Unbreakable Barriers and the Death Drive
Matthew Helmers |
TEDxRansomEvergladesSchool
• April 2021
“What if there are barriers we don’t want to break?” Dr. Matthew Helmers invites us to contemplate the current world of social distancing, mask-wearing, and the protection of the all-important skin barrier. We begin by recognizing the many ways in which we derive our sense of self merely from the preservation of our ‘personal bubble,’ a process of ego-formation made famous by psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud. But, this talk takes us back to an opposite and often forgotten impulse also proposed by Freud, the poorly named “Death Drive.” Alternately called psychasthenia or the instinct toward renunciation, this impulse pushes us to move beyond the confined barriers of our skin, and to explore the ways in which our sense of self is bound up with the wider environment. By balancing the instinct toward formation with the Death Drive, we might be able to experience new forms of connection with others, the world, and ourselves.