The concept and psychological consequences of symbolic immortality

Sturesteps, Valerie A.

The concept and psychological consequences of symbolic immortality

Date

1992

Authors

Sturesteps, Valerie A.

Abstract

The research study reported in this thesis examines Otto Rank's concept (1930) of Symbolic Immortality which proposes that people have a need to feel that they will transcend death in some way. Rank hypothesised that there are three ways, or modes, in which people can feel they have achieved Symbolic Immortality: 1. Having children - thus living on in the genes passed down to those subsequent generations (the Biological Mode) 2. Belief in life after death (the Afterlife Mode) 3. Performing some type of creative work or difficult task so they will be remembered after their death (the Creative Work Mode). The later psycho-analyst, Robert J. Lifton (1973), added two more modes: • The feeling that oneself may die but the rivers, mountains, etc. will still remain (the Nature Mode). • Experiencing a feeling of mystical expansion of the self (the Experiential Transcendence Mode). In this thesis it was suggested that if these modes fulfil a basic need then the modes will be expressed in ethnographies of tribal societies, and writings from ancient civilisations. An examination of both categories of literature revealed evidence that all five modes have been expressed in both societies. A review of published research revealed that the modes are also still being expressed in contemporary Western society. There are two aspects of Symbolic Immortality, having the modes feature in one's life (Availability of the Modes) and feeling that one, or more, of the modes do enable one to feel that death will be transcended (Acceptance of the Modes). In this thesis three general research issues were examined: differences between people who have the modes available and people who do not have them available; which features of people's lives are associated with accepting particular modes; and, whether availability and/or acceptance of the modes, are associated with personality characteristics. If these two aspects are so associated, how strong are the associations, compared to associations with demographic and other personality characteristics, for predicting personality characteristics. These issues were assessed by means of a questionnaire which contained the following sections: • A demographic variables section, including age, sex and religion. • The Templer/McMordie Death Anxiety Scale. • An acceptance of the Symbolic Immortality Modes Scale. • The Eysenck Personality Questionnaire. • The Hansburg Separation Anxiety Test Neuroticism, Death Anxiety and Gender differences were prime foci of the research because Rank believed that Death Anxiety and Neuroticism are associated with a failure to fulfill the immortality need, and that women and men express their immortality in different ways, women through childbirth and men through creative work. The Separation Anxiety Test was included because O'Dowd (1985) mentioned Rank's attimde that life was a series of unions and separations. Rank's Afterlife Mode and Lifton's Experiential Transcendence Mode both have a religious connotation, so it was hypothesised in this thesis, that people affiliated with different religions would show different patterns of acceptance of the modes. Five different religious groups were used: Christianity, Yoga, Spiritualism, No Religion and Atheism. In previous research, the relationship of Age with acceptance of the modes had only been tested on a restricted age range. So the present study used an extended age range of 18 to 88 years, and the respondents were grouped into five age groups for the statistical analyses. However, there was only one significant difference for age: Women aged forty years and over accepted the Biological Mode more highly than the two younger age groups. There were no significant differences on age for the male respondents. Only slight support for Rank's theories was found in this research. The support that was found was ambiguous as some results were in the direction that Rank hypothesised, but others were in the opposite direction. Rank's three modes were found to be more important for the variables examined than Lifton's two modes. Availability of four modes, Biological, Afterlife, Creative Work and Experiential Transcendence were associated with personality characteristics. The remaining mode, Nature, was not associated with personality characteristics at all. The four features of people's lives that were most frequently associated with acceptance of the modes were: Acmally having a mode available was significantly related to accepting that mode; Religious affiliation was a significant predictor of Acceptance for every mode, with Yoga and Spirimalism being the most frequent significant religious groups; Extraversion was the most frequent significant personality characteristic, but Neuroticism was not significant in this analysis; and Level of Education was negatively associated with acceptance. The question of whether there are only five modes is discussed and it is suggested that the Creative Work Mode may be divided into two modes, Creativity and Notable Achievements, thus increasing the number of modes to six. As the form of expression of the modes has changed with time researchers should be sensitive to changes in society that may enable people to express symbolic immortality in new ways.