Human beings know that they are going to die, and that is the difference with animals. Death would not exist if there were no word to designate it. However, the word, the symbolic representation, gives the person sufficient awareness to know that there is an end, a cut-off. Such awareness is proper to the human insofar as it is language that makes it possible to half-cover what, at first, seems out of sense.
The fact that death is in common language does not mean that the subject can give it meaning, but it does allow him to name it, to wrap it symbolically through beliefs or ideals, or customs (funerals, tombstones, obituaries…). All these are human resources to wrap death in a way that allows to alleviate anguish and assimilate losses.
Where does the fear of death come from?
The fear of death comes from the impossible relationship between language and the reality of death. It is impossible insofar as death is presented as that which escapes any will of control on the part of the person, so that there is no possibility of being able to predict anything as to when and how the moment will come. This uncertainty leads to anguish and, in turn, gives rise to religion as a symbolic or imaginary resource to mitigate the consequences.
What are the consequences of fear of death?
The clinical consequences derived from anguish in relation to death can be divided into two different subjective positions:
- People who, through a defense mechanism, try not to face any situation that evokes death or illness. These people try to avoid medical check-ups, staying in their position of blindness and showing a childish position before the fear of knowing.
- People who try to have a position of control over death and disease. This would include people who are obsessed with avoiding death at all costs and live in anguish at any small sign of illness. It does not refer to people who take care of themselves and maintain healthy habits. Some patients within this group firmly believe in the scientific discourse and long for a cure for cancer to be a reality that makes death more distant.
There is no such thing as immortality: how psychoanalytic psychotherapy can help to come to terms with it.
Eternal youth, immortality or lifelong love are longings for fulfillment or ideals that try to avoid the encounter with the realities of human existence and loss. However, although the person knows of this impossibility, he/she does not stop looking for it, trying to make it possible, even if it means always running into the anguish that appears when one least expects it.
To be able to live in peace with that anguish or anxiety that is impossible to control is the demand of many people who come to the specialist in Psychology or Psychoanalysis. Psychoanalytic psychotherapy not only helps in the anguish but it is also oriented so that the person can have a freer position before that which escapes his control, which is the loss.