No concept in psychoanalysis is more misunderstood, and none darker than the death drive. Why do we do things that go against our pleasure and repeat our traumas? Why is the repetition of both pleasure and pain at the core of the uncanny being we call human?
In this episode, I trace the beginnings of Freud's idea of the death drive vs pleasure principle, why he thought the sex drive to be master of all, take a trip through Lacan, who saw death at the core even of sex, and lastly Zizek who extends this to our ideology and the idea of immortality
