ABSTRACT
Grasping the problems posed by death itself and by the threat of death and death anxiety similarly requires language-based formulations, whatever affects it may arouse. Language enables humans to develop a clear sense of death as the inevitable outcome and conclusion of life. Personal death per se is a major life issue, but death anxiety is also aroused by many other kinds of death-related and non-death experiences. The type of unconscious memory storage of aspects and meanings of death-related events takes place in the deep unconscious system of the emotion-processing mind. The death-related memories in this system tend to be manifestly about death, injury, and illness, and to be retrievable in manifest, unencoded form. A given person's separation, illness, injury, and death profile or life history, which includes all death-related events and the individual's responses to them, has a profound effect on his or her emotional life and, of course, on any engagement he or she has with psychotherapy.
