The purpose of this paper is to think about war and the psychic violence involved in experiences of war, by making a psychoanalytic articulation between the notions of war, violence and death drive. It is assumed that this articulation is not as obvious as it seems, an assumption that is justified by an analysis of Freud's works on those three main subjects. This path leads to an approach of correlated topics such as trauma, repetition compulsion, and war neurosis, which allows a discussion about the violent implications of war for the individual and for humanity. Psychic processes such as denial and fragmentation are considered in terms of radical modalities of defense from these violent implications. On the other hand, non-pathological defensive solutions are also presented, such as the possibility of working though the trauma, or the possibility of sublimation of death drive in its sadistic expressions.
War; violence; death drive