Eros and Thanatos
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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- "Human sexuality is, quite apart from Christian repressions, a highly questionable phenomenon, and belongs, at least potentially, among the extreme rather than the ordinary experiences of humanity. Tamed as it may be, sexuality remains one of the demonic forces in human consciousness - pushing us at intervals close to taboo and dangerous desires, which range from the impulse to commit sudden arbitrary violence upon another person to the voluptuous yearning for the extinction of one's consciousness, for death itself." --Susan Sontag in the The Pornographic Imagination
Sex and death have gone hand in hand since the earliest times, but were first explicitly linked as two complementary and contradictory drives or instincts in Freudian psychology. For Sigmund Freud Eros also called libido, libidinal energy or love, is the life instinct innate in all humans. It is the desire to create life and favours productivity and construction. But starting with Freud's essay Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920), Eros is opposed by the destructive death instinct of Thanatos (death instinct or death drive). In going "beyond" the simple pleasure principle, Freud developed his theory of drives, by adding the death instinct, often referred to as "Thanatos," although Freud himself never used this term.
Philosophically, the theme has been explored by Georges Bataille in L'Érotisme.
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In the arts
Visual art
Death and the maiden
Death and the maiden Death and the Maiden is a common theme in Renaissance art, especially in painting. It was developed from the Dance of Death consisting of a personified death figure and a "maiden". The new element was an erotic subtext. A prominent representative is Hans Baldung Grien. (see Three Ages of the Woman and the Death).
In cinema
The erotic horror genre can best be approached through the work of Alfred Hitchcock in films such as Psycho and Frenzy, as well as the oeuvre of Jess Franco. The most relevant movie in the genre is Peeping Tom by (1960) Michael Powell .
Further reading
Cinematic bibliography
- Immoral Tales: European Sex and Horror Movies 1956-1984 (1994)
- Eros in Hell (1998) - Jack Hunter
- Necronomicon book series (1996 - )
See also
- Dark Romanticism
- Drive theory
- Death drive
- Eros (concept)
- Thanatos
- Bodice ripper
- Erotic asphyxiation
- Liebestod
- Little death
- Love and death
- Love and hate
- Necrophilia
- Sexual aggression
- Sex and death
- Sex and violence
- Beyond the Pleasure Principle
- The Tears of Eros
- Erotism: Death and Sensuality, see De l’érotisme, il est possible de dire qu’il est l’approbation de la vie jusque dans la mort
