Greek: Thanatos (god)
Latin: Mors (god)

In Greek mythology, Thanatos supposedly resided in the lower world and was the personification of death.

He was the son of Nyx (goddess of the night) and the brother of Hypnos (sleep). The Roman equivalent for this character is Mors.

1. The universal death instinct theorized by Sigmund Freud; so, in psychiatry, an instinct or impulse to seek peace in nonexistence, often manifested in aggressive behavior; death instinct.
2. In psychoanalysis, the death principle, representing all instinctual (natural inward impulse; unconscious, involuntary, tendencies toward senescence [old age] and death).

According to Freud’s (1920) hypothesis, life instincts of self-preservation and sex are in conflict with a death instinct, the purpose of which is to reduce life-forms to inanimate matter.