Death Heebie-Jeebies and the Ego

Coping with Fears of Death and Dying (Vol. 6; Issue 20)

Some people who are afraid of death find solace by believing in an afterlife while others anticipate a peaceful reunification with Nature. They may find such consolation through religious traditions, rigorous prayer, meditation or ingestion of psychedelic substances, all of which share in the potential dismantling of the individual ego. But these strategies hardly guarantee relief. Understanding the ego’s role in creating death anxiety offers, at least, an intellectual understanding of why so many of us fear life’s inevitable ending.

Developmental psychoanalysts believe that the ego, or self, emerges from a combination of biological and social forces in the first year of life. They consider the narrative structure comprising “self” as associated, initially, with infantile omnipotence. The basic assumption that every wish or need deserves satisfaction enhances infants’ chances for survival. Over time, such normal narcissism is offset by the development of empathy, parental limit-setting, and the containing effects of the broader social contract.

Meanwhile, this all-powerful basic ego becomes the key problem for those terrified of death. Driven by its drive to survive, the ego dissociates from any possibility of its ending. On the one hand, the ego gives us a sense of control and the capacity to make choices. But on the other hand, it sports a cavernous blind spot to scary uncertainties along the path of life up to its inevitable ending.

Beginning with the human body, the ego has no clue about any number of ordinary physiological functions. How your lungs, kidneys, heart, liver, and circulatory system operate is completely out of its purview. And yet, the ego is completely dependent on these structures. Coincidentally, the ego’s associating itself with the body represents yet another illusion. A human being deprived of air will die within minutes, and without water within days. Why does the ego perceive itself as existing within a sac of skin, an arguably psychotic perception?