Resumos
Based on new discoveries in the field of neurobiology and on his own research on severe psychopathological conditions mostly unaddressed by Freud, the Viennese psychoanalyst Otto Kernberg redefined the death drive concept. Despite acknowledging that the phenomena referred to by Freud refers as supporting the idea of a death drive reveal the existence of a dominant self-destructive tendency, Kernberg maintains that such tendency results from a malignant transformation of aggression due to constitutional and relational factors, rather than from an innate feature of the mind. This paper seeks to reassess some problematic points of Freud’s second drive theory and argue that Kernberg’s perspective allows to avoid some of its main stalemates.
Key words:
Otto Kernberg; Freud; drive theory; death drive