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This paper examines some of the basic concepts underlying Freud's theory of the Life and Death instincts. It is pointed out that Freud based his hypothesis of a Death instinct on the assumption that Fechner's principle, a special case of the second law of thermodynamics (the principle of increasing entropy), was applicable to living organisms. In fact it is valid only for closed systems, whereas living matter is an open system characterized and, indeed, definable by its ability to take energy (negative entropy) from its environment. The hypothesis is therefore suggested that there is but one primary instinct, a Life instinct, the aim of which is to maintain the life processes of any given system in continued operation.
Carrel's tissue culture experiments are cited as consistent with this hypothesis. Under optimal metabolic conditions, such as probably no longer ever occur in nature, issues grow indefinitely and are potentially immortal, ageing and death apparently only occurring as a response to environmental interference with the life instinct. Carrel's experiments show further that when the life instinct operates unopposed there is only growth and no development of new structures or functions. Adaptation is therefore the result of frustration. Two kinds of adaptation alone are possible, progressive with increasing differentiation and regressive with loss of differentiation. Among the factors affecting the choice of mode of adaptation the degree of complexity of the organism is of paramount importance, primitive systems tending to adapt progressively, complex ones regressively.
A full bibliography of the literature on the Death instinct is appended.