Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

The sense of immortality: On death and the continuity of life

  • Twentieth Annual Karen Horney Lecture
  • Published:
The American Journal of Psychoanalysis Aims and scope

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

References

  1. Robert Jay Lifton,Death in Life, New York: Random House, 1968, pp. 540–541.

    Google Scholar 

  2. See Ernst Cassier,An Essay on Man, Doubleday Anchor, 1944,The Myth of the State, Doubleday Anchor, 1946, andThe Philosophy of Symbolic Forms (three volumes), New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1953–1957; and Susanne Langer,Philosophy in a New Key, Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1942,Feeling and Form, New York: Scribners, 1953,Philosophical Sketches, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1962, andMind: An Essay on Feeling, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins Press, 1967.

  3. Lifton, “Experiments in Advocacy Research”,Research and Relevance, Vol. XXI of Science and Psycho-analysis, ed. J. H. Masserman, pp. 259–271. Also in the academy newsletter of The American Academy of Psychoanalysis, Feb. 1972, Vol. 16, No. 1, pp. 8–13.

  4. Thomas Kuhn,The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, Phoenix Books, 1962.

    Google Scholar 

  5. Sigmund Freud, “Thoughts for the Times on War and Death”, Standard Edition, London: The Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psychoanalysis, 1957, Vol. IXV, p. 289.

    Google Scholar 

  6. Carl Jung,Modern Man in Search of a Soul, New York: Harcourt Brace, 1936, p. 129.

    Google Scholar 

  7. Avery Weisman and Thomas Hackett, “Predilection to Death: Death and Dying as a Psychiatric Problem”,Psychosomatic Medicine, May–June 1961, Vol. 33, No. 3.

  8. Otto Rank,Beyond Psychology, New York: Dover reprint, 1958, p. 64.

  9. Leslie, Farber, “The Therapeutic Despair”,The Ways of the Will, New York London: Basic Books (2nd printing), 1966.

    Google Scholar 

  10. Marghanita Laski,Ecstasy: A Study of Some Secular and Religious Experiences, Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1961.

    Google Scholar 

  11. Marcea Eliade,Cosmos and History: The Myth of the Eternal Return, New York: Torchbacks, 1959.

    Google Scholar 

  12. Lifton,Revolutionary Immortality: Mao Tse-Tung and the Chinese Revolution, New York: Random House, 1968, p. 10.

    Google Scholar 

  13. Kenneth Boulding,The Image, Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press, 1956.

    Google Scholar 

  14. John Bowlby,Attachment and Loss (Vol. I: Attachment), New York: Basic Books, 1969.

    Google Scholar 

  15. Melanie Klein, et al,Developments in Psychoanalysis, London: The Hogarth Press, 1952.

    Google Scholar 

  16. Kenneth Keniston,Young Radicals, New York: Harcourt, Brace & Jovanovich, 1968.

    Google Scholar 

  17. Lifton, “Protean Man”,Partisan Review, Winter 1968, Vol. 35, 1: 13–27;History and Human Survival, New York: Random House, 1970, pp. 311–331; andArchives of General Psychiatry, April 1971. 24:298–304.

    Google Scholar 

  18. Erik H. Erikson,Childhood and Society, New York: Norton, 1950.

    Google Scholar 

  19. Lifton,Home From the War: Vietnam Veterans, Neither Victims Nor Executioners, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1973.

    Google Scholar 

  20. Joseph D. Teicher, “‘Combat Fatigue’ or ‘Death Anxiety Neurosis’”,Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 1953, 117: 234–242.

    Google Scholar 

  21. Abram Kardiner, “Traumatic Neuroses of War,”American Handbook of Psychiatry, 1959, Vol. I, pp. 246–257.

    Google Scholar 

  22. Wilhelm Stekel,Nervous Anxiety States and Their Treatment (translated by Rosalie Gabler), New York: Dodd Mead & Co., 1923, as cited in Jacques Choron,Modern Man and Mortality, New York: Macmillan, 1964, p. 131.

    Google Scholar 

  23. Rank,Will Therapy, New York: Knopf, 1950.

    Google Scholar 

  24. Freud,Civilization and Its Discontents, Standard Edition, Vol. XXI, p. 89.

  25. Lifton,The Broken Connection, ms., chapter on “Death and Psychiatry”.

  26. George R. Crupp and Bernard Kligfeld, “The Bereavement Reaction: A Cross Cultural Evaluation”,Journal of Religion and Health, 1, 1962, pp. 222–246.

    Google Scholar 

  27. Freud, “Analysis of a Phobia in a Five-Year-Old Boy,” Standard Edition, Vol. X, pp. 5–149.

  28. Harold Searles, “Schizophrenia and the inevitability of Death”,Psychiatric Quarterly, 1961, 35: 631–635.

    Google Scholar 

  29. R. D. Laing,The Divided Self, Baltimore: Penguin (Pelican), 1965, p. 176.

  30. Primo Levi,Survival in Auschwitz, New York: Collier, 1961, p. 82.

    Google Scholar 

  31. See, for instance, various papers in Don B. Jackson (ed.),

  32. Ibid. See, for instance, various papers in Don B. Jackson (ed.).

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychiatry, Yale University, School of Medicine, 34 Parl Street, 06519, New Haven, Conn.

    Robert J. Lifton M.D. (Foundations' Fund Research Professor of Psychiatry)

Authors
  1. Robert J. Lifton M.D.
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Lifton, R.J. The sense of immortality: On death and the continuity of life. Am J Psychoanal 33, 3–15 (1973). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01872131

Download citation

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01872131

Search

Navigation