Introduction

Psychological theory has tended either to neglect death or render it a kind of foreign body, to separate death from the general motivations of life.

This issue on the psychoanalysis of death is a diverse collection of articles that seek to draw attention to die more salient and complex psychodynamics and fantasies we have concerning mortality. Though Plato (360 BC) and Montaigne (1580-1595) said philosophy is preparation for death, and Buddha believed that enlightenment consisted of the excruciating awareness that we all die, psychoanalysis seems to resist acknowledgment that the fear of death is a poignant psychological problem. Amidst innumerable discussions on sexuality, object relations, technique, analytic process, even loss and mourning, psychoanalysis remains surprisingly quiet about the way we cope with thoughts of death, with the fear of being killed, of ceasing life, rotting, being consumed by maggots, disappearing forever. Richard IFs fool sits on the throne and laughs at our narcissistic fantasies of significance before the inevitability of death (Shakespeare, 1595), and both Nietzsche (1872) and Kyoto School philosopher Nishitani (1982) aver that a gaping abyss, a sense of nihility and futility open up before us when we face our death. As a colleague of mine put it, most of us do not like the idea that we are defecating pieces of meat of no more ultimate significance than a clam or potato. Psychoanalysis somehow consigns such thinking to limbo, generally ignoring important contributions on the fear of death, refusing to admit that mortality is of any psychodynamic relevance.