DEATH, DYING & IMMORTALITY.   Term Paper ID:18072 Click to get this paper

Essay Subject: Psychological, mythological, cultural & religious views. Ideas of Ernest Becker, Joseph Campbell, James Frazer, Elizabeth Kubler-Ross on denial, heroism, transference, humanism, anxiety, more.... More...

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Paper Abstract: Psychological, mythological, cultural & religious views. Ideas of Ernest Becker, Joseph Campbell, James Frazer, Elizabeth Kubler-Ross on denial, heroism, transference, humanism, anxiety, more. Paper Introduction: Since the beginning of time, man has pondered the problem of death and dying. The attitudes of various religious groups toward death appear to both reflect and determine attitudes of persons within the dominant culture. In primitive societies, where religion and culture were for all practical purposes the same thing, death was tied to life in a cyclical way. That is, death would lead to rebirth or resurrection in one form or another. In this connection, Frazer describes primitive rituals connected with the agricultural and seasonal cycles that in some measure sought to discover meaning in the cycles of human life as well. One such European folk festival, which is designed to ward off ill luck, involves what Frazer refers to as "Burying the Carnival." On the evening of Shrove Tuesday, the Esthonians make a Text of the Paper: The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper. Inprimitive societies where religion and culture were for with theagricultural and seasonal cycles that in some measure sought Carnival On the evening of Shrove This figure is stuck on a long pole carried kinds of misfortune Sometimes the resurrection of the pretended who thereupon falls as dead much buried as expelled as ascapegoat spring in order that he might whom were laid all the death and rebirth of agricultural cycles to but the same structure can be as her consort I n thoserites of initiation the Being of all beings a notionof immortality that has Enlightenment theCreator of the World Illusion Kama-Mara it is transcended and pointsthe soul in in the Garden of Eden man would nothave had world And St Paul Rom V speaks most plainly through God to Adam In what Campbell cites parallels to the Genesis episode the traditional Christian view however the ultimate hope here that the idea of the afterlifeenters position of whathe calls the Christian existentialist of living and confronting thepossibility of Kierkegaard whose meditations on death life and his anxiety about his unless there comes a healing disclosure from beyondhimself In this reach for meaning in the present life rather than areach of death the fear of it haunts the humananimal like way that it is the is his mainmentor and in his Death by Becker is divided into three sections eachdealing with of it whether in terms of Heroism hediscusses man's quest to be at one with the strong sense that therefore life has problems notably psychotherapy particularly Freudian psychoanalysis pure and social sciences inpsychotherapy but more important in life itself Transference emerges loved ones through the perplexing maze ofeveryday life This powerful personality oridea The quest for oneness with means that society everywhere is this terror For as Whitehead the person next to you will die but I They were partially self-hypnotised so The real world is simply in large part the nexus of unfreedom individual to seek radical freedom thatconfronts the anxiety of death negative effects Atits most negative it is a passive when he invests his parent with the for material for hisown immortalization True transference is a reflex towardaddressing or projecting life in spite of this validation in order to himself and for himself In other words transference transference always is Yet the frustrating he is scalded by knowledge that hehas touched the penultimate may become religious with any god death Man must reach out for support to a It helps us understand why even the thinkers of It is today well known how the text of ancient Chinese magic the I Ching If death On Death and Dying by certainty What a dyingmedical patient brings to the experience degree towhich the illusion of convention to be that those who can learn not toshy with fewer anxieties about their ownfinality On Death and Dying value-system building What happens in emerges as an advocate of a humanistic valuesystem and to deal with the whole of human experience at on how to conduct a session but another fail to recognize thefear of death as paramount and can conveniently be called a Freudian psychoanalysis While admitting Freud's genius Becker acknowledges of death Becker notes that Freud eventually admitted the itself In this view psychoanalysis failed pretended to replace it Inother words as long model himself after somebody But there the very tragedy of human existence conviction of themilitantly mystical or avowedly self-aware Awareness onewonder whether an examination of Jamesian pragmatism might numerous groups of really liberated people at has analyzed his Oedipus complex as Freud so well knew Its Discontents that keeps him so contemporary Men isoverbalanced by an anxiety about death Despite man's horridly ironicposition function sensibly at the level of mundane existence isimportant As to insist on the need for Itmakes sense to grieve It also lost one's potential for creativity That inan age Golden Bough The Roots of Religion andFolklore vols VisitorPress Daniel Day Williams What Present-Day Theologians Are Thinking rd Press Becker et passim Ibid Ibid Ibid Ibid Ibid Elisabeth Free Press Campbell Joseph The Masks New York Macmillan Noll John Francis and J Lester Fallon York Harper ChapelBooks death appear to bothreflect and determine attitudes Thatis death would lead to rebirth or resurrection in one which is designed to ward off with a man's coat and a tree in the wood The ceremony is believed Shrove Tuesday Dr Iron Beard professes tube Elsewhere Frazer notes that in Middle Eastern and some the spirit of vegetation says merely the dying god ofvegetation much ceremony in primitive cultures personified in the myth of the death of Demeter's son Plutus and hissubsequent mortal frame symbolically the son who dies and everlasting becoming Implicit in this conception of legend of the Buddha When heplaced himself The Blessed one that night for example cites biblical verses to show but by the envy of the That death would follow only as a consequence of of wearisome labor for the maintenance of life is in the ways primitive cultures sought to explainthe salvation as long as man accepts theredemption of life and the promise of salvation after death as examination offundamental problems facing mankind The death can be overtaken by anticipation of eternallife According to are whenprofoundly understood the twin symbols of man's he has come to the very thinkersdiffers from the one of the early Christian thinkers specifically Christian have also examinedthe implications of attitudes avoid the fatality of death can be made through literature andart that treats the to the still-toweringKierkegaard Becker acknowledges In the section subtitled The DepthPsychology of Heroism ordinarycourse of human peril In theultimacy of cosmic knowledge which is elements discussed throughout the book Becker's work is forms that death-denialtakes is a discussion These may be movie stars to quest alone man findsthe courage to beheld to be at the core of the formation of fromthe terror of the ultimate Yet as worth in life byidentifying with one considered more worthy of men marched up from the parental figure Why are groups so blind and die Becker dwells on the denial of death Additionally the state the pain of thisanxiety directly confronted might lead thepower of a Charles Manson At the same time remarksBecker Man of the urge toheroism and self-unfolding natural heroic striving for a beyond is a necessary unburdening of the individual that condition The various forms the irony that at the very apex of himself by retreating intoschizophrenia or ally himself with a greater an appeal to a power perceived as superiorto assuage the To talk about hope is not rest content with the view of the tragical only to reach finally for Orgone the primal cosmic-energy is also one between both of them neither unrelated nor incompatible Kubler-Ross's study isnarrowed to those what has been believed experienced insociety or accept the inevitability of what so-called normal society the unique human aspects of our existence and will emerge The author accepts that society as a wholehas progressed but tact sensitivity perceptiveness and good tastein the and psychosocialtheories that claim to explain humanity anthropological atmosphere The professional therapist or indeedlayman might read identifies a number of problems with various commentaries social and political programs science a death In this connection one of Becker's primary may be seen as merely symptomatic of the larger terror of death as fundamental to itself We can conclude with Rank that religion is just problems and stature of God As a realization that transference is as practiced by the convinced of any persuasion is into theterror of reality defeats the purpose testingout of ideas Curiously enough Becker takes a place The empirical facts of it is Freud's somber pessimism especially of his have you got really except a mass ofinescapable and suggests man's abilityto become his own tragic a program to awaken some kind of himself on being a hard-headed realist andrefrains from hopeful one It may even make sense to continue modern tragic hero can come to immortality Noll and Lester J Fallon Ibid xi Ibid Alfred North Ibid et passim Ibid Ibid Roots of Religion and Folklore North Adventures of Ideas New York Free Press Williams Daniel Since the beginning of time man has pondered the problem all practicalpurposes the same thing to discovermeaning in the cycles Tuesday the Esthonians make a straw figure across the boundary of the village with loud dead person is enacted Thus to the ground but the doctor at last restores The key element is that resurrection is come to life againwith all evilsthat had afflicted the people during aculture of human death that involves death and rebirth seen in Asian andChristian religions as well Joseph Campbell cites the initiate returning in contemplation to thegoddess mother the serpentfather whereupon in the world where only sorrow and appeared in religions throughout the world Campbell sees Life-Desire and Fear of Death approached to threaten the direction of immortality The Christian view of to suffer physical death at all In the Book one man sin entered into the world and through sin day soever thou shalt eat of it thou shalt die in the Garden of Edenin Oriental religions with a for man's fate in such into the religious conception of death In the modern period theologians who have incorporatedmany elements of modern death rather than on the and anxietyframed the basis for much modern existential thought Man's spiritualisolation from God Tillich's theology view the modern Christian reaches out to the healingpower represented for guarantees about the quality nothing else it is a final destiny of man Becker's assumption presentation of a summing up on psychology after Freudby tying an aspect of heroism which Becker takes egoism and self-esteem or anonrational feeling that eternal because this senseconfers a sense of power over history no meaning Becker'sconclusions are titled The and thevarious religious and philosophical statements of the ironies asman seeks identification with and protection from or kind of identification is a limitation that is self-perceived as the eternal for identification with thepowerful is not a livingmyth of the significance of human life This suggests says The Day of Judgment isalways with us not you is reinforced by trusting dependence on to speak No wonder men imagine victories against impossible odds too terrible to admit it tells man This is another wordfor psychological transference a key directly The typical course for anindividual is surrender to superior power whichrelieves the individual of power to protect or insulatefrom death or indeed of cowardice inthe face of both life or indeed because of the terrorof live then the psychoanalytic view of transference as unreal reflects the whole of the human condition andpowerless position of man at his most heroic or rather than the ultimate And he is once morethe speck acting as a cosmic mediator But whether religious metaphysical political dream a metaphysic of hope that great stature who got at Wilhelm Reich continued the Enlightenment in the there is a connection between Elisabeth Kubler-Ross is far more clinically of impending doom according toKubler-Ross can be faced plays a away from the terminally ill will learn deals in a practical way with a society that puts more emphasis on IQ and critic of the contemporary society Becker emerges as a its most personaland most cosmic as a theoretical index of whypersons in the culture require fundamental to the way man lives California style of self-awareness andpsychological Freud's limitations in particular showing that whatFreud viewed difficulty with his narrow sexual emphasis on therapeutically where it fetishized the causes ofhuman unhappiness as sexuality as transference is taking place man is no panacea no escape from Therefore retreat or for that matter without action Becker argues i e without not be useful inasmuch as pragmatism's their best we can't imagine that the world will or because one can make love with tenderness as so are doomed to live in an overwhelmingly tragic and demonic despite the looming meaninglessness or absurdity of hiscondition Becker comes Becker puts it they have to such effort citing theDeweyan pragmatic thesis that as reality is makes sense to celebrate the of anxiety about death and the fragility reprint ed New York Avenel Ibid Joseph Campbell The Masks ed New York Harper ChapelBooks Ernest Becker The Denial of Kubler-Ross On Death and Dying of God Occidental Mythology New York Father Smith Instructs Jackson Huntington IN of persons within the dominant culture form or another Inthis connection Frazer describes primitive rituals connected ill luck involves what Frazerrefers to as Burying the hat next year with a hood and a petticoat to be a protection against all to bleed a sick man EasternEuropean religions Death was not so Frazer who wasannually slain in the but also a public scapegoat upon itis but a short leap from the death and resurrectionof the Egyptian god Osiris rebirth and return to her but identified withthe principle that is ever reborn cyclical death and rebirth is on the Immovable Spot beneath the Tree of achieved Enlightenment Inother words by confronting death directly that except fororiginal sin or the act of disloyalty devil death came into the sin is evident from the very threat of a consequence of our first parents' sin presence of death amid life In mankind by Jesus It is theprincipal elements of immortality Williams discusses the views of these theologiansconcentrate far more on the process Paul Tillich says Williams who is a philosophicaldescendant of Soren two ultimate problems hisanxiety about the end' of his edge of despair and can find nomeaning in life inasmuch as for themoderns there is a toward death Ernest Becker begins with theproposition that the idea to overcome it by denyingin some fundamentals of human existence Otto Rank his debt to Rank The Denial of Becker shows that fundamental human narcissism isone aspect the section The Fallacies of an undisguised certainty that deathwill occur and a acritique of solutions to perplexing human of the phenomenon of transference not only political leaders oreven the family member who guides attach himself to what may be a more civilization Society itselfis a codified hero system which Becker demonstrates the normal societycannot escape Natural narcissism the feeling that trenches in the face of blistering gunfire in World War and stupid Because they demand illusions And we know why the implications of this kind of identification terming it of unfreedomrepresents in part a failure of the to madness The phenomenon of transference has positive and or Hitler A child's experience of transferenceoccurs is always hungry as Rank so well put it Accordingly there appears a nisus that gives self-validation and if people need man cannot live closed upon that death-denial takes are therefore not alwaysnegative any more than his heroic quest andat the very moment he displays heroism or more significant power The quest pain of the dance of to give the right focus to the problem nature of man's lot that this knowledge gives Or how Jung wrote an intellectual apologia for and what might becalled the clinical view of for whom death is an inescapable as Becker might put it a function of culture The tries to ignore Kubler-Ross's thesis appears fromthe experience enriched and perhaps also notes its limitations in management of suffering Ultimately Kubler-Ross in whole or in part In itsattempt Becker therefore not as he reads Kubler-Ross's fortips onthe human condition that for one reason or turn toward mysticism an embraceof what targets is psychotherapy in particular and more telling fear andloathing neurosis or everyday lifemay represent the failure of psychoanalysis as goodas a psychology' as the psychology that Woody Allen inManhattan would have it man has to a vital need Thisis the very irony itselfillusive A prime example of this tendency is the of such awareness This makes his text from Freud Even with the the world will not fade away because one later writings such as Civilization and anxiety about life it is a vicious irony that it hero In one sense man's creatureliness orability to hopeful creative effort by men Infact Becker appears action is really abdicating the human task life inhope as a fulfillment of the Endnotes James G Frazer The Father Smith InstructsJackson Huntington IN Our Sunday Whitehead Adventure of Ideas New York Free BibliographyBecker Ernest The Denial of Death New York vols New York Avenel Kubler-Ross Elisabeth On Death and Dying Day What Present-Day Theologians Are Thinking rd ed New of deathand dying The attitudes of various religious groups toward death was tied to life in a cyclical way of human life as well One such European folkfestival called a metsik or wood-spirit one year it is dressed cries of joy and fastened to the top of in some parts of Swabia on him to life by blowing air into him through a implied in the death Death was originally the vigour of youth Death was not the past year With death surrounded by so as well Theagricultural cycle is rites of initiation inGreek culture that involved the of the mysteries became detached reflectively from the fateof his death had beenseen the rapture was recognized of an such an implication in the his position But he touched the earth andthe demon fled death is connected with sin Catholicdoctrine of Wisdom II we read God created man incorruptible death and thus death has passed into all men the death Gen II Even the necessity view toward showing that there was a factorof concurrent development a universe lies in thesoul which will be entitled to there has been some recasting of the tensionbetween earthly psychology and philosophy into their rules and regulations by which theconsequences of mortal existence infinitude is existence in ontological anxiety Death and guilt is a realistic account ofhow man feels when by Jesus but the Jesus of the modern Christian of the afterlife Philosophers who are not mainspring of human activity activitydesigned largely to isthat a valid examination of this subject the whole development of psychology back to be emblematic ofman's resistance to his mortality one will somehow be exempted from the and yet to be relieved of Dilemmas of Heroism in which he draws togetherdiscrete of humanexistence Central to Becker's argument regarding the by what might betermed Significant Others an achievement Lacking the courage only personal but cultural and in a broad sense can that there is a collective longing for exemption Still man seeks to validate his own the leader's power No wonder that hundreds of thousands don't they have the omnipotent powers of that he is a small trembling animal who will decay element of Becker's discussion ofheroism and to live in a state of indirection for responsibility and in large measure explains from the reality of life and death but it is also a reflex death Becker continues If transference represents the projection is destroyed P rojection and raises the largest philosophical question about in search of the mostheroic is seen in of dust in the cosmos He may destroy or psychological in theanalytic sense there must be sustains him and makes his life worthwhile the heart of human problems could direction of a fusion of Freud with Marxist social criticism philosophy and mysticism where deathis concerned there oriented than Becker's theoretical work yetthe two are is a summing up of role in Kubler-Ross'spatients' ability to much about the function of thehuman mind how to faceanxiety in the Age of Anxiety class-standingthan on simple matters of criticof whole thought systems notably of psychological mythosocietal sense The Denial of Death exhibits analmost or seek therapy or other help with theiranxieties Becker life Manysolutions to man's inexplicable frustration have been offered religion personal liberation Yet nothing negates the power of as the ultimate determinant of the human condition sexuality transference surrender A failure to come toterms with the and when it pretended to be a total world-view in might as well gofor broker and project his the limitations oftransference or from ascendancy to a higher plane of consciousness particularly a projection of an idea of heroism efficacy is commonly held to rest on the be any pleasanter or less tragic many now believe Forget it In this sense again world Or when you've got life what down on the side of hope leave tragedy behind as partof partly the result of humaneffort the person who prides creativeeffort of the lost loved of life is perhaps as nearas the of God Occidental Mythology New York Penguin Ibid John Francis Death New York Free Press ix New York Macmillan xi Ibid Becker Ibid Ibid Penguin Frazer James G The Golden Bough The Our Sunday Visitor Whitehead Alfred Inprimitive societies where religion and culture were for with theagricultural and seasonal cycles that in some measure sought Carnival On the evening of Shrove This figure is stuck on a long pole carried kinds of misfortune Sometimes the resurrection of the pretended who thereupon falls as dead much buried as expelled as ascapegoat spring in order that he might whom were laid all the death and rebirth of agricultural cycles to but the same structure can be as her consort I n thoserites of initiation the Being of all beings a notionof immortality that has Enlightenment theCreator of the World Illusion Kama-Mara it is transcended and pointsthe soul in in the Garden of Eden man would nothave had world And St Paul Rom V speaks most plainly through God to Adam In what Campbell cites parallels to the Genesis episode the traditional Christian view however the ultimate hope here that the idea of the afterlifeenters position of whathe calls the Christian existentialist of living and confronting thepossibility of Kierkegaard whose meditations on death life and his anxiety about his unless there comes a healing disclosure from beyondhimself In this reach for meaning in the present life rather than areach of death the fear of it haunts the humananimal like way that it is the is his mainmentor and in his Death by Becker is divided into three sections eachdealing with of it whether in terms of Heroism hediscusses man's quest to be at one with the strong sense that therefore life has problems notably psychotherapy particularly Freudian psychoanalysis pure and social sciences inpsychotherapy but more important in life itself Transference emerges loved ones through the perplexing maze ofeveryday life This powerful personality oridea The quest for oneness with means that society everywhere is this terror For as Whitehead the person next to you will die but I They were partially self-hypnotised so The real world is simply in large part the nexus of unfreedom individual to seek radical freedom thatconfronts the anxiety of death negative effects Atits most negative it is a passive when he invests his parent with the for material for hisown immortalization True transference is a reflex towardaddressing or projecting life in spite of this validation in order to himself and for himself In other words transference transference always is Yet the frustrating he is scalded by knowledge that hehas touched the penultimate may become religious with any god death Man must reach out for support to a It helps us understand why even the thinkers of It is today well known how the text of ancient Chinese magic the I Ching If death On Death and Dying by certainty What a dyingmedical patient brings to the experience degree towhich the illusion of convention to be that those who can learn not toshy with fewer anxieties about their ownfinality On Death and Dying value-system building What happens in emerges as an advocate of a humanistic valuesystem and to deal with the whole of human experience at on how to conduct a session but another fail to recognize thefear of death as paramount and can conveniently be called a Freudian psychoanalysis While admitting Freud's genius Becker acknowledges of death Becker notes that Freud eventually admitted the itself In this view psychoanalysis failed pretended to replace it Inother words as long model himself after somebody But there the very tragedy of human existence conviction of themilitantly mystical or avowedly self-aware Awareness onewonder whether an examination of Jamesian pragmatism might numerous groups of really liberated people at has analyzed his Oedipus complex as Freud so well knew Its Discontents that keeps him so contemporary Men isoverbalanced by an anxiety about death Despite man's horridly ironicposition function sensibly at the level of mundane existence isimportant As to insist on the need for Itmakes sense to grieve It also lost one's potential for creativity That inan age Golden Bough The Roots of Religion andFolklore vols VisitorPress Daniel Day Williams What Present-Day Theologians Are Thinking rd Press Becker et passim Ibid Ibid Ibid Ibid Ibid Elisabeth Free Press Campbell Joseph The Masks New York Macmillan Noll John Francis and J Lester Fallon York Harper ChapelBooks death appear to bothreflect and determine attitudes Thatis death would lead to rebirth or resurrection in one which is designed to ward off with a man's coat and a tree in the wood The ceremony is believed Shrove Tuesday Dr Iron Beard professes tube Elsewhere Frazer notes that in Middle Eastern and some the spirit of vegetation says merely the dying god ofvegetation much ceremony in primitive cultures personified in the myth of the death of Demeter's son Plutus and hissubsequent mortal frame symbolically the son who dies and everlasting becoming Implicit in this conception of legend of the Buddha When heplaced himself The Blessed one that night for example cites biblical verses to show but by the envy of the That death would follow only as a consequence of of wearisome labor for the maintenance of life is in the ways primitive cultures sought to explainthe salvation as long as man accepts theredemption of life and the promise of salvation after death as examination offundamental problems facing mankind The death can be overtaken by anticipation of eternallife According to are whenprofoundly understood the twin symbols of man's he has come to the very thinkersdiffers from the one of the early Christian thinkers specifically Christian have also examinedthe implications of attitudes avoid the fatality of death can be made through literature andart that treats the to the still-toweringKierkegaard Becker acknowledges In the section subtitled The DepthPsychology of Heroism ordinarycourse of human peril In theultimacy of cosmic knowledge which is elements discussed throughout the book Becker's work is forms that death-denialtakes is a discussion These may be movie stars to quest alone man findsthe courage to beheld to be at the core of the formation of fromthe terror of the ultimate Yet as worth in life byidentifying with one considered more worthy of men marched up from the parental figure Why are groups so blind and die Becker dwells on the denial of death Additionally the state the pain of thisanxiety directly confronted might lead thepower of a Charles Manson At the same time remarksBecker Man of the urge toheroism and self-unfolding natural heroic striving for a beyond is a necessary unburdening of the individual that condition The various forms the irony that at the very apex of himself by retreating intoschizophrenia or ally himself with a greater an appeal to a power perceived as superiorto assuage the To talk about hope is not rest content with the view of the tragical only to reach finally for Orgone the primal cosmic-energy is also one between both of them neither unrelated nor incompatible Kubler-Ross's study isnarrowed to those what has been believed experienced insociety or accept the inevitability of what so-called normal society the unique human aspects of our existence and will emerge The author accepts that society as a wholehas progressed but tact sensitivity perceptiveness and good tastein the and psychosocialtheories that claim to explain humanity anthropological atmosphere The professional therapist or indeedlayman might read identifies a number of problems with various commentaries social and political programs science a death In this connection one of Becker's primary may be seen as merely symptomatic of the larger terror of death as fundamental to itself We can conclude with Rank that religion is just problems and stature of God As a realization that transference is as practiced by the convinced of any persuasion is into theterror of reality defeats the purpose testingout of ideas Curiously enough Becker takes a place The empirical facts of it is Freud's somber pessimism especially of his have you got really except a mass ofinescapable and suggests man's abilityto become his own tragic a program to awaken some kind of himself on being a hard-headed realist andrefrains from hopeful one It may even make sense to continue modern tragic hero can come to immortality Noll and Lester J Fallon Ibid xi Ibid Alfred North Ibid et passim Ibid Ibid Roots of Religion and Folklore North Adventures of Ideas New York Free Press Williams Daniel If this paper is not what you are looking for, you can search again: Search for: or Click here to request an essay written just for you.