Fantasies Of Death Research Articles

To the Question of Attitude to Death of Middle-Aged People During the War in Ukraine

A person's attitude to death is influenced by the critical situations he encounters in his life. The war, which began in Ukraine at the beginning of 2022, made people's feelings about death relevant, because death has become everyday reality in the lives of Ukrainians. The purpose of the study is to determine the peculiarities of middle-aged people attitude to the phenomenon of death during the war in Ukraine. A sample of subjects (N=76) who previously participated in our research in 2019 and 2020 during the coronavirus infection. The age of the subjects varies as follows: Me=44.00; min=35.00; max=55.00. Research methods: the "Attitude to Death" method (I.Yu. Kulagina, L.V. Senkevich), the "Attitude to Death Scale" method by D.V. Hardt, Metaphor of Personal Death technique – the Revised Death Fantasy Scale (RDFS) J. McLennan. It was determined that the attitude towards death in people of the studied middle-aged group during the war is ambivalent with a certain deviation towards the positive. The studied group is characterized by an average level of stress resistance, which is associated with thoughts about death. The choice of metaphors about death is determined by the degree of attitude positivity towards death: a pessimistic attitude towards death is associated with negative thoughts about death, fixation on its external side, avoidance of contact with death. Lack of seeing a positive perspective in death leads to pessimism and negative thoughts. An optimistic attitude towards death is associated with the rare occurrence of negative thoughts about own death, perception of death as a necessary aspect of being, openness to contact with death. Significant differences were found between believers and atheists on the indicator of positive thoughts about their own death: believers showed a high level of acceptance of death. Significant differences in attitudes toward death between men and women were also identified: men have a more positive and "black" humor to thoughts about death.

3.8 in Otautahi

3.8 in Otautahi Gregory Dally (bio) Tectonic plates on which you're perchedhave shifted. Only a fraction.It's a prompt for your next themeas you whisper to talkback. It appears you're taking stockof a host of tremors set to rendan isle of Gondwanathat's already fractured. The night is letting out fantasiesof death as a renewal: historiesvis-à-vis drunkenness loose in the air.You fish for your mate with chopped syllables and consider Maui's lore–those legends commended heart-to-mindand mouth-to-ear in sessionsencircling a fire. From a past you liked, your paramour's voiceis settling. Her myths are remindersto filter your head's rampant excess.She'll bring you around. You shush. It's all in the listening.Rattling the can, she links her Speight's to yours,and vitamins stir. One lingua on anotheris disrupting ideal nutrients. At your vintage, it behooves youto slam propaganda from carpers.A neglected grin is meshed in foam,stilling the curdle of thoughts. [End Page 105] So you launch into the phantom danceof those who've survivedjust to redefinethe most hideous of adjectives, 'mature.' She avoids your question. The nothinggrows urgent. It's a lack of retort which letsher strengthen. She bites on time,and your quiet tempers merge. You're the one to ad lib charm,the kind all mockers love.Inaction is only inertiathat's got you ready, set to hug. [End Page 106] Gregory Dally Gregory Dally has had poetry, fiction, scripts, and other material published in various journals, including Amsterdam Quarterly, Milly Magazine, Popshot Quarterly, and Tarot. He placed first in the poetry category of the 2020 NZSA New Zealand Heritage Literary Awards. His ten-minute plays have been staged in New Zealand and the United States. A recent project involved an effort to create a biographical statement of at least a hundred words as a means to augment his identity. This is a departure from his custom of limiting such items, in accordance with a theory that the content is the issue, rather than the author. Copyright © 2022 Wayne State University Press

Paroles de réanimés, énigme de la mort en réanimation

ContextThrough our daily clinic of clinical psychologist in resuscitation along with the doctoral research work entitled “Dreams of resuscitation. Experiences of coma in adult intensive care unit”, a reflection emerged on the experience of patients during coma, as well as the awakening and post-discharge from intensive care. For many of them, resuscitation's hospitalization is traumatic and the confused state of the coma experience is as much, if not more, than the somatic crisis they are going through. Work on psychic processes in intensive care has evolved a lot, in the past several years. Enriched with the contributions of M. Grosclaude and R. Minjardin particular, the consideration of these resuscitative stories paved the way to a psychological approach to delirium. It is defined, according to the American Psychiatric Association in DSM IV, by a disturbance of consciousness accompanied by cognitive changes. The etiologies are varied and the clinical signs are characterized by a disturbance of consciousness, memory disorders, disorientation, hallucinations, modification of psychomotor behaviour (hypo or hyperactive forms), an inversion of the sleep-wake cycle. ObjectivesThis research work has a theoretical aim by proposing a modeling of the coma experience and its awakening through the subjective content of resuscitation stories, beyond elements objectified by scales, generally barely used by care workers not trained in psychiatry. This work also has a clinical aim as well as to provide awareness of the caregiver to the prevention, screening and management of this syndrome. MethodsIt was the clinic that first motivated this work, using a qualitative approach, during semi-structured interviews with patients and their families during hospitalization or in the aftermath. The therapeutic space offered makes it possible to share this delirium experience with multi-professional resuscitation teams, with the aim of improving practices. The clinic is closely linked to the theoretical psychoanalytic field, for listening and reading interviews. The population studied is centered on twelve patients who have been in intensive care; postoperative or due to organ failure, and experienced an artificial coma. ResultsThis research work is progressing but the challenge to identify and take care of these traumatic experiences by the care teams are already taking shape. This is explained by the lack of training of caregivers on this subject but also the lack of psychologists in these services. The traumatic issue is central to patients. Through dream work, the fantasy of death and a “fragmentary” experience, there would be an attempt to represent the experience of the body. ConclusionsThe clinical and psychoanalytic approach is necessary to develop and maintain a psychic presence in these highly technical services. “Being with” patients intertwined with multi-professional work constitute the foundation of the living and desired subject, while defending freedom and the acceptance of words.

Sexual Desire, Violent Death, and the True Believer

The relationship among sexual desire, violent death, and fundamentalist belief leading to acts of terrorism is explored through the psychoanalytic lens of structural and object relations theory. Using contemporary and historical cases of jihadist, ethnic nationalist, and single-issue terrorist violence, the author posits that both the fear of and desire for sexual pleasure, and its condemnation and often punishment within the strictures of fundamentalist belief systems, are often intrapsychically managed through pre-Oedipal defenses, compensatory fantasies of death of the self and object, and the promise of unlimited sexual gratification through violent obliteration. The actual targeted violence, directed toward perceived unbelievers, also advances the fantasy of ambient purification (morally cleansing the environment), and the fantasy of ushering in a destined utopia, usually vaguely defined.

Horatio’s Philosophy in Hamlet

Horatio’s Philosophy in <i>Hamlet</i>

The Plight of Ethics

Since Kant, ethics has been synonymous with moral law, grounded in Reason. As Kant’s heirs, we are still grappling with a tension he sought to resolve through his appeal to a rational God, namely, between ethics and politics. “Politics says, ‘Be ye wise as serpents,’” remarks Kant: “Morality adds (as a limiting condition) ‘and guileless as doves’” (1795, 338). For Kant, both the serpent of politics and the dove of ethics are bound by the same moral duty that has its source in the freedom of our sovereign rational will. The perfection of this good will is possible not as individuals but only from the perspective of what Kant calls “Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View,” which it turns out is a view from the cosmos, more specifically, from the perspective of the “dwellers from other planets” whom Kant imagines viewing us from their own place in the universe (1784, n. 2). As we know, Kant insists that the concept of duty cannot be in conflict with doing our duty—or that ought implies can: “It is patently absurd, having granted this concept of duty its authority, to want to say that one nevertheless cannot do it. For in that case this concept would of itself drop out of morals. . . . [H]ence, there can be no conflict of politics as doctrine of right put into practice, with morals, as theoretical doctrine of right” (1795, 338). But what if the reverse were true? What if ought implies cannot? What if our obligations always outstrip our intentions? What if the sovereign will is fundamentally beholden both to other people and to the Other The Plight of Ethics

Van Gogh’s Fantasies of Replacement: Being a Double and a Twin

The replacement child, often given the name of the deceased, is prone to fantasies that he or she is the embodiment of the dead child. Vincent van Gogh was born one year to the day after a stillborn brother of the identical name, including the middle name, Willem. In the parish register van Gogh was given the same number twenty-nine as his predecessor brother. Van Gogh's fantasies of death and rebirth, of being a double and a twin, contributed to both his psychopathology and his creativity. The replacement theme in van Gogh's life and work is evident in his voluminous correspondence containing drawings and references to his art. His parents and his brother Theo are viewed as having shared a familial fantasy system. Van Gogh's self-portraits are regarded as relevant to his being a replacement child. No single fantasy or theme can account for the complexities of development, disorder, or creativity. Van Gogh's art was vastly overdetermined, including extraordinary endowment and the motivation of a replacement child to justify his survival, surpass his rival double/twin through great achievement, repair parental depression, and defy death through immortality.

Transcultural issues about death fantasies and beliefs

Our data comes from 32 interviews occurring during aone-year period with Greek patients who were seen within24 hours of a suicide attempt and after admission at thecasualty department of a Greek general hospital. At theend of the assessment the patient was asked to give a sui-cidal fantasy and speak about his thoughts and believesaround death.

Le maternel en souffrance. Ombre de la mort sur le corps adolescent

Considering the link between the feminine character of suicide attempts in adolescence and the specific issue of maternity, the authors suggest a "cultural roundaboutness" showing that, in some African societies, teenager girls are exposed to culturally structured death fantasies before becoming mothers. In occidental culture, death matter is theatrically expressed by suicide attempts whereas, in African societies, death is ritually played and thus contributes to overcome the infantile components and to allow maternity. The authors underline two points of the occidental culture: first the delayed access to maternity and also denial of death. These two points are supposed to play a particular role in the individual development since they psychically echo with the possible difficulty in elaborating castration which is a necessary step to build the genital feminine dimension of personality.

O paradoxo do diagnóstico precoce de câncer

Como circunscrever o discurso do paciente que teve diagnóstico de câncer com técnicas de detecção precoce dessa doença? A partir de dois casos clínicos, tentamos desenvolver a idéia de um efeito traumático no paciente ao ser informado desta doença potencialmente mortal. Assistimos à recomposiçao do fantasma de morte com o enunciado do discurso médico, figura reduplicada dos pais não protetores. E o corpo constitui-se como um objeto “fobogênico”, lugar de projeção do traumático. Desta forma o sujeito instala-se numa posição de identificação ao agressor segundo os termos de Ferenczi. Durante o tempo em que o paciente se mantiver numa posição exterior em relação ao seu corpo libidinal – e será isto que facilitará o discurso médico – ele ficará hipnotizado pelo agressor, repetindo desta forma um comportamento infantil, de submissão aos maus pais. Despossuídos de seus próprios corpos, esses pacientes testemunham dos destinos pulsionais mais variáveis, chegando a formas mais mórbidas.

The reorganization of the maternal instincts through the process of splitting

Working with a young woman who had to deal with the anxieties caused by the cohabitation of life and death fantasies and wishes, I tried to study and demonstrate how these wishes interweave one into another, how the envy of the parent who gives birth meets the fear of genealogical succession, which at the same time includes the fear of death.

THE USE OF DEATH METAPHORS TO UNDERSTAND PERSONAL MEANING OF DEATH AMONG HONG KONG CHINESE UNDERGRADUATES

Many Chinese words are pictographic in nature and Chinese people often tend to use metaphorical expressions to communicate emotional feelings. The assessment of death images and metaphors provides a meaningful way of understanding personal perceptions of death among the Chinese. The purpose of this study was to establish an instrument to assess the death metaphors of Hong Kong Chinese for assessment and empirical research. Thirty death metaphor statements in Chinese were created from items of the Revised Death Fantasy Scale (RDFS; J. McLennan & C. A. Stewart, 1997) and a previous pilot study in Hong Kong (S. M. Y. Ho, 2001). The item pool was administered to 100 undergraduates together with the Templer's Death Anxiety Scale. Seven out of the 10 highest scored death metaphor statements were from the items that had been created for this study. Descriptive statistics of individual items suggested an interpersonal dimension of death perception that is not emphasized in Western literature. Factor analysis generated a 18-item Death Metaphors Scale (DMS) with 2 9-item subscales: the Positive Metaphors (α = .85) and the Negative Metaphors (α = .81). The scores of DMS subscales are significantly correlated with the Templer's Death Anxiety Scale but not with corresponding scores of the RDFS. The DMS was considered a potentially useful instrument to study death metaphors among Chinese.

Considerations on depressive conflict and its different levels of intensity: Implications for technique

This article considers the problem of depressive conflict (DC) and the difficulties that arise in integrating aggression towards the object of libidinal cathexis. This conflict results, in particular, from the destructive omnipotence that infantile fantasies attribute to the aggression. In order to better clarify Klein's very broad concept of the depressive position, three levels of severity of depressive conflict are proposed, depending on the type of fantasies concerning the loss of the object that predominate in the individual. These are: fantasies of catastrophic and irreparable destruction of the object (‘parapsychotic’ DC); fantasies of death and serious damage of the object (‘para‐depressive’ DC); and fantasies of rejection and loss of the love of the object (‘para‐neurotic’ DC). Having looked at these theoretical hypotheses, their implications for technique will then be considered, particularly the importance of focusing the interpretation on guilt feelings rather than on drives in the transferential relationship. A clinical example drawn from the work of Klein and a clinical vignette of a particularly difficult analysis illustrate this technical hypothesis.

Fantasies of Death and Violence in the Early Juvenilia of Charlotte Brontë (1829–32)

This article argues that the origins of two themes in Charlotte Brontë's novels, rage and its suppression and race as a way to define rebellion, can be found in her earliest juvenilia. From the ages of thirteen to sixteen, Charlotte Brontë used the juvenilia to explore her traumatic reaction to the deaths of her mother and two sisters. She also used the fantasy writing to repress her rage at so much death. This is important since the symbolic language she used as a thirteen-year-old would reappear, in a much more sophisticated form, in Jane Eyre and Villette. Finally, Charlotte's use of characters with 'black blood' to represent rage originates in the Africans of her juvenilia. This article traces her depictions of Africans and Africa to the original geography books she studied as a child, and makes the link between her African characters and Bertha Rochester.

Using Metaphors to Assess Anticipatory Perceptions of Personal Death

The Revised Death Fantasy Scale (RDFS) is an 18-item measure based on metaphors of personal death. It was constructed to assess psychological aspects of contemplating personal death, at levels of awareness less conscious than those tapped by conventional self-report measures. It contains two subscales: Positive Metaphors and Negative Metaphors. In several studies the RDFS has shown evidence of reliability and validity. The scale may be potentially useful in health-related research and in the training and support of individuals whose work is related to death and dying.

Destruction as the Cause of Coming Into Being

Throughout my involvement with sexual problems, one question has especially interested me: Why does this most powerful drive, the reproductive instinct, harbour negative feelings in addition to the inherently anticipated positive feelings? These negative feelings, such as anxiety and disgust, must be overcome in order to use the drive appropriately. Naturally, an individual’s negative attitude towards sexual activity strikes especially to the core of the neurotic. Several investigators have sought to explain this opposition as a result of our manner of child-rearing: We attempt to keep the drive within bounds and teach each child to consider the fulfilment of sexual wishes as something dirty and forbidden. The frequency with which sexual wishes are associated with images of death is noteworthy because death is a symbol of moral failure (Stekel).1 Gross relates the feeling of disgust in the presence of sexual products to their anatomical proximity to lifeless excreta. Freud traces the opposition back to anxiety and repression of the initial positively feeling-toned wish. Bleuler considers the inevitable negativity present in the positively feeling-toned idea to be a defence. In Jung, I found the following passage:Passionate longing, i.e., the libido, has two aspects: it is the power that beautifies everything and, in certain cases, destroys everything. Often, one cannot recognize the source of this creative power’s destructive quality. A woman who, in today’s society, abandons herself to passion soon leads herself to ruin. One need only contemplate the current bourgeois state of affairs to understand how a feeling of unbounded insecurity occurs in those who unconditionally surrender to Fate. To be fruitful provokes one’s downfall; at the rise of the next generation, the previous one has exceeded its peak. Our descendants become our most dangerous enemies for whom we are unprepared. They will survive and take power from our enfeebled hands. Anxiety in the presence of erotic Fate is completely comprehensible, for there is somethingimmeasurable within it. Fate usually contains hidden dangers. The wish not to wrestle in the dangerous struggle of life explains the continual hesitation of neurotics to take risks. Whoever relinquishes experiencing a risky undertaking must stifle an erotic wish, committing a form of self-murder. This explains the death fantasies that often accompany the renunciation of the erotic wish.2

Near-death-experiences in out-of-hospital cardiac arrest survivors. Meaningful phenomena or just fantasy of death?

Frequent criticism concerning the investigation of near-death-experiences (NDEs) has been the lack of uniform nomenclature and the failure to control the studied population with an elimination of interfering factors such as administration of sedatives and nonspecific stress responses. Greyson's NDE Scale is a 16-item questionnaire developed to standardize further research into mechanisms and effects of NDEs. Using this scale, we interviewed good out-of-hospital cardiac arrest survivors, with documented time-intervals between call for help and restoration of spontaneous circulation, yet without obvious brain damage or known, psychiatric history. The incidence of such experiences appeared to be extremely low among survivors of genuine cardiac arrest events. Alteration of information processing under the influence of hypoxia and hypercarbia only occurs after several minutes of brain ischaemia. International multicentric data collection within the framework for standardized reporting of cardiac arrest events will be the only satisfying method to address this fascinating and intriguing issue.

Countertransference in Factitious Disorder

In the treatment of patients with factitious disorder it is important to realize that at various levels of their experience these patients are more intimate with death than with life. This requires a particular awareness of resistance mechanisms to countertransference as well as of the importance of clinical procedures, in particular with regard to superego analysis. A requirement for establishing a psychotherapeutic alliance with patients suffering from factitious disorder is a high degree of 'therapeutic eros', hope and trust in one's own capabilities. The emphasis on a 'biophile attitude' does, however, involve the danger that the destructive potential, fantasies of death or killing, but above all feelings of guilt and shame are euphemistically interpreted and played down. A supportive superego analysis is viewed by the patient as playing down her or his 'terror of conscience' and a sense of being left alone. The therapist can be of greater help to the patient by focusing on his or her need and by escorting him or her. This requires that the therapist accept the feelings of relentlessness and hopelessness experienced by the patients in her- or himself. By relinquishing the denial of death-directed tendencies, the therapist is able to establish normality, reality and structure, and is thus in a position to exert a stabilizing effect, initially on her- or himself, but frequently also on the patient, for whom new horizons open.

The Death Fantasy Scale: A Measure Based on Metaphors of One's Personal Death

Abstract Conventional self-report inventories measuring attitudes toward death have been criticized on the grounds that they fail to tap important unconscious processes related to death anxieties and are contaminated by broad personality dispositions such as neuroticism. In this study, using Australian volunteers as subjects, we investigated a measure devised by Feifel and Nagy (1981) to tap death-related attitudes at a fantasy level. The scale contained two subscales: Positive Death Metaphors and Negative Death Metaphors, both of which were internally consistent and relatively uncorrelated with a general measure of neuroticism. The measure shows potential as a tool for investigating aspects of attitudes toward death and dying.

A Death Fantasy Journey: The Use of Guided Imagery in Death Education and Grief Counseling

A Death Fantasy Journey: The Use of Guided Imagery in Death Education and Grief Counseling