The Wound of Mortality: Fear, Denial, and Acceptance of Death (Margaret S. Mahler)

Death is a much avoided topic. Literature on mourning exists, but it focuses chiefly upon the death of others. The inevitable psychic impact of one's own mortality is not optimally covered either in this literature on mourning or elsewhere in psychiatry and psychoanalysis. __The Wound of Mortality__ brings together contributions from distinguished psychoanalysts to fill this gap by addressing the issue of death in a comprehensive manner. Among questions the contributors raise and seek to answer are: Do children understand the idea of death? How is adolescent bravado related to deeper anxieties about death? Is it normal and even psychologically healthy to think about one's own death during middle age? Does culture-at-large play a role in how individuals conceptualize the role of death in human life? Is death "apart" from or "a part" of life? Enhanced understanding of such matters will help mental health clinicians treat patients struggling with death-related concerns with greater empathy. Freud's todesangst and Ghalib's Ishrat-E-Qatra : two perspectives on death / Salman Akhtar What happens when you die : three-to-four-year-olds chatting about death / Leon Hoffman, MD, Eileen Johnson, Michelle Foster, and Josephine Wright Children's understanding of death / Henri Parens Symbolic death, East and West : metaphors in three child case studies / Jaswant Guzder It is not over when it's over : reflections on death and mourning / Albert Kaplan Fear of death : analyst and patient in the same boat / Ilany Kogan The dead self must be reborn / Stanley Coen Living to die and dying to live : normal and pathological considerations of death anxiety / Calvin Colarusso Facing death : intrapsychic conflict and intergenerational passage / Ruth Garfield Eastern intersubjectivity : relational homes for frailty and death / Tooraj Moradi Demise and illusion / Hossein Etezady Is that all there is? : a concluding commentary on psychoanalysis and death / Ira Brenner. Death is a much avoided topic. Literature does exist on mourning, but its focus remains upon the death of others. The fact of one's own mortality and its inevitable psychic impact on one's life is not optimally covered either in this literature or elsewhere in psychiatry and psychoanalysis. Bringing together contributions from distinguished psychoanalysts, The Wound of Morality fills this gap by addressing the issue of death in a comprehensive manner.