death instinct

n. An individual's fundamental need to die. This concept, also called Thanatos, was developed by Sigmund Freud. The death instinct represents the wish to relinquish the hardships of living and return to the calm and stillness of death. In the human mind, the death instinct coexists with the life instinct, or Eros. Freud posited that humans live according to the pleasure principle, maximizing experiences that produce pleasure and minimizing those that are unpleasant. Freud also noted, however, that humans tended to enact aggressive and self-destructive events. He saw this as a need and labeled it the death instinct. According to Freud’s view of the death instinct, all living beings have a fundamental yearning to return to a preorganic state. This need is one component of the individual's id, or the part of the mind that houses primitive desires.

- TJM