One of the few certain things about human existence is that we are all born into this world, and will inexorably each leave this life behind by dying at some point. In his magnum opus Being and Time, 20th century existential philosopher Martin Heidegger said: ‘as soon as man comes to life, he is at once old enough to die’.1 This focuses the attention on the reality of death, rather than putting the idea of death somewhere at the back of our minds or exiling it into a distant future. Heidegger spoke of death as the possibility of the absolute impossibility of being.1,2
This brings out an aspect of death that human beings don’t like to think about very much – that death will be the end of their known existence. Whatever your religious or spiritual worldview, the fact of death is undeniably the end of your earthly trajectory. Whether there is something beyond death remains debatable, but we know that we cannot take anything from our brief visit on planet Earth with us into death. We will have to leave behind our physical body, our identity, our connections and loved ones, our possessions and everything we have created while we were in the world.
This is a challenging thing to think about and when Ernest Becker published his book The Denial of Death,3 it was a shocking revelation to many people to hear him broach this taboo subject in such a direct manner. Becker showed how death was dealt with in various cultures, and gave evidence that most cultures shared a terror of death and a desire to avoid this fear. Terror management theory was largely derived from his work.4,5,6
In Denial of Death, Becker said: ‘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.’3 This means that we always pay a huge price for denying death. Becker agreed with Heidegger that it is only in facing death early on that we can learn to live to the full. Becker wrote about the ways in which human beings seek to escape from the idea of death by creating heroes, and by defiantly creating various kinds of meaning in the face of death. He also spoke about the management of death anxiety through immortality projects, or by focusing on trivial matters and distracting yourself.
The management of death anxiety
This was a theme directly taken from Heidegger’s work. He wrote in detail in his book Being and Time about the many ways in which human beings seek to cheat ideas of death and the anxiety it triggers.1 We have ingenious ways of distracting ourselves. Heidegger showed that human beings are always homeless (unheimlich) and insecure at the core, as we are inevitably part of a process of change and transformation. We live in time, between birth and death, and are always no longer who we were, and not yet who we are becoming. We can ward off the anxiety that this generates in many ways, for instance, by letting ourselves get absorbed in the world of things, or by falling in with other people. We can also do it by protective sheltering and tranquillising, in many different forms or shapes. Most of us have observed ourselves and our clients doing this by living in a small bubble, using various substances, foods, games and movies to obliviate fears. We learn to forget about the things that raise our anxiety and become opaque to ourselves, and to the reality of our finitude. We distract ourselves and become alienated from the truth of existence, and live inauthentic lives.
Limit situations
Karl Jaspers, a contemporary of Heidegger, and a German philosopher who was also a psychiatrist and psychologist, contributed enormously to existential thought. Jaspers spoke of the limit situations that human beings try to deny. He said: ‘I must die, I must suffer, I must struggle, I am subject to chance, I involve myself inexorably in guilt. We call these fundamental situations of our existence, “ultimate situations”’.7
Jaspers especially focused on the four limit situations of:
Struggle (Kampf): we have to fight for survival each day and suffer in that process
Death (Tod): we all die eventually, though we deny it and it terrifies us
Chance (Zufall): we are all subject to uncertainty and coincidence
Guilt (Schuld): we all make mistakes, and owe a debt to others and to life.7
According to Jaspers, it is possible to face these limits and go beyond them, especially by turning towards what he called ‘a comprehensive view of all that exists’.7,8 He saw limits as really being boundaries that take us to the frontiers of human existence. This gives rise to the idea that when we dare to go to these borders, we may see across them to change our narrow perspective. Thus, we discover the possibility of being transformed. For we find that these are not end points, but liminal spaces, in which we have a view across the border. It is a theme taken up more recently by French contemporary philosopher Jean Luc Nancy, in his book The Fragile Skin of the World, where he illustrates the work to be done in those liminal spaces.9 It also connects with the recent interest in panpsychism and the work of people such as Godehard Brüntrup, who has done interesting research on near-death experiences,10,11 also reverberated by Goff’s book Why?.12
A clearer sense of identity
Irvin Yalom’s work, which is generally well known among psychotherapists, was in many ways an extension of Becker’s work, summarising what can be learnt from existential philosophers, and applying it to psychotherapeutic work. In his book Existential Psychotherapy,13 he showed the importance of tackling death anxiety, which he also argued was the most fundamental source of human fear. His book about his own confrontation with death anxiety Staring at the Sun14 made it into a more deeply felt personal argument, and the book he co-authored with his late wife Marilyn Yalom, as she was dying, brought it even closer to home, showing the impact on both the person saying goodbye and the one remaining alive.15
Yalom provided illustrations of the way in which confrontations with death can lead to a clearer sense of identity and a renewed appetite for life. I have myself written many times about my work with those who had confronted death,16 and latterly about my work with an Iranian refugee who had to confront death in a very direct manner, and who struggled enormously with the impact of this on his life.17,18,19 In my book Rising from Existential Crisis,20 I have also described some of my experiences in relation to a serious traffic accident at the age of 10, which resulted in a life-threatening head injury, leaving me in a coma for three hours and in hospital for many weeks. I had to lie flat on my back in the dark and stay immobile to allow the multiple hairline fractures in my skull to mend, and for my subdural hematoma to be absorbed, hearing medical staff whisper about the gravity of my situation. It had a huge impact on my life and especially on my sense of self, which became very different during those weeks of isolation in intensive care. It really was like venturing into a different universe, going across the frontier of life. It led to me thinking differently about my family, friends and my future life as well.
In Rising from Existential Crisis, I also included some of the results of my doctoral students’ work around confrontations with limit situations.20 This demonstrated how those who become political refugees after confrontations with death, suffer many wide ranging and inexorable losses, though they are not necessarily traumatised by this if they have a clear project to believe in and work towards.21 Even so, we know that refugees, in general, are at far greater risk of emotional problems than the general population.20 This is also true for those who see active combat. Another doctoral piece of research showed that those who have been confronted with death during active service suffer greatly in their intimate relationships as a result. They no longer feel that other people can understand what they have seen, or that they can resonate with what they now know to be the case about the world.22 People are profoundly altered by such experiences of first-hand exposure to violent deaths and danger, and this can lead to isolation, as they sense they are different to others and are out of sync with the normal social world around them. This often leads to fractured relationships, addictions and depression. When you have been close to death, you tend to see everything from a perspective of the possibility of catastrophe, and this makes you feel the relativity and unreliable nature of life much more acutely.
An aftermath of healing
Understanding these things better leads to a different approach to traumatic experiences and post-traumatic growth,23,24,25 because it becomes obvious that going through adversity and tragedy can give rise to an aftermath of healing and making sense, if new purpose can be found or created. This requires building existential resoluteness, resilience and inner strength. When this succeeds, it can feel to people as if they have met the challenge of their mortality, and are hence forward able to be more confident about being a match for any future difficulties.
Viktor Frankl’s work is a well-known illustration of this point. 26,27 He overcame his Holocaust experiences in Auschwitz, which had also confronted him with the death of his parents and wife, who were exterminated in the camps.28 As a psychotherapist who created his own school of meaning therapy, known as ‘logotherapy’, he demonstrated that his understanding of other people’s misery was greatly enhanced by having found a way to survive these excruciating horrors. By carefully observing how he and others dealt with these extreme and inhumane conditions, he had concluded that human beings need to find meaning by taking value from the things around them wherever possible. They also need to create new meaning whenever possible by adding something of value to the world. Finally, he learnt that when there is no hope left, you can still determine your own attitude towards your suffering.28 He discovered that those who gave up hope and purpose would die very soon. His confrontations with death taught him to find meaning, even in loss and grief. He said that ‘having been is also a kind of being and maybe the surest kind.’27
To discover that you can still cope when life becomes dystopic is certainly an immense piece of learning about the extent of your own adaptability, flexibility and resilience. Frankl’s findings have been echoed by other accounts of the Holocaust, such as those of Edith Eger29 and Hannah Pick-Goslar,30 and also in the touching account of Etty Hillesum’s life by Patrick Woodhouse.31
There is much to learn from people’s confrontations with limit situations and especially with death. For the qualities that enable them to survive and the insights that allow them to thrive afterwards are of importance to all of us who are facing dark times.
References
1 Heidegger M, Macquarrie J, Robinson E (tr). Being and time. New York: Harper and Row; 1962.
2 Heidegger M, Manheim R (tr). An introduction to metaphysics. New York: Doubleday; 1961.
3 Becker E. The denial of death (1st ed.). New York: The Free Press; 1973.
4 Greenberg J, Pyszczynski T, Solomon S. The causes and consequences of a need for self-esteem: a terror management theory. In: Baumeister RF (ed.) Public self and private self. New York: Springer-Verlag; 1986 (pp189–212).
5 Solomon S, Greenberg J, Pyszczynski T. A terror management theory of social behaviour: the psychological functions of esteem and cultural worldviews. In: M. P. Zanna MP (ed.) Advances in Experimental Social Psychology 1991; 24: 93–159.
6 Solomon S, Pyszczynski T, Greenberg J. The worm at the core: on the role of death in life. New York: Random House; 2015.
7 Jaspers K. Marsheim R. The way to wisdom. New Haven CT and London: Yale University Press; 1951.
8 Jaspers K, Ashton EB. Philosophy (3 vols). Ashton, Chicago IL and London: University of Chicago Press; 1969.
9 Nancy JL, Stockwell C (tr). The fragile skin of the world. Cambridge: Polity; 2021.
10 Brüntrup G. Recollected experiences of death as boundary situations. In: Frick E, Gutschmidt R, Jaspers and pastoral care. De Gruyter Studies in Spiritual Care 2024.
11 Brüntrup G, Jaskolla L (eds). Panpsychism: contemporary perspectives. New York: Oxford University Press; 2017.
12 Goff P. Why? The purpose of the universe. Oxford: Oxford University Press; 2023.
13 Yalom ID. Existential psychotherapy. New York: Basic Books; 1980.
14 Yalom ID. Staring at the sun. London: Piatkus; 2008.
15 Yalom ID, Yalom M. A matter of death and life: love, loss and what matters in the end. London: Piatkus; 2021.
16 van Deurzen E. Paradox and passion in psychotherapy (2nd ed). London: Wiley; 2015.
17 van Deurzen E, Arnold-Baker C. Existential phenomenological therapy illustration: Rahim’s dilemma. In: van Deurzen E, Craig E, Schneider K, Längle A, Tantam D, du Plock S. Wiley world handbook for existential therapy. London: Wiley; 2019.
18 van Deurzen E. Rising from a shattered life: psychotherapy and existential crisis, in grief matters. The Australian Journal of Grief and Bereavement 2020; 23(1): 25–30.
19 van Deurzen E. Working with death, struggle and guilt. In: Frick E, Gutschmidt R, Jaspers and pastoral care. De Gruyter ‘Studies in Spiritual Care’ series. In press.
20 van Deurzen E. Rising from existential crisis: living beyond calamity. Monmouth: PCCS books; 2021.
21 Danesh A, Assiter A. Political refugees: a new perspective. London: Rowman and Littlefield; 2022.
22 Iacovou S. The impact of active service on the intimate relationships of ex-servicemen, an existential-phenomenological study. [Dissertation.] London: Middlesex University; 2015.
23 van Deurzen E. Existential grief therapy. In: Steffen EM, Milman E, Neimeyer MA (eds). The handbook of grief therapies. London: Sage Publications; 2021.
24 Boaz M. An existential approach to interpersonal trauma. Routledge; 2022.
25 Wharne S (ed). Psychological growth after trauma: insights from phenomenological research. Routledge. In press.
26 Frankl VE. Man's search for meaning (revised and updated ed.). New York: Washington Square Press; 1984.
27 Frankl VE. Psychotherapy and existentialism. Selected papers on logotherapy. New York: Simon and Schuster; 1985.
28 Frankl VE, Young J (tr). Yes to life, in spite of everything. London: Penguin Random House; 2019.
29 Eger E. The choice. London: Penguin Random House; 2017.
30 Pick-Goslar H. My friend Anne Frank. London: Penguin; 2024.
31 Woodhouse P. Etty Hillesum: a life transformed. London: Bloomsbury Continuum; 2009.