'If I were Dead'

From time to time, suddenly and for no apparent reason, one finds oneself thinking: "If I were dead…', a thought which one immediately ignores. This phrase crops up out of the blue, interrupting for a moment or two the peaceful flow of everyday thoughts, but it is almost immediately swallowed up again, provoking at best the comment: 'What a thought!'

We are dealing here with a mental phenomenon which, like many others, passes almost unnoticed because—despite its singularity—it is fleeting, isolated, of low intensity and quickly submerged in the daily flood of concrete perception. Furthermore, the mind rejects such phenomena without even the slightest examination or questioning. One more reason to stop and ask ourselves what the significance of such a peculiar event might be.

To begin with, we should note that, once this phenomenon has appeared, it tends to recur several times, usually with increasing impact, for longer periods. These recurrences take place at varying and sometimes quite lengthy intervals. Initial attempts at pinpointing the circumstances surrounding the time when the thought first arose are fruitless. A narrowly escaped accident or a forgotten illness may be recalled—somewhat at random—but nothing very precise or convincing comes out of it; it is often hard enough to even say just when the thought first occurred. It could be a year ago or more, or only a few months ago. As to the accompanying affect, its main feature is its circumspection; it consists in a light feeling of amused surprise, stronger than at first, but still free from any conscious anxiety. It would be fair to say that although the phenomenon expresses itself as a vague sentence rather than as an image, its rational form may well conceal a deep anxiety whose development has been repressed. The initial attempts at interpretation will revive the defence. One wonders if one is dead, while maintaining intact perception of an evident external reality and having an immediate calm