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life instinct

British  

noun

  1. psychoanal the instinct for reproduction and self-preservation

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Example Sentences

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Later, Freud formulated his famed "death instinct," into which suicide fitted neatly as death's triumph over the life instinct.

From Time Magazine Archive

But when man, both as an individual and as humanity, advances to a more complex life, instinct is unequal to the new task confronting him.

From Christianity and Ethics A Handbook of Christian Ethics by Alexander, Archibald B. C.

To these combinations also all the phenomena of life, instinct, and intelligence in the world are to be referred.

From What is Darwinism? by Hodge, Charles

The life instinct in me would not be doomed, but was insistent in its demands and made me flee from insanity and death.

From An Anarchist Woman by Hapgood, Hutchins

So far as she could judge, the qualities that she deemed necessary in the make-up of a robust life, instinct with purpose and accomplishment, seemed to be entirely lacking in Kennedy Square formulas.

From The Fortunes of Oliver Horn by Smith, Francis Hopkinson

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