The death drive emerges with subjectivity itself as the subject enters into
the social order and becomes a social and speaking being by sacrificing a part
of itself. This sacrifice is an act of creation that produces an object that
exists only insofar as it is lost. This loss of what the subject doesn't have
institutes the death drive, which produces enjoyment through the repetition of
the initial loss.
Subjects engage in acts of self-sacrifice and self-sabotage because the loss
enacted reproduces the subject's lost object and enables the subject to enjoy
this object. Once it is obtained, the object ceases to be the object.
As a result, the subject must continuelly repeat the sacrificial acts that
produce the object, despite the damage that such acts do to the subject's
self-interest. From the perspective of the death drive, we turn to violence
not in order gain power but in order to produce loss, which is our only source
of enjoyment. Without the lost object, life becomes bereft of any satisfaction.
──Enjoying What We Don't Have: The Political Project of Psychoanalysis