Changes

Our own [[death ]] cannot be represented, which is obvious since it would require a [[self]]-observing [[consciousness ]] that [[disappears ]] with death and therefore cannot perceive the death. Any [[anticipation ]] of our own death as nothingness is therefore [[impossible]]. For [[Freud]], this [[philosophical ]] evidence was reflected in his remarks that "our [[unconscious ]] . . . does not believe in its own death; it behaves as if it were immortal" (1915b, p. 296) and "it is indeed impossible to imagine our own death; and whenever we attempt to do so we can perceive that we are in fact still [[present ]] as spectators" (1915b, p. 289). These two propositions should not be confused. The second is a [[logical ]] [[statement]], since in the [[absence ]] of [[existence ]] there is no consciousness, while the first refers to the make-up of the unconscious [[system ]] and especially the fact that it ignores [[time ]] and its passage, and more radically, [[negation]].

The inability to [[represent ]] one's own death does not imply that we fail to suffer [[about ]] the [[certainty ]] of death. [[Anxiety ]] about death occupies a central [[place ]] in our lives, and ultimately it is this that [[superego ]] anxiety and [[castration ]] anxiety refer to. Moreover, death is represented in [[dreams ]] and [[symbols]]. Departures and muteness, or the ability to hide from [[others ]] are oneiric representations of death. Among the typical [[dream ]] types Freud mentions in The [[Interpretation ]] of Dreams (1900a) is the dream of the death of loved ones.

[[Perception ]] about the death of the [[other ]] is a central element in obsessive neurotics. Freud wrote, "these neurotics [[need ]] the [[help ]] of the possibility of death chiefly in [[order ]] that it may act as a solution of conflicts they have [[left ]] unsolved" (1909d, p. 236). By suppressing an element of indecision, death would allow [[resolution]], but death, and the possibility of escaping it through superstitious magical activities, is associated with their unconscious [[hatred ]] in the [[conflict ]] of [[ambivalence]]. The [[idea ]] of death offers a solution in obsessive [[neurosis]], but it is also, for everyone, a [[value ]] that, by establishing a contrast, exalts the value of [[life]]. Freud demonstrates this in relation to transience (1916a [1915]), but he also emphasizes it in relation to the risk of death: "Life is impoverished, it loses in interest, when the highest stake in the [[game ]] of [[living]], life itself, may not be risked" (1915b, p. 290).

Beyond the impossible [[representation ]] of one's own demise, there is the question of death as enigma, similar to [[birth]], as the end mirrors the beginning. Freud questions [[primitive ]] man's attitude to death (1912-1913a) by distinguishing between the triumph before the corpse of the [[enemy ]] and the [[pain ]] experienced in the [[loss ]] of a loved one. Certainly, in these cases [[identification ]] could lead primitive man to also consider his own death. But Freud introduced an additional idea, that of the ambivalence that would lead to [[suffering ]] and relief, and considered it to be the root not of the representation of death but of the fact that the [[disturbance ]] caused by it might have led men to [[think]]: "What released the spirit of enquiry in man was not the [[intellectual ]] enigma, and not every death, but the conflict of [[feeling ]] at the death of loved yet [[alien ]] and hated persons" (1915b, 293).

As for [[children]], Freud also felt that the origin of the [[activity]], if not of [[thought]], at least of research, was found in the [[desire ]] for affection (preserving the [[love ]] of one's [[parents ]] without sharing it with younger siblings). In contrast he does not appear to have considered that for children the representation of death and, in [[particular]], their own death, might have constituted an enigma and encouragement for [[reflection]]. "Children", he wrote, "[[know ]] [[nothing ]] of the horrors of corruption, of freezing in the ice-cold grave, of the terrors of eternal nothingness—ideas nothingness—[[ideas]] which grown-up [[people ]] find it so hard to tolerate, as is proved by all the [[myths ]] of a [[future ]] life" (1900a, p. 254). On the contrary, we can consider that the theories, or myths, that the [[child ]] creates to explain the origin of life also treat its end, and that both preoccupations are inseparable.

These theories raise the question of the [[causality ]] of death. We know that the [[adult]], rather than [[seeing ]] death as an inevitable destiny, will consider the immediate causes, or even look for those [[responsible ]] (1915b). The child, in a similar [[position]], does not hesitate to make death the result of [[murder]]. For here the [[relationship ]] to death retains its original [[form]], that is, the impulse to kill [[repressed ]] by an important [[moral ]] [[injunction]], "Thou shalt not kill." However, there is one area where this impulse can be given free rein: [[literary ]] [[fiction]], which provides the [[pleasure ]] of remaining alive and the certainty that we have not killed anyone. "In the realm of fiction we find the [[plurality ]] of lives which we need" (1915b, p. 291). The fact that so-called "crime" [[writing ]] has always enjoyed such success attests, as surely as the existence of a moral imperative, to the existence and persistence of this impulse to murder and the enigma contained in this [[return ]] to death, here couched in playful [[terms ]] (Mijolla-Mellor, 1995).

See also: Beyond the Pleasure [[Principle]]; Castration [[complex]]; Certainty; Death [[instinct ]] ([[Thanatos]]); [[Estrangement]]; "[[Mourning ]] and [[Melancholia]]"; "On Transience"; [[Phantom]]; Suicidal [[behavior]]; [[Suicide]]; "[[Thoughts ]] for the [[Times ]] on War and Death"; "[[Uncanny]], The".[[Bibliography]]

Further [[Reading]]