Existential Therapy: Death
From Irvin Yalom’s Existential PsychoTherapy
Reflection Questions
How many more years do I expect to live?
Up to this point, have I been living my own life, or someone else’s?
Have I postponed living? Why? For whom?
In what ways do I avoid being present and living fully?
In what ways do I live in denial of death or try to convince myself it doesn’t apply to me?
What would make the rest of my time fulfilling and/or meaningful?
Concept Overview
The concept of memento mori (Latin for "remember you must die”) has been emphasized across cultures and philosophical traditions, often represented in art and architecture through the symbolic use of skulls, candles, and hourglasses. While it may be assumed bringing awareness of death to the forefront would cast a cloud over one’s life, many great thinkers argue the opposite.
Existential psychologist Irvin Yalom writes, “The physicality of death destroys man, but the awareness of personal death saves him.” He argues we employ various strategies to push death anxiety out of our minds, but it is to our own detriment. Instead, we ought to see how awareness of death acts as a smelling salts, keeping us from sleep walking through our lives. Consider the awakening that happens when someone has a near death experience or is given 3 months to live. The effect can be a trivializing of the trivial, a sense of liberation to choose what they want, an enhanced sense of living in the present, a greater willingness to take risks, an appreciation of simple things, deeper communication with loved ones, etc.
Singer-songwriter Jason Isbell captures how awareness of death shapes our actions in the present in his love song “If We Were Vampires”. He writes, “If we were vampires and death was a joke / We'd go out on the sidewalk and smoke / And laugh at all the lovers and their plans / I wouldn't feel the need to hold your hand / Maybe time running out is a gift / I'll work hard 'til the end of my shift / And give you every second I can find / And hope it isn't me who's left behind”
Deep Dive
Yalom writes, “The terror of death is ubiquitous and of such magnitude that a considerable portion of one’s life energy is consumed in the denial of death. Death transcendence is a major motif in human experience—from the most deeply personal internal phenomena, our defenses, our motivations, our dreams and nightmares, to the most public macro-societal structures, our monuments, theologies, ideologies, slumber cemeteries, embalmings, our stretch into space, indeed our entire way of life—our filling time, our addiction to diversions, our unfaltering belief in the myth of progress, our drive to get ahead, our yearning for lasting fame.”
He then explores two main strategies people employ to deny the reality of death: belief in their own specialness and/or an ultimate rescuer.
Specialness refers to the (largely unconscious) belief in our own immunity to the limitations and mortality that affect everyone around us. It is a desire to escape our creatureliness and our tether to the earth, subscribing instead to an “eternal spiral upward” in which we are forever becoming and progressing. According to Yalom, this belief manifests in things like compulsive heroism, workaholism, narcissism, aggression and control. He notes the desire for power as an attempt to assuage death anxiety, saying, “Getting ahead, achieving, accumulating material wealth, leaving works behind as imperishable monuments becomes a way of life which effectively conceals the mortal questions churning below.”
What happens if this belief collapses? Depression, anger. Yalom writes, “When an individual arrives at the discovery that personal specialness is mythic, he or she feels angry and betrayed by life. Surely this sense of betrayal is what Robert Frost had in mind when he wrote: “Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee / And I’ll forgive Thy great big one on me.” Many people feel that if they had only known, really known, earlier they would have lived their lives differently. They feel angry; yet the rage is impotent, for it has no reasonable object.”
The belief in an ultimate rescuer is exactly what it sounds like: the idea that death isn’t real or permanent because a “magical helper” will intervene. This can obviously take a religious form. But Yalom also states, “Some individuals discover their rescuer not in a supernatural being but in their earthly surroundings, either in a leader or in some higher cause. Human beings, for millenia, have conquered their fear of death in this manner and have chosen to lay down their freedom, indeed their lives, for the embrace of some higher figure or personified cause.”
Yalom writes about the many pathologies that are associated with a collapse of an individual’s ultimate rescuer, which can happen for a variety of reasons. But he also speaks to pathologies that emerge when the belief is still intact. He says, “The defense of belief in an outside deliverer seems inherently limited. Not only does it not entirely contain primal anxiety but by its very nature it spawns additional pathology: the belief that one’s life is controlled by external forces is associated with a sense of powerlessness, ineffectualness, and low self-regard. One who does not rely on or believe in oneself limits accordingly one’s acquisition of information and skills, and may relate to others in an ingratiating manner. It is readily apparent that low self-esteem, a tendency toward self-abasement, few skills on which to build a sense of self-worth, and unsatisfying interpersonal relationships, all prepare the soil for psychopathology.”
Interestingly, Yalom goes on to explore the ways the specialness and ultimate rescuer strategies become intertwined. “Because we have an observing, omnipotent being or force continuously concerned with our welfare, we are unique and immortal and have the courage to emerge from embeddedness. Because we are unique and special beings, special forces in the universe are concerned with us. Though our ultimate rescuer is omnipotent, he is at the same time, our eternal servant.”
The main issue with these strategies, says Yalom, is that they keep us from living in a present and authentic way. He writes, “Heidegger believed that there are two fundamental modes of existing in the world: (1) a state of forgetfulness of being or (2) a state of mindfulness of being. When one lives in a state of forgetfulness of being, one lives in the world of things and immerses oneself in the everyday diversions of life: One is “leveled down,” absorbed in “idle chatter,” lost in the “they.” One surrenders oneself to the everyday world, to a concern about the way things are. In the other state, the state of mindfulness of being, one marvels not about the way things are but that they are. To exist in this mode means to be continually aware of being. In this mode, which is often referred to as the “ontological mode” (from the Greek ontos, meaning “existence”), one remains mindful of being, not only mindful of the fragility of being but mindful, too, of one’s responsibility for one’s own being. Since it is only in this ontological mode that one is in touch with one’s self-creation, it is only here that one can grasp the power to change oneself … Recognition of death contributes a sense of poignancy to life, provides a radical shift of life perspective, and can transport one from a mode of living characterized by diversions, tranquilization, and petty anxieties to a more authentic mode.”
He goes on to say, “Many existential theorists have commented upon the high price exacted in the struggle to cope with death anxiety. Kierkegaard knew that man limited and diminished himself in order to avoid perception of the “terror, perdition and annihilation that dwell next door to any man.” Otto Rank described the neurotic as one “who refused the loan (life) in order to avoid the payment of the debt (death).” Paul Tillich stated that “neurosis is the way of avoiding non-being by avoiding being.” Ernest Becker made a similar point when he wrote: “The irony of man’s condition is that the deepest need is to be free of the anxiety of death and annihilation; but it is life itself which awakens it and so we must shrink from being fully alive.” Robert Jay Lifton used the term “psychic numbing” to describe how the neurotic individual shields himself from death anxiety.”
Finally, Yalom summarizes his argument by saying, “Death reminds us that existence cannot be postponed. And that there is still time for life. If one is fortunate enough to encounter his or her death and to experience life as the “possibility of possibility” (Kierkegaard) and to know death as the “impossibility of further possibility” (Heidegger), then one realizes that, as long as one lives, one has possibility—one can alter one’s life until—but only until—the last moment.”