death instinct
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
It was Freud who posited the Nirvana principle as an innate psychic drive or death instinct that aims to end life’s inevitable tension.
From The Guardian • Jan. 25, 2017
It’s because of the death instinct that a perfectly nice person dates a string of losers: you tell yourself that you want to move forward, but actually, on some level, you want to go back.
From The New Yorker • May 11, 2015
If so, the theory of the death instinct must have been especially helpful to Freud after the spring of 1923.
From Time Magazine Archive
Many psychoanalysts do not accept the death instinct, but most modern thinking swings between versions of Freud's psychodynamics of depression on the one hand and Durkheim's sociological factors on the other.
From Time Magazine Archive
The energy of the life instincts are called libido and energy of the death instinct is called destrudo.
From Time Magazine Archive
From Roget's 21st Century Thesaurus, Third Edition Copyright © 2013 by the Philip Lief Group.
