ABSTRACT
O How has human awareness of mortality and fear of death been described by writers such as Becker and Yalom?
Human consciousness, psychology and existentialism Possessing the sort of consciousness that humans do is something of a mixed blessing. As we noted in Chapter 4, Edelman (1992) contends that humans and non-humans share primary consciousness, the state of being mentally aware of things in the world, of having mental images in the here-and-now. To be conscious in this sense doesn’t necessarily imply any kind of ‘I’ who is aware and having mental images. What’s unique to humans is higher-order consciousness – the recognition by a thinking subject of his or her own acts or affections, embodying a model of the personal, and of the past and future as well as the present. We’re ‘conscious of being conscious’. This, Edelman believes, puts human beings in a ‘privileged position’. However, there’s a flip side to this privileged position. As the psychotherapist Rollo May observes in Love and Will (1969): ‘... It [consciousness] is the fearful joy, the blessing, and the curse of man that he can be conscious of himself and his world.’ Why a curse? Because we’re the only species aware of the fact that we die, as well as having the capacity to question the purpose of what we do in and with our lives. As the existential psychotherapist Irvin Yalom (2008) puts it:
Self-awareness is a supreme gift, a treasure as precious as life. This is what makes us human. But it comes with a costly price: the wound of mortality. Our existence is forever shadowed by the knowledge that we will grow, blossom, and, inevitably, diminish and die.
