Destrudo is a term introduced by Italian psychoanalyst Edoardo Weiss in 1935 to denote the energy of the death instinct, on the analogy of libido'[1] - and thus to cover the energy of the destructive impulse in Freudian psychology.
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Destrudo is the opposite of libido - the urge to create, an energy that arises from the Eros (or "life") drive - and is the urge to destroy arising from Thanatos ("death"), an aspect of what Sigmund Freud termed "the aggressive instincts, whose aim is destruction".[2]
Weiss described how secondary narcissism related not only to libido turning towards the self, but also to aggression, which he called "Destrudo", which behaved in an identical way. Unfortunately this paper, which contains many interesting ideas, is written in a rather obscure German'.[3]
Perhaps as a result, whereas Weiss, Federn's disciple, collaborator, and the editor of his writings, preferred to call this second energy "destrudo"...[Federn's] term "mortido" has been used by other analytic writers more generally'.[4] Eric Berne wrote that 'The term mortido is taken from Paul Federn...Weiss calls it "destrudo"'.[5]
Interestingly enough 'Freud never bothered to name the aggressive and destructive energy of the death drive, as he did when he called the energy of the life drive "libido". With this in mind, Federn called this new energy source "mortido", while some others, like Charles Brenner (1973,;22), elected the term "destrudo" for this purpose'.[6]
Literary criticism has been almost more prepared than psychoanalysis to make at least metaphorical use of the term Destrudo. Descriptions of 'the struggle between the principles of destrudo and libido',[7] of 'the mystification of the destrudo',[8] and of how in artistic images 'incestuous libido and patricidal destrudo are thence reflected back against the individual and his society'[9] are thus not uncommon.