence in the individual.
Marcuse embraces Freud's typographical
depiction of the mind with its id, ego, superego, conscious and unconscious
realms but, in a Marxian twist, links the typography to broader (repressive)
institutions.
... parental influence remains the core of the superego. Subsequently, a number of societal and cultural influences are taken in by the superego until it coagulates into the powerful representative of established morality ... now the "external restrictions" which first the parents and then other societal agencies have imposed upon the individual are "introjected" into the ego and becomes its "conscience". (Marcuse, 1955, pp. 31-32)
The super-ego, as
both an ego-ideal and as a censor, is conceived as being fashioned
to accept the systematic social restraints as though they are ‘needs’ that
are to be realized. This psychological embeddness of restraint and the
particular nature of that restraint, Marcuse argues, has to be understood
in a specific historical context “and judged as to whether such systems
of domination exceeded their bounds” (Giroux, 1983, p. 26). Unlike Freud,
Marcuse rejected the notion that legitimate and illegitimate forms of domination
were a natural and permanent feature of civilization. Marcuse was of the
view that each society has material conditions that operate as a reality
principle. The reality principle can take a different form in different
societies. In capitalist societies the specific reality principle that
applies is one based on a performance principle — under whose
rule “society is stratified according to the competitive economic performance
of its members” (Marcuse, 1955, p. 44). This performance principle, Marcuse
believed, had outstripped its historical function and like many of the
performance principles "of advanced industrial societies have been based
on the destructive energies of Thanatos" (Luke, 1994, p. 194). Scarcity
was no longer a universal feature of society and therefore it was no longer
‘necessary’ to submit individuals to the demands of alienating labor that
were engendered through the application of this principle. It was historically
outdated and was in need of replacement. In this context Marcuse noted
that a degree of repression was ‘necessary’, in that it was socially useful
but in this case it was excessive — ‘surplus repression’. Marcuse (1955,
pp. 37-38) captured the relationship of these notions when he argued:
... while any form of the reality principle demands a considerable degree and scope of repressive control over the instincts, the specific historical institutions of the reality principle and the specific interests of domination introduce additional controls over and above those indispensable for civilized human association. Those additional controls arising from the specific institutions of domination are what we denote as surplus-repression ... the modifications and deflections of instinctual energy necessitated by the perpetuation of the monogamic-patriarchical family, or by a hierarchial division of labor, or by public control over individual’s private existence are instances of surplus-repression pertaining to the institutions of a particular reality principle.
In his further examination
of the dynamics of the process of repression, Marcuse extends Freud's theory
of the Oedipus complex (using a male child in his example):
The revolt against the primal father eliminated an individual person who could be (and was) replaced by other persons; but when the domination of the father had expanded into the domination of society, no such replacement seemed possible, and the guilt becomes fatal ... The father, restrained in the family and in his individual biological authority, is resurrected, far more powerful, in the administration which preserves the life of society, and in the laws which preserve the administration ... there is no freedom from administration and its laws because they appear as the ultimate guarantors of liberty. (Marcuse, 1955, pp. 91-92)
The replacement of the parent
by society and the laws which preserve its administration ensures obedience.
The same psyche that hindered the revolt against the parent similarly discourages
revolt against society. Atkinson (1971) incisively captures the essence
of what Marcuse is suggesting:
The individual wants to conform with them because he has internalized the values that legitimize them. But he also has to conform with them, for to break them would involve the powerful psychological constraint of guilt.It is only in this sense that the individual is seen as determined and his nature is being infinitely manipulable by the structure of pre-existing society. The individual does not know he is determined, openly coming to want to behave in ways demanded of him. His basic instincts are, in the process, manipulated and repressed to the extent that he may actually disown or fail to recognize them. Should he consciously wish to act at variance with himself, mechanisms inside his personality make sure that such action fails. (Atkinson, 1971, p. 39)
Freud saw repression as
necessary for society to survive. Marcuse was to highlight how such repression
was not only reproduced within the individual but how, simultaneously,
the individual becomes unwittingly a willing participant in the continuation
of their own servitude. Repression is reproduced both in (through
the super-ego as both an ego-ideal and as a censor) and over
(through the reality principle of the ego that takes note of the institutionalized
repressive agencies in society) the individual (see Carr, 1989). Hence
Marcuse's view that repression is in this sense both a psychological and
political phenomenon. Marcuse suggested that there would be a transformation
of the current performance principle as contradictions continued to emerge
from the operation of the specific reality principle in the various institutions.
Citizens would no longer tolerate what was in fact surplus repression.
Transformation and emancipation of the individual will thus occur through
changes to repressive agencies in society.
In briefly outlining a clinical
appreciation of the death instinct in the work of Spielrein, Freud, Klein
and the socio-cultural rendering in the work of Marcuse, the question now
arises: 'How are these insights relevant to the field of organisation studies?'
It is to this question that I turn our attention.
The notion of a death instinct and the field of organisation studies
In as much as organisations are currently occupied and controlled by human beings, theories about personality and human behaviour are relevant to the field of organisation studies. Theories and issues related to death and mortality would seem important for, as we previously noted, death and mortality frame life itself. Although our awareness of this 'frame' maybe hidden from our conscious, psychodynamic theory suggests it is a significant influence upon everyday human behaviour. Our unconscious motivation can be so strong that we may act in a manner unthinkable to the conscious, yet we remain unaware of the psychodynamics responsible. This paper represents an initial attempt to consider the matter of the death instinct specifically and at least to acknowledge and include the concept of death and mortality in the theorising of behaviour in organisations.
Presently I will come to the
implications of the different psychodynamic theories that have been outlined
in this paper, but I would like very briefly to return to where this paper
commenced: with the observation that organisations, as entities,
seem to have an air of immortality, or at least that seems to be what we
project onto their existence. When we talk about work organisations, we
may reify and to some extent deify the existence of the organisation such
that the organisation itself becomes the target and container of our projections
about immortality. To varying degrees this also has implications for the
manner in which we perceive the split between managers and 'workers'. For
example, Sievers (1990) observes some parallels between work organisations
and tales of the relationship among gods and mortals in Greek mythology.
He notes that Tantalos and Sysiphus tried to defraud the gods of their
immortality and would not allow their contemporary mortals to be part of
their divine immortality, condemning them to alienating and repressive
forms of work. He argues that:
it seems to me, our enterprises have taken over the function of the ancient city; the bigger companies, in particular, tend to symbolize our accepted contemporary notion of immortality. Despite the fact that some of them may go bankrupt again and again, they are built on the underlying assumption that they will exist forever. And according to the underlying splitting it is the managers who, by devoting their lives to the permanent growth and survival of the enterprise, continuously try to prove their own immortality. At the same time, those at the bottom, the workers, even seem to be defrauded of their immortality as they increasingly are converted into production means, tools, cogs, dead-wood or scrap. And to the extent that workers are perceived and treated like things, they are also regarded as non-mortals. (Sievers, 1990, p. 322)
The extent to which this
initial observation has a bearing upon understanding behaviour in organisations,
is something that appears worthy of further investigation. One might ask,
for example, the degree to which so much of the policies related to "down-sizing"
carried the hallmarks of this subliminal dynamic?
If we briefly turn our attention to the clinical appraisal of the notion of a death instinct that comes from the work of Spielrein, Freud and Klein, we can note a number of additional issues which seem to arise from an awareness of mortality and the operation of the death instinct.
Spielrein suggested that the death instinct was an ever-present destructive component of the sexual instinct. This destructiveness was largely conceived, as being in the service of facilitating new birth. Organisations seem to have to constantly deal with the tension of maintaining the status quo and the putative need for change. In this context, similarly relevant here, Freud's rendering of the death instinct suggested that it assumes the form of repetition compulsion with an intended conservative effect on the life instinct. In our approach to the dynamics of organisation change we encounter resistance to change, the cause of which sometimes eludes explanation. Our models of the change process seem unable to explain where this resistance arises. The death instinct would appear to help in this regard because obviously at it's most basic some people are likely to be grieving for the previous structure that they knew well and understood. Thus, the issue is raised of the readiness for change. Some of our most valued employees leave during the grieving process as that process is never transcended by these employees, or rather the organisation fails to effectively respond to that process in a timely manner. Organisations need to be able to take their cues from people's reactions to change. Similarly, Spielrein's imagery of death in the interests of new life — the Wagnerian love we noted earlier with themes like dying in the arms of the beloved. It is acknowledged that organisation change is all about destruction, and/or deconstruction, of the present and 'construction' or birth of the new. In our models of organisation change we do not include the psychodynamics of grieving (see Carr & Zanetti, 1999). Spielrein's work implies we can be attached to the old yet look forward to the new. If the analogue to organisation change, at least in part, involves the process of grieving, then the field of organisation studies should expect to see grieving behaviour and make provision for it as a 'natural' cycle within the change process. A Kleinian lens on organisation change would also reinforce the notion that perhaps it is the identification with the previous 'good' object that is being destroyed. In Klein's view, however, destroying the good object may engender the paranoid-schizoid position and the fears for the ascendance of persecutory objects. For example, when some trusted and revered bosses leave the organisation the subordinates may become anxious about the replacement — perhaps it is to be someone from within the organisation that they have previously demonised. Notwithstanding the difference in Spielrein and Klein's views, the psychodynamics of grieving are implied.
The psychoanalytic literature
(see Rycroft, 1995, pp. 105-106; Moore & Fine, 1990, pp. 122-123) suggests
that mourning seems to have three inter-related and successive phases:
first, denial or rejection of the idea of the loss and often clinging to
the mental representation of the lost “object”; second, resignation, despair
and acceptance of the loss, which involves withdrawal of attachment and
identification with the lost object; and third, adapting to life without
the object which also often involves establishing new relationships and
attachment to a new object. In the work organisation and group setting
some have noted that members of a group may exhibit a variety of behaviors
with respect to the “death” of a leader (or colleague):
Within the group there will be a modest division of labor, some acting as mourners, some as murderers, and others as the dead consultant-leader himself. Still others may seek to raise the dead. In general, however, the tone of this drama is dominated by the experience of deadness, the group's identification with the dead leader. (Alford, 1994, p. 62)
To acknowledge the psychodynamics
of grieving as part of the change process may help all within organisations
understand and interpret this behaviour in a different light.
Also implied is that the change process in organisations needs to be re-thought
to have an underlying theoretic that explicitly assists and gives
time for mourning. Instead of the “beltway bandits” of organisation
reform simply encouraging organisations to replace one set of structures
and processes with new ones, a more acute understanding of the psychological
meaning of change would seem to be in order.
Freud's rendering of the death
instinct draws attention to a range of issues in work organisations. The
antagonism of life and death instincts and the manner in which they become
"fused, blended and alloyed with each other" (Freud, 1923/1984, p. 381)
can be seen in a variety of guises in work organisations. The death instinct
seeks to impede life instincts. One of the conservative effects can be
noted in the death instinct assuming the form of repetition compulsion.
Ritualised forms of control, rules and routines for behaviour are instances
that may might be cited in this regard where meaning seems to have been
extracted from what otherwise might be read as routine organisational behaviour.
Yiannis Gabriel (1999), one of the few to link the death instinct with
behaviour in organisations, insightfully captures this in his discussion
of Gouldner's (1954) study of organisational dynamics in a gypsum mining
company. Gabriel notes:
Some of the time, employees observed these rules in a ritualistic, resigned manner; at other times, they disregarded them, even with the collusion of management. In other circumstances, they tested them and sought to redefine them. Bureaucratic rules make very different psychological demands from those made by moral laws. To the extent that they are observed, they amount to an acting out of a repetition of routinized behaviour, through which individuals achieve the safety of inertia (see Gouldner, 1954). The same compulsive adherence to routines of behaviour are the hallmark of the mindless administrator and the robotic factory-floor worker immortalized by Charlie Chaplin in Modern Times (1936). In both cases, behaviour becomes depersonalized and uniform, devoid of meaning and life, an expression perhaps of the death instinct as a compulsion repetition. (Gabriel, 1999, p. 104)
Of course we recognise that
rules and other forms of control seek to ritualize some forms of behaviour
and in so doing seek to conceal the reasons for such control. If we dare
to think of self-responsibility and autonomy as expressions of the life
instinct and the sources for pleasure and meaning in work, rules and ritualized
forms of control may represent expressions of the death instinct. This
is a different reading of rules and forms of control that warrants our
attention if, to paraphrase Marcuse, we are to re-eroticise the workplace
and reduce surplus repression. From a Kleinian perspective, the rules and
hierarchies of relations are part of establishing some psychological boundaries
and forms of protection against uncertainty and anxiety. The problem with
establishing such organisational or social defences, as Gabriel and Carr
(2002, p. 356) note, is that the projections and introjections "seriously
distort organisational rationality and task". Organisational and social
defences are issues that are particularly apposite in a Kleinian view of
the world for it is the creation of such boundaries that facilitate the
differentiation of self and other and helps to relieve the fear of engulfment
by the other. Secure psychological boundaries that act as lines of defences
allow the individual to more confidently engage with others. The problem
is:
that in containing anxieties organisations often resort to dysfunctional routines which stunt creativity, block the expression of emotion or conflict, and, above all, undermine the organisation's rational and effective functioning. Just as individual defenses immerse the individual in a world of neurotic make-belief detached from reality, so too do organisational defenses immerse their members in collective delusions, in which they pursue chimerical projects or run blindly away from non-existent threats, while disregarding real problems and opportunities. Like the individual neurotic, the organisation may then find itself at the centre of a vicious circle. Just as a neurotic's personal self-delusions deepen the sufferings for which they ostensibly offer consolation, likewise corporate delusions merely re-inforce the malaise of the organisation. (Gabriel & Carr, 2002, p. 357)
Clearly the management of
psychological boundaries and anxiety are matters that the field of organisation
studies needs to devote considerable attention, whether that be understood
through the optic of Freud's theory of the death instinct or that of Klein.
Freud's view of the death instinct also more broadly raised the issue of not only seeking control over externality, but the development of the fantasy of control over the environment. The difference between fantasy and reality can all too soon be blurred and become delusion. In our organisations, and theorising about them, one might be prompted to consider the degree to which we feel it necessary to 'feed' this fantasy of control. Certainly strategic management tools and some theorists within the field of organisation studies appear to promote the notion that organisation dynamics can be managed as though they are a science and technical challenge. Scientific management fueled such an orientation and ushered in the paradigm of the natural sciences, but I wonder if many of our MBA and other management education programs feed this fantasy to the extent that one is deluded about a sense of control and predictability that can be expected in this foreign creature called an organisation?
Freud noted that the death instinct can be inwardly-directed as self destructive behaviour. Obsessional neurosis and masochistic behaviours are some of the clinical outcomes. One sees this behaviour on display and played out by some leaders in organisations. Leader behaviour in such instances is heavily wed to ritual and the obsessional tendencies lead to distrust. One could observe the leader wishing to rely upon procedures and direct supervision rather than trusting the good sense and talents of subordinates. In a somewhat ironic twist, a leader engaging in self destructive behaviour in an organisation suppresses the Eros of others and certainly stifles initiatives for change. Often the organisation, or sections of it, becomes a silo. Our mainstream discourse in organisation studies has witnessed some accounts of leaders' psychopathologies becoming projected into and taking hold in organisation cultures (e.g. Ketes de Vries, 1991; Ketes de Vries, 1993). The work on the death instinct reinforces the need to analyze organisation culture in such a manner.
Freud's work suggested that the death instinct may be sublimated, as in the case of one's competitiveness in working relationships. This would seem to be an instinct that reinforces or is in harmony with the external voice of the capitalist system that has as its reality principle that which Marcuse identified as a performance principle. This broader commentary on the world of work is worthy of further attention for it suggests that competitive performance in the work environment is not merely a 'cultural' construct. The implications of such a view are quite profound if one were to re-organise the workplace to try to install a culture that was not based upon hierarchy, or was at least less dependant upon it.
The major voice of Klein's view of the death instinct directs our attention to the manner in which, in the face of anxiety, we split the world into good and bad objects. In extreme cases it has been noted that individuals and groups enact a form of primitive aggression toward 'bad' (the 'other') objects such that it becomes a "hunger" that takes the form of a fantasy to devour the 'other' who was seen as threatening or persecutory (see Guntrip, 1969, pp. 25-31). The schizoid defence renders an 'us' and 'them' mentality and relations with others become polarized. Actions become misread and minor deficiencies in others become magnified as problem behaviour. Suspiciousness and a guardedness are also engendered and, in some circumstances, can be accompanied by envy. Understanding this realm of psychodynamic processes is one that is capable of engendering a positive contribution to those probing conflict situations in organisations. For example, as has been noted elsewhere (see Carr, 1997), recognizing such processes would alert us to how a situation may become polarized and distortions created that may not only inhibit dialogue, but create an environment in which legitimate questions and issues go unaddressed and judgments become impaired. Similarly, such an understanding might alert us to the inclination to idealize leaders that not only carries a set of unreal expectations of them, but simultaneously alerts us to the manner in which we seem to largely relieve ourselves of a responsibility to reflect and consider issues on their merits. It has also been argued that understanding these dynamics might also make us wary of the way language and processes can be used to manipulate interests (see Carr & Zanetti, 1997; Carr & Zanetti, 2001), and, in particular, the way in which guilt can be unfairly induced in others.
Klein's assessment of the death instinct suggests that those who regress to the primitive defence of the paranoid-schizoid position may come to realise that the fate of the 'bad' object might in some manner be tied to that of the 'good' object. In these cases working through the depressive position would infer some reparative activity and may come with some inner feelings of shame in relation to past actions. In the organisation context one might observe preferential behaviour towards others in a manner that may seem to defy ordinary logic or a logic based upon straightforward merit considerations.
Finally, the work of Marcuse
raises the issue of the manner in which repression is reproduced both within
and over individuals and the extent to which that is "surplus". This issue
is open to extensive reflection, but in the field of organisation studies
one might seek to consider reflexively the degree of complicity of our
field in helping to legitimize or justify what is surplus repression. To
what degree does the field seek to act as part of the repressive regime
and in what aspects does the field generate 'guidance' that is little more
than justifying political servitude? Like other issues in this paper that
stem from considering the death instinct, the intention is to commence
a conversation in our field.
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Copyright - The Author
Dr Adrian Carr is an Associate Professor (Organisation Studies and Applied Social Sciences) and a Principal Research Fellow in the School of Applied Social and Human Sciences at the University of Western Sydney, Australia. Adrian's areas of research interest are psycho-sociological explanations of human behaviour, critical theory, public sector reform, postmodernism and the management of change. Adrian is a member of a number of professional associations and editorial boards, the latter including: Policy, Organisation & Society; the Journal of Management Development; Administrative Theory & Praxis: A Journal of Dialogue in Public Administration; Journal of Organizational Change Management; Radical Psychology: A Journal of Psychology, Politics and Radicalism; TAMARA: Journal of Critical Postmodern Organization Science and, Global Business & Economics Review.
Address for Correspondence
Dr Adrian Carr
School of Social and Applied
Human Sciences
University of Western Sydney
Australia
Email: a.carr@uws.ed.au