Liebestod Fantasies in a Patient Faced with a Fatal Illness

How a person faces the real possibility of his own demise is a question that many analysts have probably thought of but about which little has been written. The case history to be presented concerns a cultured attractive young woman who, learning she had a fatal illness, attempted to ward off her fear of death with the fantasy of eternal reunion with a dead brother.

Early in life her mother's aloofness had drawn her towards her warm and brilliant father. When she saw that he did not measure up to her overvaluation and as she became aware of his preference for her brother, the longing for her father had been replaced by an intense feeling for the brother. Her love for him was reciprocated, even though envy of his masculinity contaminated her affection. There developed a far-reaching community of interest in poetry, literature, and music. They were deeply attracted to Wagner, especially to Tristan and Isolde, and when the two children heard the Liebestod—or love death—they were moved to tears. She was Isolde and he Tristan. It will be recalled that Tristan had an illicit love affair with Isolde, the betrothed of King Mark, his uncle. Isolde is then wedded to King Mark, but clandestine meetings with Tristan continue and are revealed to the king by a jealous friend. In a struggle with this friend Tristan is mortally wounded. Tristan dies in Isolde's arms, and Mark's forgiveness is too late. Isolde laments her lover and also dies, being united with him in death. But her dying is no death, and in her final aria she recounts her passionate response to his living beauties as if seeing them in an undying vision. Wagner describes her as 'verklärt'—transfigured. This fantasy of ecstatic reunion after death had the most profound effect upon the patient. Enthralled with the Love-Death, the two children vowed that if one were to die before the other, he would give a signal from the other world. Thus was death denied in advance.

The patient also felt that a story of