Freud, the Aim and the End

Abstract

The author comments on some of Freud’s essays – ‘The Theme of the Three Caskets’, ‘Transience’, ‘Thoughts for the Times on War and Death’ and part of ‘Beyond the Pleasure Principle’ – which address ‘the end’, understood both as conclusion and death, and as having goals or aims. He shows how the Freudian reflection on the ‘end’ as the final moment, and on the ‘end’ as an aim or goal, are, in a dialectical way, intricately intertwined. According to the author, this double face of the ‘end’ explains Freud’s later elaborations on Eros and Thanatos, which in turn lay out the metaphysical presupposition starting from which Freud constructed his entire doctrine (and clinical practice): that the essence, the quid, of a human being (and of living beings) is die Lust, that is, desire and/or pleasure. Lust appears ambiguously as the ‘end’ of human beings, given that their aim is pleasure, but also as the annihilation of desire. It is against the background of this dialectic between end and aim that we can thus finally grasp, in the ambit of Freudian doctrine, what the author calls a ‘contact with the Real’.

Keywords:

• Beyond the life/death drives Keyword: Beyond the life/death drives
• Freud Keyword: Freud
• Love and Death Keyword: Love and Death
• War and Transience Keyword: War and Transience
• ‘Et in Arcadia Ego’ Keyword: ‘Et in Arcadia Ego’
• ‘The Theme of the Three Caskets’ Keyword: ‘The Theme of the Three Caskets’

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Rights: Incopyright