Death Instinct and Creativity: With Works of Egon Schiele

Death instinct was first introduced by Freud in ‘Beyond the Pleasure Principle’ in 1920. Dominant death instinct can negatively affect the balance of mental apparatus with a variety of psychopathologies. The author analyzed life and work of the Austrian painter Egon Schiele and tried to determine how death instinct affected his work. In this study, typical themes of his work were analyzed. The first theme analyzed was ‘mother and child’. Typical mother-child attachment and emotional ties were not observed in his work. This reflected Schiele’s detachment from his mother and a dominant death instinct in his mental apparatus. It also indicated a predominantly paranoid-schizoid position in object-relationship. The second theme was ‘Self-portrait’. Usually the face in his self-portrait was grotesque and asymmetry. In some pieces, the genital was exaggerated or extremities were cut. These selfportraits reflected Egon Schiele’s ego. He was asexual. He indulged in masturbation due to phobia of syphilis which took his father’s life and mental. These works showed that he was preoccupied by death instinct which also caused psychological developmental arrest in various aspects. With the work of ‘Death and the Maiden’ in 1915, he accomplished maturation of sexuality with integration of death instinct and libidinal instinct. By creative working for several years, he could overcome his unconscious predominant death instinct and ‘paranoid-schizoid position’. In conclusion, death instinct could distort normal mental functioning, it also could be mastered by creative activity. Psychoanalysis 2017;28(3):58-68