This small in size but dense in meaning essay marks a significant shift in Freud's work. Written shortly after the end of World War I and possibly influenced by the destructive forces it unleashed, it will abandon the established psychoanalytic notion that mental phenomena are dominated by the omnipotence of the pleasure principle, introducing a more primitive, more determining, and more grim concept, the death drive.

Freud examines phenomena such as that of compulsive repetition and seeks grounding in biology and the study of elementary forms of life, to argue that all organic life is governed by a return to a prior state and, ultimately, to the tranquility of inorganic matter.

Fully aware of the audacious speculation, the author will transform every previous opposition that governs the mental life into that of the forces of Eros and Death and will argue the 'paradox' that the ultimate purpose of life, which the pleasure principle itself serves, is death itself.

Taking the death drive for granted, Freud directed analysts to perceive aggression as a drive in itself. After this essay, mental conflict began to be viewed as arising from a fundamental rivalry between Eros and Death, the life drive and the death drive, libido and aggression.

[Excerpt from the text on the back cover of the edition]