According to Freud, the ‘compulsion to repeat’ has the feeling of something ‘demonic’, as if one where possessed by alien forces beyond conscious will and self-interest. In ‘Beyond the Pleasure Principle’, Freud returned to his pre-psychoanalytic neurological model in a far reaching, speculative essay which moves from repetition compulsion in victims of trauma to children’s play, embryology, and the origins of life itself. Whilst a living vesicle develops a protective shield to deal with excessive stimulation and dangers coming from the outside, it is less able to stop excessive internal energies from overwhelming its nervous-psychical systems. Freud proposed that a hidden ‘death drive’ operates in conjunction with a life drive, whose ultimate aim is to return to a state of inorganic quiescence (a compulsion to repeat what came before which, according to Lacan, operates with a ‘machinic’ insistence). The innovation of psychoanalysis was to show how the energies (feelings and affects) which arise from the ‘inside’ in fact originate from ‘outside’.

In this print Kenning presents a schema of the death drive, utilising a more visceral, organic register to give a sense of the physically embodied nature of psychic operations. The print was originally made as part of Kenning’s exhibition Where It Was at Piper Keys (in Raven Row). The exhibition title was taken from Freud’s famous dictum of unconscious knowledge and action: ‘where it [id] was, there I [ego] will be’.

Each print is signed on the reverse by the artist.

Dean Kenning exhibited at Matt's Gallery in 2019 with the solo show, Physcobotanical.

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For further information or to purchase a framed edition please contact info@mattsgallery.org or call 020 8067 3842.