Freudian Death Drive: Utilising the Unconscious for Freedom and Liberation
“THE THINGS YOU OWN END UP OWNING YOU,” Fight Club (1999)
“If you want to do critique of ideology, if you want really to get free, first, you have to beat yourself.” — Slavoj Žižek, 2013.
Generally, movies are probably not my thing but Fight Club (1999) have caught my interest since Slavoj Žižek mentioned it in one of his interviews back in 2013.
I would recommend you to watch it if you haven’t and read further if you have as this will contain spoilers. Not only the mind-blowing storyline this movie offered but I am amazed on how this movie provokes my ideological enquiries through psychoanalytical thinking.
In daily life, I have always been fascinated with the idea of personal freedom and liberation. As a learning stoic, I have always been trying to implement the dichotomy of control in my day-to-day life which I admit as rather not easy to acquire. There are a few factors that often fail me in implementing stoicism virtue such as my constant need of stability and security. I, for sure, have experienced my personal encounter to instabilities and scarcities and I would do anything in my capability to avoid living my life in such state, as most people would. Most of all yearn for security and stability. Nonetheless, in minor inconveniences, I would lose my ability to implement stoicism due to my instant diversion to my fight or flight mode.
I wanted to be in charge, I wanted to be in control.
This movie provokes my inner struggle on implementing stoicism through the path of the unconscious and I am going to be focus on Freudian concept here. Why Freud? While I could go all the way linking this to Lacanian jouissance?
If you think I would only examine these based on Sigmund Freud’s 3 dichotomies (ego, superego, ID), no, it is far beyond that. For me this movie draws a very complex unconscious analysis that it evokes my favorite part of Freudian concepts, the Death drive.
Death drive (Thanatos) was developed and elaborated on Freud’s Beyond Pleasure Principle and Civilization and Its Discontent, this concept lies on human’s tendency to associate ourselves to destruction, aggression and to return to an organic matter, which later on developed together with the life drives (Eros) by Hebert Marcuse.
As what the Narrator of this movie said, “You are not special. You’re not a beautiful and unique snowflake. You’re the same decaying organic matter as everything else. We’re all part of the same compost heap. We’re all singing, all dancing crap of the world.”
This movie screams Freudian death drive like no other.
Beating each others underground to unleash the death drive, borderline behaviors, the urge to dominance, even the smallest parts of the movie scream “Thanatos” to me.
To me the figure of Tyler is the real imagery of our deepest part of our psychic apparatus, the ID, and it was portrayed beautifully. It relies on acting on our deepest desire and needs for fulfilment. Nonetheless, this ID was represented in “rational” way because Tyler was also portrayed as smart and cunning, which is not the case with our most primitive level of unconscious.
The idea of Jack or the Narrator to me, seems like a living perfectionist. A superego, a continuation of living drive. Like most of us now, he wants to be in charge, he wants to be in control. He doesn’t mind living constantly in mediocrity because it feels safe and stable. Security and small IKEA improvements by day are the main daily goals.
Whilst we are inspired by characters Tyler, why are we constantly striving to be Jack?
Let’s start from my most favorite part.
This was the scene where Tyler Durden put a gun on Raymond K. Hessel.
Tyler stops the Clerk and pushes him down to a kneeling position.
TYLER
Give me your wallet.The Clerk fumbles his wallet out of his pocket and Tyler snatches it.
Tyler pulls out the driver’s license.TYLER
Raymond K. Hessel. 1320 SE Benning, apartment A. A small, cramped
basement apartment.RAYMOND
How’d you know?TYLER
They give basement apartments letters instead of numbers. Raymond,
you’re going to die.RAYMOND
Please, God, no.-
TYLER
An expired community college student ID card. What did you used to
study, Raymond K. Hessel?RAYMOND
S-S-Stuff.TYLER
“Stuff”. Were the mid-terms hard?Tyler shoves the gun against Raymond’s temple.
TYLER
I asked you what you studied.RAYMOND
Biology, mostly.TYLER
Why?RAYMOND
I don’t know.TYLER
What did you want to be Raymond K. Hessel?TYLER
The question, Raymond, was “what did you want to be”?Tyler begins to squeeze the trigger.
RAYMOND
A VETERINARIAN!TYLER
Animals.RAYMOND
Yeah … animals and s-s-s —TYLER
— *Stuff*. That means you have to get more schooling.RAYMOND
Too much school.TYLER
Would you rather be dead?Tyler shoves Raymond’s wallet back into his pocket.
TYLER
I’m keeping your license. I know where you live. I’m going to check
on you. If you aren’t back in school on your way to being a
veterinarian, you will be dead. Now, get the hell out of here.As Raymond walks away in fear Tyler whispers to himself (and Jack)
Raymond K. Hessel, tomorrow will be the most beautiful day of your
life. Your breakfast is going to taste better than any meal you’ve
ever eaten.script source: https://sfy.ru/?script=fight_club
In stoicism we believe in Memento Mori which pretty much indicates our acceptance of death, that it is inevitable and it is all around the corner. Yet sometimes we think we always have time to just “live” and “present”, but could our acceptance of death go hand in hand with the death drive?
This scene portrays Tyler provoking Raymond’s fear of death that forced him to get to where he wanted to be, a veterinarian. Everyone could have different interpretations of this scene but for me the death drive, if used wisely, could be a useful tool in acquiring success.
Human’s drive to destruction, just to be aware of, is enough reason to make the best out of life.
No, this isn’t about “if tomorrow is gonna be your last day, how would you want people to remember you?” kind of naive query, but rather “how would YOU live your life if tomorrow is your last day as a living being?”
To live and and to die are personal experience and should be treated as such. Often times, I stumble upon people who are living while fulfilling others’ expectations of them.
Out of all the freedom we own within our society, aren’t we supposed to be free of being the person we want to be?
We are stuck and keep beating ourselves up in numerous judgements made by ourselves and others, you’re too old, it’s too late, you’re too much, you are not good enough.
Do we really need anyone to point a gun behind our heads everyday to make sure we truly are living as someone who we want to be?
My second favorite scene.
He asks the guys in the back what they wish they’d done before they died.
They narrowly miss other cars, and Tyler lets go of the wheel. Jack grabs it.
Tyler tells Jack that he blew up his condo.
He tells him “stop trying to control everything and just let go.”
So Jack lets go of the wheel too.
The car crashes into a car parked on the side of the road and careens down a ravine.
Tyler pulls Jack out of the crashed car (seemingly from the driver’s side) and says, “We just had a near-life experience!”
script source: shmoop
As if we all know both Tyler and Jack are the same person, Tyler indicates his biggest drive to destruction here whilst Jack keeps on resisting.
He kept on resisting not being in control, not knowing what’s going on. He had to know that he would be safe, he had to know that he is far from danger.
I have a little note during my study of Freud, to which I said “Freud is the biggest stoic of our time”. Not without reason, as J Dunn mentioned on his article, “Freud’s theory of the instinctual drives is examined in the light of his adherence to Darwinian thought. In this scheme, the drives arise from the interaction between biological and environmental stimuli and are dialectically constructed from both pressures: internal and external phenomena reciprocally organise each other and attempts to conceptualise them as separate entities restrict the degree to which we can understand the nature of mental life.” Freudian concepts examine the external and internal phenomenon at its best.
Aren’t we constantly struggling with the idea of letting go that it always causes us mental sufferings?
You do not need to be in control of outside situations, you are in control of the person you are, the ideas you think and the actions you take.
Our death drive should be used as a tool to reorientate our vision and most importantly, to rip-off the ideology that does not function well within our personal liberation in living day-to-day life.
Our urges to take ownership of everything and anything should be decreased just by considering the fact that death and destruction are all around the corner.
