In the early days of psychoanalytic theory, Sigmund Freud posited that two drives govern human motivation: the libido and the destrudo. The libido is the more well-known of the two; the word is often used to refer to the sex instinct. But while the libido gives rise to sexual desire, it also gives rise to all other desire, as well as love, connection, creativity, and change. The destrudo is the opposite: it gives rise to aggression, destruction, and stillness. Both drives, Freud posited, are the fundamental driving forces behind all human behavior, and this idea is now called dual-drive theory.

The ultimate goal of the libido was defined in terms of the pleasure principle: a mind will instinctively seek to create pleasurable situations. The entire purpose of the libido is to enact this principle. Similarly, the ultimate goal of the destrudo is the nirvana principle: a mind will instinctively seek to destroy painful situations. This may seem like fundamentally the same thing; pleasure and pain are opposites and where there is no pain there is pleasure. But if we take a page from Buddhist logic and throw out the principle of non-contradiction — considering pleasure and pain as not opposites, but complementary concepts that can both be present or both be absent — we can see that the libido and destrudo serve separate but complementary functions. The libido increases pleasure; the destrudo decreases pain. The libido seeks to move away from a baseline; the destrudo seeks to move toward it.

Despite the dual-drive theory being a controversial idea from the start, it can easily be seen in art and creative endeavors. In my view, the libido and the destrudo directly influence all creativity, and the themes and motifs found in a work of art are heavily influenced, if not entirely dictated, by the creator’s dominant drive at the time they were creating the work. I am not currently sure which themes and motifs would definitively characterize a work as being libido- or destrudo-driven, but one possibility is that libido-driven works are aligned with Romanticism, inasmuch as the libido craves harmony and emotionalism, and destrudo-driven works are aligned with Enlightenment, inasmuch as the destrudo craves order and control.

Works can be driven by one drive overall, but specific sections may be driven by the other drive, such as in TV shows. For example, Star Trek is an overall libido-driven work. Its fundamental themes are of discovery and forming connections, themes that are practically synonymous with the libido. However, the episode Let That Be Your Last Battlefield is destrudo-driven. The episode was written as a reductio ad absurdum argument against racism, that is to say, the writer Lee Cronin turned his destrudo against racism to creative ends.