Repetition and Binding: Freud's 'Project' and the Death Drive
Sigmund Freud's 'Project for a Scientific Psychology', which discusses the notions of repetition and binding as mechanisms of the pleasure principle, is interpreted in relation to his concept of the death drive. The aim is to explore the premise that the subject experiences a basic ambivalence towards the object of desire. Repetition in relation to the trauma of castration is also examined together with Freud's and Jacques Lacan's descriptions of the death drive.