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from Social Issues
A Psychoanalyst's Perspective:
AIDS And The Death Wish
By Gerald Schoenewolf, Ph.D., NARTH Advisory Board Member
Ever since AIDS was first discovered, activists have made AIDS a human rights
issue. AIDS is viewed by them as yet another way in which gays are victimized.
AIDS is a result of the social oppression of gay men, a result of the social
stigma attached to homosexuality, which forces gays to go underground and to
engage in unsafe sexual practices. It is social discrimination against gays,
they claim, that indirectly causes AIDS, since discrimination brings the low
self-esteem and depression to gay men that leads to sexual acting out. People
should not "blame the victim" or condemn gay men, but rather should be
sympathetic to their tragic plight. So goes the gay litany.
But despite gay activist protests, professionals in various fields have pondered
the fact that many gays engage in unsafe sex, knowing that it may cause them to
become infected with the HIV virus. The phrase, "death wish," has emerged in
this connection, as psychologists question whether some gays have an unconscious
wish to die. Even some gay groups have wondered about this. However, when they
wonder about it, they attribute the death wish to social oppression of gays,
whereas psychologists link it to adverse conditioning (traumatic situations) in
childhood.
A recent article published in NNPA, a Black news organization, reported on a new
phenomenon among gay men called "bug chasing." It refers to men who go online
in order to invite other men who have AIDS to pass the bug onto them. According
to the article, they use phrases such as "breed me," "welcome me to the
brotherhood," and "convert me," as though getting AIDS were some rite of
passage. The article describes a typical online advertiser, an African-American
man, 34, from New Jersey who identifies himself as a "bug chaser." His screen
name is "Vertical." He claims to be HIV-negative, but wants to become
HIV-positive, preferably by "a down to earth, cool dude with nice thighs."
The article notes the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in
Atlanta, has found that HIV-related illness and death has historically affected
gay men more than it has any other group. "In 2000, according to the CDC,
13,562 (42 percent) of new AIDS cases were reported among men who sleep with
men, compared with 8,531 (25 percent) among IDUs and 6,530 (33 percent) among
men and women who acquired HIV heterosexually. In a time when gay men are being
urged to practice safe sex, bug chasers are deliberately taking part in
unprotected sex in order to contract the disease.
The article goes on to quote a psychiatrist, Antoine Douaihy, who works with
AIDS patients in Pittsburgh. Douaihy says that confusion, depression and mental
illness contribute to what he considers self-destructive behavior. "They [bug
chasers] are reaching out for some kind of intimacy. They want to feel accepted
and a part of something. It's a distorted way of exploring how you can become
intimate with someone else." The distortion to which Douaihy is probably
referring is the bug chaser's association of intimacy with disease and death;
bug chasing would seem to be an ultimate demonstration of a death wish among
some gay men.
Freud* laid the foundation for a psychological theory of the "death wish;"
indeed, his concept of a death instinct not only in human beings but also in all
living matter is one of the cornerstones of his psychodynamic theory. However,
Freud's concept is as much about biology as it is about psychology, using
biological analogies to explain the death instinct. Writing about the
relationship between eros and the death drive, he notes that what eros is aiming
at "by every possible means is the coalescence of two germ cells which are
differentiated in a particular way. If this union is not effected, the germ
cell dies along with the other elements of the multicellular organism" (1919, p.
45). He sees a struggle between these opposing forces in all living matter.
On one hand, there is the instinct toward sexual union and life (eros), and on
the other hand there is the instinct to return to the nonliving matter from
which life erupted (thanatos).
He once stated ironically that, "The aim of life is death." He explains his
theory by pointing out that in the beginning there was no life on our planet.
When the first living cells emerged, they were probably alive for only a moment
and then quickly returned to the inanimate state. The inanimate state is the
natural state of being, while life is a kind of aberration. So the moment an
inanimate object comes alive, it is conflicted; part of it wants life, but part
of it wants to return to its "natural" inanimate state. Speculating on the
evolution of the first life to appear on our planet, he writes, "The tension
which then arose in what had hitherto been an inanimate substance endeavored to
cancel itself out. In this way the first instinct came into being: the instinct
to return to the inanimate state" (p. 37). Still later, he uses sexual
intercourse to explain the opposing forces of eros and thanatos: we seek sexual
excitement (the life instinct), but when we become too excited we seek release
from excitement in the form of the orgasm (the death instinct--i.e., the return
to inanimate matter).
Freud went on to link this death instinct with the repetition compulsion and
with masochism. To him, the repetition compulsion, as seen in dreams that
conjure up a "psychical trauma of childhood," hark back to the wish to return to
an inanimate state, or, in other words, to return to the womb. In explaining
the connection between the death instinct and aggression he notes, "During the
oral stage of the organization of the libido, the act of obtaining erotic
mastery over an object coincides with that object's destruction" (p. 39).
This aspect of Freud's theory, linking the death instinct with the repetition
compulsion and aggression (in the form of masochism and sadism) may shed light
on the psychodynamics of those male homosexuals who would appear to have a death
wish. Because of traumatic situations in their childhood, they develop the
compulsion to repeat those traumatic (usually abusive) situations in their adult
lives. Often times, such gay men, as children, were sexually or physically
abused, and so their sexuality as adults takes on a sado-masochistic attitude.
The depression that they feel perhaps contributes to the process, causing them
to have unconscious suicidal urges, which they romanticize by viewing the
process of getting infected with a deadly disease almost in a Romeo and Juliet
manner.
Those activists who want us to see AIDS simply as an aspect of the societal
oppression of gay men, and who likewise feel than any analytical study (such as
this one) is an attack on gay men, are actually preventing us from understanding
and truly doing something about the problem.
*Sigmund Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, 1920, (New York, Bantam Books, 1967.)
Dr. Gerald Schoenewolf is a licensed psychoanalyst and head of the Living
Center in New York City. He serves as an Advisory Board member for NARTH and is
a member of the American Psychological Association as well as the National
Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis.
Updated: 2 September 2008
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