In Freud’s seminal paper, “The Ego and the Id,” published in 1923, he distinguished between two instincts: the death instinct, “the task of which is to lead organic matter back to the inorganic state,” and Eros which “aims at more far-reaching coalescence of the particles into which living matter has been dispersed.” Earlier, Wilhelm Stekel had called the “death wish” by the name Thanatos. Freud never used this term for the death instinct because of his dislike of Stekel. Freud continued to develop his conception of this duality between Eros and the death instinct, to the point where he wrote in Civilization and Its Discontents in 1930:

The fateful question of the human species seems to me to be whether and to what extent the cultural process developed in it will succeeded in mastering the derangements of communal life by the human instinct of aggression and self-destruction… Men have brought their powers of subduing the forces of nature to such a pitch that by using them they could now very easily exterminate one another to the last man.

Freud here suggests that the combination of the death instinct and human ingenuity could lead to the extermination of the human species. This was before the possibility of nuclear extermination and before any apprehension about the ability of the planet to sustain human life given man’s destructive effect on the environment and other life forms.

This raises a question. It is clear that the “return to inorganic matter,” is the fate of each one of us individually. This is a biological given and each of us must come to terms with our life’s end in our own way. But can it be that the species itself harbors a “death wish” for the species as a whole? Would that be the final Ragnarök? This idea has more “explanatory” power than we might wish to acknowledge.

Freud concludes his essay with this extraordinary statement:

And now it may be expected that the other of the two heavenly forces, eternal Eros, will put forth his strength so as to maintain itself alongside of his equally immortal adversary.

It is fascinating that Freud here raises Eros and Thanatos—previously referred to as human instincts—to heavenly forces (Freud’s emphasis). Freud here is speaking of Eros as an immortal force beyond the human which will be putting forth his strength so as to “maintain itself” against Thanatos, its immortal adversary.

What is it that led Freud to expect Eros to exert itself in this way? Whatever it was, something else happened to Freud which led him two years later to write in his New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis:

“…our best hope for the future is that the intellect—the scientific spirit, reason—should in time establish a dictatorship over the human mind. Whatever…opposes such a development is a danger for the future of mankind.”

I wrote in Psyche Speaks, some 34 years ago, when first commenting on Freud’s conclusions:

Here Freud seems to forget his call to Eros and falls into the typical stance of siding with reason against the soul. I feel that Freud’s earlier stance was more correct, that the battle is not between Eros and Logos, but between Eros and Thanatos. Thanatos seems ever present in today’s world. But where is Eros?

If anything, the world has grown darker since I wrote those words, and Eros seems even less visible and present. Psyche Speaks was my effort to point to Eros as what the world needs. In his 1960 letter to Herbert Read, Jung called what was needed, was a “great dream.” Jung said that such a great dream has always spoken through the artist as “mouthpiece” proclaiming the arrival of the coming guest. It is the artist’s love and passion (the human eros) that needs to be listened to in order to proclaim and welcome the coming guest (the heavenly Eros). In my view, it was the artist in each of us that would be the source of what was necessary to welcome the coming guest. But we seem far from such a realization and manifestation.

The earlier Freud expects the arrival of the heavenly Eros. The later Jung expects the arrival of the coming guest. I think both great men are talking about the same thing.

Thus, in the face of the final Ragnarök, which seems ever more certain, one may either give up in despair, entertain oneself to death, or manifest ever more fully the human Eros that is love and passion and generative creativity. One must perhaps, celebrate both the final Ragnarök and welcome Eros, the coming guest.

How this might be done I’ll turn to in the next post.