In an attempt to produce a philosophical interpretation of Freud's thought, this essay presents a problematization of a range of notions such as subjectivity, reality, the pleasure principle, the reality principle, the death instinct and the source and sustenance of individual and group life. In investigating the conditions for the constitution of human subjectivity, we have chosen to examine several texts on hypnosis by the psychoanalyst. Based on these texts and on the relationship that holds among them, we intend to clarify the conditions under which social - that is, libidinal - bonds are established, beyond merely the sustenance of life, the opposition to aggressiveness and primary self-destructiveness, as postulated by Freud. In this way, we intend to support our thesis that the whole constitution of subjectivity, as well as life sustenance, takes place through an interaction between the inner and outer which is opposed, for a determined period of time, to the conservative death drive that exists in every organism.
Freud; Psychoanalysis; Reality; Hypnosis; Aggressiveness; Life; Death