The Death Instinct

'Why?' asked Younger. 'To discharge the fear?'

'For a long time I tried to understand it that way,' replied Freud. 'Discharging fear would be pleasurable. At least it would lessen displeasure. Every psychological phenomenon, I thought, was motivated at bottom by the drive to increase pleasure or lessen displeasure. But I was trying to fit facts to theory, when I should have been fitting theory to facts. I had just begun to understand it when you were last here. The war taught me something I should have seen ages ago: we have a drive beyond the pleasure principle. Another instinct, as fundamental as hunger, as irresistible as love.'

'What instinct?' asked Colette.

'A death instinct. More tea, Miss Rousseau?'

'No, thank you.'

'You mean a desire to kill?' asked Younger.

'That's one side of it,' said Freud. 'But fundamentally it's a longing for death. For destruction. Not only someone else's; also our own.'

'You think people want to die?' asked Colette.

'I do,' said Freud. 'It's built into our cells, our very atoms. There are two elemental forces in the universe. One draws matter toward matter. That is how life comes into being and how it propagates. In physics, this force is called gravity; in psychology, love. The other force tears matter apart. It is the force of disunification, disintegration, destruction. If I'm correct, every planet, every star in the universe is not only drawn toward the others by gravity, but also pushed away from them by a force of repulsion we can't see. Within an organism, this force is what drives the animal to seek death, as moths seek a flame.'

'But you can cure it – this death instinct?' asked Colette.

'One cannot cure an instinct, Miss Rousseau,' said Freud. 'One cannot eliminate it. One can, however, make it more conscious and in this way relieve its pathological effects. When an instinct creates in us an impulse that we don't act on, the impulse does not go away. It may subsist unaffected. It may intensify. It may be turned to other objects, for better or worse. Or it may produce pathological symptoms. Such symptoms can be cured.'

'I wouldn't have thought,' said Younger, 'that Luc's muteness aimed at death.'

'No, his muteness has another function. That would be the point of analyzing him – to uncover that function. It's undoubtedly connected to his parents' death, but there's something more too. Possibly their death reminded him of a scene he had witnessed even earlier. Did your father mistreat you, Miss Rousseau?'

'Mistreat me? In what way?'

'In any way.'

'Not at all,' said Colette.

'No? Did he favor you?'

'Luc was his favorite,' said Colette. 'I was a girl.'

Freud nodded. 'Well, it's a pity you can't remain in Vienna, but I don't see how it's possible. Vienna is a much smaller city than New York. You'll be noticed here. The police will have everyone watching; someone will report you.'

'May I ask you a question, Dr Freud?' asked Colette.

'Of course.'

'These two forces you describe,' she said. 'They're good and evil, aren't they? The instinct for love is good, and the instinct for death is evil.'

Freud smiled: 'In science, my dear, there is no such thing as good or evil. The death instinct is part of our biology. You're familiar with chromatolysis – the natural process by which cells die? Every one of our cells brings about its own destruction at its allotted time. That's the death instinct in operation. Now if a cell fails to die, what happens? It keeps dividing, reproducing, endlessly, unnaturally. It becomes a cancer. That's what cancer is, after all – cells afflicted with the loss of their will to die. The death instinct is not evil, Miss Rousseau. In its proper place it's every bit as essential to our well-being as its opposite.'

That night, after Freud had retired and Colette and Luc were installed in one of the children's old bedrooms and the apartment fell silent, Younger smoked a cigarette on the veranda. He had felt claustrophobic inside; on the little balcony overlooking the courtyard, he felt claustrophobic outside as well. A door opened within; Younger imagined it might be Colette, coming to join him.

'No – it's only me,' said Freud's voice behind him. The older man stepped out onto the veranda. 'So what do you think of my death instinct?'

'I'm for it,' said Younger.

Freud smiled. 'You're still at war, my boy. You never demobilized. Ten years ago, I wouldn't have foreseen you as the instinctual kind. You were more – repressed.'

'I read somewhere that repression is unhealthy. A world-famous psychologist has proven it.'

'Whose ideas you don't accept.'

'Ten years ago,' said Younger, reflecting, 'I saw your ideas as moral anarchy. Exploding all propriety. But you were right. I guess I don't believe in morality anymore.'

'Ah yes, that's what my critics say: Freud the libertine, Freud the amoral.' He inhaled the night air – a deep breath of age and judgment. 'It's true, I'm no believer in Sunday school morality. Love thy neighbor as thyself is an absurd principle: quite impossible, unless one has a very unusual neighbor. But when it comes to a sense of justice, I believe I can measure myself with the best men I've known. All my life I've tried to be honorable – not to harm, not to take advantage – even though I know perfectly well that by doing so I've made myself an anvil for others' brutality, their disloyalty, their ambition.'

'Why then?' asked Younger. 'Why do you do it?'

'I could give you a plausible psychological explanation,' said Freud. 'But the truth is I have no idea. Why I – and for that matter my children – have to be thoroughly decent human beings is beyond my comprehension. It is merely a fact. An anchor.'

There was a slight pause before Younger said: 'You think I need an anchor?'

'No. You have one already.'

'You mean a sense of justice?'

'I meant love,' said Freud. 'Which is why this bombing of yours worries me.'

'The Wall Street bombing?'

'Yes. It may be a harbinger of something new. Not its violence – that's to be expected. I was reading the other day a description of one of those happy quarters of the earth where primitive societies flourish in peace and contentment, knowing no aggression. I didn't believe a word of it. Where there are men, there will be violence. Fortunately, the death instinct almost never operates alone. Our two instincts are nearly always obliged to work together – which gives sexuality its violent character, but also tempers the death drive. That's what makes your bombing so troubling.'

'Because it was unalloyed?'

'Exactly,' said Freud. 'The death instinct unbound. Freed from the life instincts, freed from the ideals by which the ego assesses its actions – conscience. Perhaps the war has unleashed it, or perhaps an ideology. Men have always worshipped death. There are death gods in every ancient religion. Goddesses as well, some of them quite beautiful, like Atropos with her shears, cutting life's threads – which is further evidence, by the way, of man's attraction to death. They haven't caught the perpetrators, have they?'

'Of the bombing?' asked Younger. 'Not yet.'

'Perhaps because they're dead.'

It took Younger a moment before he understood: 'You think they killed themselves in the blast – deliberately.'

'Maybe they did, maybe they didn't,' said Freud. 'Maybe they'll give others the idea. But yes, that's what worries me.'

Early the next morning, while Freud was out for his daily constitutional, Oktavian Kinsky called. 'I've come to offer you my services, Mademoiselle,' he said to Colette in the Freuds' sitting room. 'I heard what happened outside the Hotel Bristol last night. I thought I might find you here, and I also thought you might want discreet transportation to the railway station.'

'You're very kind, Count Oktavian,' said Colette. 'I don't know how to thank you.'

'Not at all, Mademoiselle,' he replied. 'A nobleman's first duty is not to the police, but to the beautiful woman the police are pursuing.'