Neuroscience and the Death Drive: The Nature of Symptoms, from Formulation to Treatment

In this book, Adrian Perkel seeks to expand upon Freud’s theory of the death drive by locating it within modern neuroscience, arguing for the centrality of the aggressive drive in the formation of mind, and the genesis of symptoms and psychopathology.

Neuroscience and the Death Drive reformulates the function of defence mechanisms as they link to the aggressive drive and their role in the binding of free energy. Filling an important gap in both formulation and treatment, this book completes Freud’s self-confessed incomplete theory of aggression through the lens of modern psychoanalysis and neuroscience, updating these concepts with current scientific insights, and introduces a refreshed view on psychotherapeutic treatment implications based on these developments. Perkel explores the treatment of patients experiencing eating disorders, anxiety, depression, addiction, personality disorders and sexual dysfunction.

This invigorating and approachable book will be of interest to all psychoanalysts, psychiatrists, psychotherapists and counsellors, and will help readers reach new understandings of this key theory of the mind.

Adrian Perkel is a registered practising clinical psychologist based in Cape Town, South Africa. He has been lecturing, writing, supervising other professionals, and practicing psychotherapy since 1989. His work is deeply informed by psychoanalysis and neuroscience. He is the author of Unlocking the Nature of Human Aggression: A Psychoanalytic and Neuroscientific Approach (2023).