This paper is a study of Death in Venice by Thomas Mann, a novella which dramatizes the function of the experience of beauty in the main character’s struggle to ward off impending self-disintegration. It reinterprets Von Achenbach’s erotic infatuation, the dramatic focus of the work, as his effort to maintain self-cohesion through the experience of an archaic, sexualized idealization of the beautiful boy Tadzio. Aschenbach’s obsession rather than being a symptom of self-disintegration, is in fact a restorative effort, the boy’s beauty offering Aschenbach an experience of perfection, in other words an opportunity for a transcendent self-object experience.