ABSTRACT
Death and Death Anxiety are of profound concern to Human Beings but, unless related to the loss of a loved one or a terminal illness, are little discussed by Psychotherapists or Psychoanalysts. Yalom and Frenkel are rare exceptions to the latter, but Death is extensively considered by the Phenomenologists (Heidegger) and the Existentialists (Camus and Sartre). The awareness of Death and the anxiety that accompanies are as evolutionarily old as Consciousness and inseparable from it. Despite what we consider “scientifically,” 80% of people believe in some kind of life after death with God usually being involved in some fashion.
Death is life's ultimate Absurdity. It offers both Meaning and Meaninglessness. Over subsequent decades it erases our explicitness, leaving, at most ripples (Yalom's term) manifesting our effects on others. Being-toward-Death has been fundamentally changed by the Metaverse where the physically dead can remain alive in a kind of immortality. It is impossible to know how this will evolve in the future, except that this will be a rapid, complex, and qualitative process.
Death Anxiety has now been studied experimentally by numbers of researchers outside the clinical domains and a significant literature has been developed on the subject, also beyond the purview of these domains.
