Citation

Minerbo M. Int. J. Psychoanal. 2007; 88(3): 777-790.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2007, Institute of Psychoanalysis, Publisher John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1516/35U6-75XU-4345-740L

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Since Freud formulated the death instinct concept, it has received widely diverse interpretations. Even Freud advanced two versions. The concomitant analyses of two films, Ai no corrida (1976) [ In the realm of the senses (1977)] and Broken flowers (2005) evince Thanatos's two faces: the cold death of decathexis of an object, in the case of Don (in Broken flowers) and the hot death of the subject-object fusion in Sada's case ( Ai no corrida). In our analysis, we elaborate two possible vicissitudes of the death instinct: in Broken flowers, the main character finds an ‘analyst’ and is cured. In Ai no corrida, the protagonist meets a complementary object and goes mad.