The death drive was defined by Sigmund Freud in Jenseits des Lustprinzips (Beyond the Pleasure Principle) (1920; English translation 1922) as "an urge inherent in all organic life to restore an earlier state of things". (SE 18:36) Freud begins the work considering the experience of trauma and traumatic events (particularly the trauma experienced by soldiers returning from World War I). The most curious feature of highly unpleasant experiences for Freud was that subjects often tended to repeat or re-enact them. This appeared to violate the "pleasure principle," the drive of an individual to maximize his or her pleasure. Freud found this repetition of unpleasant events in the most ordinary of circumstances, even in children's play (such as the celebrated Fort/Da ("Gone"/"There") game played by Freud's grandson, who would stage and re-stage the disappearance of his mother, and even himself). After hypothesizing a number of causes (p

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