Death Drive in Religions of Different Cultures

This final qualifying work is devoted to the analysis and exploration of the correlations between Sigmund Freud's theory of Life and Death drives and the concepts of the most ancient ritual practices. The purpose of the study is to explore the Death drive, which is functioning in human’s psyche, using the examples of religious traditions and rites that existed thousands of years ago, and in particular so-called ‘rites de passage’, initiations and mysteries which imply the existence of a liminal stage where any social, moral, physical characteristics of a person disappear and subject’s death comes for the sake of the subsequent resurrection. This study examines the oldest rituals associated with symbolic or physical death, which bring us closer to understanding how important death was for people’s life many centuries ago and how an ancient person feeling the desire for violence, murder and destruction tried to take it under control to save not only his own life but also the life of society. This study tests the hypothesis that the most ancient ritual practices have been based on the principles of the Death drive, described by Freud, for many millennia before the advent of his theory and psychoanalysis as a science in general. This means that in his theory Freud approached the very foundations of understanding the functioning of the human psyche, in which the Death drive prevails over the Life drive and also seeks to return a person to his original state of rest and nirvana, which is so similar to the primal paradise. Despite the fact that Freud's theory was critically evaluated with great skepticism and misunderstanding, as well as Freud himself suggests very carefully his hypotheses pointing out that they are considered more in a course of his research process than as a final and affirmative statement, in fact, using the examples of many ancient rituals and ceremonies, we can clearly see the confirmation of his theory.