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February 26, 1957. LIEBESTOD FANTASIES IN A PATIENT FACED WITH A FATAL ILLNESS. Bernard Brodsky, M.D.
This paper discusses, on the basis of an analytic case history, the fantasy of Liebestod, the latent wish for an eternal reunion with a beloved person who is dead. One such fantasy is the wish to die with the person. A young woman with chronic leukemia was accepted for analysis because of intense depression and anxiety. Her mother's aloofness and her father's preference for the only son drove her into an intense and ambivalent relationship with her brother. In early life the two children became fascinated with Wagner's Tristan and Isolde. When the brother was killed in a war, the patient became depressed and had the fantasy of being reunited with him. After her marriage, and during her third pregnancy, her fatal illness developed. Her analysis revealed the fantasy to be: 1, a warding off of fear of death by denying it; 2, being buried with the brother as an intrauterine fantasy of coitus and pregnancy; 3, reunion with the brother as a means of being reunited with the mother—a good death being equated with