In an issue devoted to discussion of the work of Robert J. Lifton, Strozier and Flynn comment that although Lifton has continually emphasized his debt to psychoanalytic theory, and especially to his mentor, Erik Erikson, he has in fact moved toward a different model. Lifton's discussion of the quest for "symbolic immortality" distinguishes itself from Freud's notion of the self's continual denial of death, positing a middle knowledge or partial awareness of death accompanied by nonpathological forms of denial. Rejecting Freud's drive theory, which places energy at the center of motivation, Lifton emphasizes the symbolic and psychohistorical experience