The Birth of the Death Drive

Abstract: This article is based on a presentation given on April 10, 2022, as part of a panel during the international conference” Sabina Spielrein and Early Female Pioneers of Psychoanalysis”. It is an effort to answer the question that was the title of the panel: “Is the Death Drive Gendered?” My answer was, and remains simple: Yes, it is: the death drive is masculine. To say it in a more nuanced and accurate way, the construct of the death drive, as it has been developed in psychoanalysis, is derived from the concept (or conceptual field) that we call “masculinity,” especially as it has been defined and enforced in the late nineteenth and twentieth century in those parts of the world under the sway of Europe’s mindset.