Most are familiar with Freud’s concepts of Eros and Thanatos; they just know them by different names; love and death.
Origins and Mythology of Thanatos and Eros
The terms Eros and Thanatos originally come from Greek mythology. Eros was the God of love and desire; his counterpart within Roman mythology is the more familiar God, Cupid.
It has been argued that Eros has two possible origins: the first theory states that Eros was the son of the Goddess Aphrodite. The second suggests that "Eros emerged from Chaos…along with Gaia (the earth) and Tartarus (the Underword)." [1]
Thanatos, in contrast to Eros, was the Greek God of death and the son of Nyx (the Goddess of night). Freud used these mythical figures to describe the life and death drives that co-exist within the psyche.
Eros inspires us to strive for individual happiness and forms our wishes to unite with others. It drives living organisms to develop. Thanatos drives us toward a return to the inorganic. According to Freud, these two forces fight each other, and their conflict and interaction determine the development of individual life and culture. [2]
Eros and Thanatos in the Sadomasochistic Relationship
Freud argued that love and death, Eros and Thanatos permeate all relationships. However, these concepts are most actively at work in the sadomasochistic relationship.
For Freud, the sadomasochistic relationship has two extremes: Eros is present at one pole and Thanatos at the other. The relationship is centred in-between these two, though it moves back and forth between both Eros and Thanatos.
The Compulsion to Repeat
One wonders, considering Eros and Thanatos, how the ego – the rational and controlled portion of the psyche, can allow the individual to experience behaviours which are not only unpleasurable, but which actually incite pain and humiliation.
Quite simply, the repetition of negative behaviours, or, "the compulsion to repeat," Freud argued, outweighed the desires of the pleasure principle.
Origins of the Narcissistic Scar
For most individuals, the reasons why we compulsively repeat negative behaviours can be found in childhood: the child initially is controlled by the id. However, as the child grows, it learns that its desires cannot always be fulfilled; it is subjected to the ‘reality’ principle. This realisation is distressing for the child; it leaves behind it the ‘narcissistic scar’, and feelings of inferiority.
The remains of the "narcissistic scar" causes certain behaviours to manifest in both adults and children; most noticeably, the individual will continue to place themselves, albeit subconsciously, in situations and relationships in which they will have the opportunity to replicate harmful behaviours, which raise the same feelings of inferiority.
As with many of Freud's psychoanalytic theories, the cause of the playing out of Eros and Thanatos within relationships can be located through careful analyses of both the individual and their past events. The experiences of the child will act as a subconscious template which come to form all future experiences, especially those relating to the relationships that we will form.
Sources:
- [1] Loggia, Mythography: Eros [Online]. [Accessed 30/04/09], 1997-2008, Available from Loggia.com.
- [2] Bunnin, N., & and Jiyuan, Y., Blackwell Reference Online, Eros: Freud [Online]. [Accessed 30/04/09], 2004, Available from BlackwellReference.com
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