I wonder if any of our members has read Robert Langs’ most recent book, Freud on a Precipice. How Freud’s Fate pushed Psychoanalysis over the Edge? While most Jungians seem familiar with Langs’ earlier work on derivative communication, communication styles, and the importance of the analytic frame, I have only met a few familiar with Langs’ work of the last decade. I have just reviewed Freud on a Precipice in the most recent issue of the Journal of Analytical Psychology (vol. 57, no. 1, 127-8) and the book strikes me as a good introduction to Langs’ current research.
Key to Langs’ recent work is how death anxiety and death-related trauma are the most basic factors in all psychic conflict and distress. Langs considers death anxiety to be so potent a force in psychic conflict that he claims: (1) it is archetypal, in Jung’s sense; (2) we therefore always experience death anxiety on some level and (3) evolution has conferred upon us a psychic factor whereby we deny this anxiety, lest we be overwhelmed by it. Thus it appears – if I understand Langs correctly – that some amount of psychic conflict is more or less inevitable, because we need to face death-related traumas and anxieties in order to gain psychic health yet we are simultaneously battling an ingrained, evolutionary mechanism tending us to deny it.
These ideas enter into the Freud book, in that Langs postulates that current psychoanalytic practice and theory in essence “acts out” this psychic situation by denying the centrality of death anxiety, something which Langs seeks to prove happened in Freud’s own case and which continues, he thinks, throughout the psychoanalytic tradition. How plausible do you all think it is that death-related traumas and anxieties lie at the root of psychic conflict? Does anyone find parallels to Langs’ claims in the Jungian tradition? Are there signs of the denial of death-related anxieties and traumas in the Jungian tradition?
Some related texts:
Langs, Robert. 2010. Freud on a Precipice. How Freud’s Fate pushed Psychoanalysis over the Edge. Lanham MD: Jason Aronson
Langs, Robert. 2004. “Death anxiety and the emotion-processing mind”. Psychoanalytic Psychology. Vol. 21, no. 1, 31-53
Replies
Very kind of you to say and I hope you are right :)
To lock onto any one level of development as the source of anxiety is dangerous and could lead to a closing of the mind. The soul develops over a continuum of stages, each with their own anxiety stimuli. Jung hit the nail on the head when he focused on spiritual growth as the ultimate individual motivator. Anything short of that is just an obstacle or distraction experience on the path of spiritual growth, whether it be sexual, death, greed, power, abandonment, or just lack of finding meaning in life.
I think that is a great point, Lee. I hope I haven't misrepresented Langs. I don't think he wants to say that death anxiety and death-related traumas are the exclusive sources of anxiety, but rather that they are the one factor always present in anxieties -- yet there can also always be other factors. If I understand him correctly, in other words, he doesn't want to reduce all anxieties and all sources of anxiety only to death-related anxieties and traumas, but only highlight that death-related anxieties and traumas are always present as one, archetypal factor in all our psychic conflicts.
I find it interesting that when I was young (as in elementary school) I was always afraid of everything: Strangers, the dark, walking home at night,........ the whole gambit. I remember one specific time while walking alone, home from a cub scout meeting at night, on a dark road where there were no homes or lights, just a dirt road through the woods, feeling all the fear when I realized that death was inevitable. Everyone dies. The mortality rate is 100%! With this realization I accepted that there was no reason to fear death, and thus no reason to fear anything that caused death, or anything less than death. Bottom line, I used my death anxiety resolution to resolve all other anxieties that had accumulated prior to my age 10 and become free. The fear was gone. Except for one, getting shackled and losing my freedom, until I learned that I can always gain freedom by stepping out of the physical body.
Not sure, But I think this was some of the work Freud took from Sabina Spielrein and her dissertation. I remember reading his comments on it in his letters to Jung.
In my own humble opinion, having gone through a near death... actually not just near, but an full death experience myself. It is an instantaneous diminishing of the ego self. That is where most of the fear originates.
Once you go through it, the reverse becomes true in that you dislike being here in this realm and no longer fear death. At time you really miss the death experience and look forward to communing with the Divine again.
Very interesting and certainly thought provoking subject. Where my thoughts immediately went, were, to that yes, of course, anxiety about death runs the show! How could it not, given what so many of us carry related to life-trauma and the terror that comes with the extinction of our ego-driven identities. After all, how is it, that "I " might not exist anymore?
So I sit with that a minute, or maybe two, or even three, and gradually, oh so gradually if I let it happen, that anxiety begins to fade. I relax, and sink into another container, one so much vaster than my physical reality.
Is it archetypal? Is it cosmic? Is it universal? Is it, at all?
I smile secretly, at the thought that I've turned "myself" over so easily to some invisible set of ever present, comforting arms. But, soon, I'll return to those earth-bound arms, the ones that hold me so anxiously, so fearfully, so cautiously. And there I'll stay as I await my Daimone's call.
Hi again, kay. I have been thinking about these interesting points you made some more and I think they add a good deal to this discussion. I wonder if your point that "we do not accept death and so we fear it" is actually basically the same point as Langs is making or at least an allied point? If I understand Langs correctly, his point is that the emotional challenges of facing (and I assume, therefore, of accepting) death are at the root of psychic conflict, including fear of death. I think he would also understand the death anxiety to be associated with the value of life and so, in practice, life and death are intermingled phenomena here, in the experience.
That would be my interpretation, though whether Langs would whole-heartedly agree with that, I don't know. But one thing Langs does do is differentiate three types of death anxiety: (1) predator death anxiety; (2) predatory death anxiety; (3) existential death anxiety. The first is associated with the ways in which we "deal death" on others -- really or symbolically, presumably. Predatory death anxiety relates to how death has been dealt on us, again really or symbolically. In both these cases, Langs appears to be developing a kind of trauma based theory of psychic conflict, so it may be literal death or it may be something which was experienced as so traumatic that it felt that way. The third, existential death anxiety, is simply the fear of the annihilation of our lives, an anxiety we all need to face, Langs thinks.
Now of course, if you introduce the ideas from Eastern philosophy concerning "reincarnation" or Plato's transmigration of souls or Christian resurrection from the dead, etc. no doubt the existential death anxiety is significantly altered in its sense. I think Langs would be concerned that such ideas are bound up with denial of existential death anxiety, but presumably that would be something one would have to look at on a case by case basis. But the other two types might still be active, even if the existential type is significantly altered through belief.
I keep wondering if it is life we fear or rather whole-hearted engagement in life... you have gotten me thinking. Thanks.
kay,
.
While I respectfully disagree with you on some of the attributes of kundalini you describe, thank you for sharing those comments as what you describe is truly an anatomical attribute of the soul. My experience of the kundalini is a little different than most people describe it as they usually limit it to the feminine aspect of consciousness. Thank you for not being restrictive in your description.
.
I totally agree with your statement "So I don't think death related traumas and anxieties lie at the root of psychic conflict, rather, i think the root of psychic conflict is fear of life, fear of emotions, and fear in general. Once the fears are confronted, acknowledged and accepted, we can let them go and the psyche is no longer in conflict."
.
"There is no fear, only that feeling of oneness with everything in creation".. (excellent statement you made.) It describes the experience perfectly.
.
Life truly is about finding and removing the obstacles to Love that exist within our souls. (Rumi paraphrased)
No, I wasn't looking for quotations but just for personal reflections. Thanks!
Kay, David, and Judith--thanks to you all for an interesting discussion. You each bring up topics that never occurred to me until I read your comments. John--I'm intrigued. I'm ordering Dr. Langs' book "Freud on a Precipice" now. In my career as a grad student, I can count the amount of exposure I've had to Freud on two fingers--one "Freud" class--and one "Post-Freudian" class--both at Pacifica. They were enlightening--but very quick and short in the course of things, and I wonder how many people on the planet actually have any formal training in Freud's works other than psychoanalysts in his tradition. I remember I actually wrote my term paper in the Freud class on "Thanatos"--the death drive. I really appreciate anything that will help us look at this challenging and enlightening arena...
-
1
-
2
-
3
of 3 Next