Concept
Life fear and death fear
Otto Rank's pair of opposed basic anxieties. Life fear is the fear of going forward into separation and individuality, first experienced at birth; death fear is the fear of losing one's individuality by dissolving back into a larger whole. Every person, Rank held, moves between the two, and the neurotic is caught between them.
Read more- Introduced by
- Otto Rank
- Key works
- 1
- Related
- Birth trauma
introduced by
- Otto Rank 1931 Rank opposed fear of life to fear of death in the third volume of his Technik der Psychoanalyse (1931).
derives from
- Birth trauma 1931 Rank traced the first experience of life fear to the act of birth, recasting his earlier birth-trauma theory as a fear of separation and individuation.