Symbolic Immortality

The concept symbolic immortality was developed in the research conducted on survivors of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Japan. Robert J. Lifton theorized that humans have a basic and compelling need for mortality transcendence, and that the quest for a sense of continuity that extends farther than one's natural life is a universal phenomenon made possible by self-knowledge of the inescapability of death. The need for, and the quest to achieve, a sense of connection and continuity was what became known as “symbolic immortality.” This concept is one of the most widely used and influential thanatological theories, and it has important implications for a wide range of social scientific approaches to the study of dying, death, and the human response.

The work to achieve a sense of symbolic immortality plays an important role beyond that of providing a sense of continuity in the face of death; it is also an essential requisite of psychological wellbeing. Achieving a sense of symbolic immortality is one possible way of assuaging the certainty—and oftentimes fear—of death by transcending the most potent conception of what death signifies, namely the severed connection to the present and future and to the world of the living. To attain a sense of symbolic immortality is to become less susceptible to the crippling fears of dying and death; it is to be less threatened by the certainty of one's anticipated demise, and ultimately, to [Page 925]approach death as a natural part of the cycle of life. The quest to achieve a sense of symbolic immortality is something all healthy individuals do, and in its absence, individuals risk developing psychic numbing or desensitization to life's experiences coupled with a loss of meaning. Studies of the survivors of Hiroshima's atomic bombing found that psychic numbing was pervasive, and that it led to a host of psychological problems in many who endured the experience. Achieving a sense of symbolic immortality helps not only to manage the terror and fear of dying, it also brings a sense of ontological order to the challenges and uncertainties of life.

It is theorized that people attempt to achieve a sense of symbolic immortality through fives modes of transcendence: the biological, creative, religious, natural, and experiential transcendent. Individuals can use one or multiple modes of transcending death, but what is crucial is that individuals attain a sense of continuity.

The Pathways to Symbolic Immortality