Psychological disorders result from failed attempts to manage death anxiety

Evidence

Psychological disorders are typically caused by a combination of factors, but there is no doubt that death anxiety plays a role in many of them. As long as people’s twin shields against the fear of extinction—a view of life as meaningful, and of themselves as valuable—are intact, they can live their lives with relatively minimal psychological turmoil. Yet some people, because of their genetic predispositions, biochemical imbalances, unfortunate upbringing, or other stressful life experiences, cannot successfully deploy these shields to quell their worries about death. So they try, often with admirable courage and imagination, to erect their own defenses. Unfortunately, these “clumsy modes of dealing with terror,” as the existential psychotherapist Irvin Yalom put it, often prove inadequate. Dread seeps through the cracks in their shields, and as a result they suffer severely. — Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski, The Worm at the Core, 687

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces the ‘twin shields’ framework: meaning and self-worth as protections against extinction fear.

Related

• Knowing how death awareness drives defenses enables more self-determined choices (similarity 0.82)
• People unaware of their death fears are nonetheless governed by layered psychological defenses (similarity 0.82)
• Threatening cherished beliefs brings thoughts of death closer to awareness (similarity 0.81)
• Subtle death reminders drive worldview defense, self-esteem striving, and unhealthy behavior. (similarity 0.80)
• Conscious and unconscious death thoughts trigger different defense systems (similarity 0.80)
• Schizophrenic delusions function as shields against death terror (similarity 0.80)
• Death-terror drives art, religion, war, consumerism, and fame-seeking (similarity 0.80)
• Fear of death ultimately reduces to thwarted biological survival instinct. (similarity 0.80)
• Mortality awareness collides with survival instincts to produce existential terror (similarity 0.79)
• Death-awareness drives humans to cling to cultural worldviews and self-esteem (similarity 0.79)
• Death awareness would have been lethal without simultaneous cultural adaptations to deny it (similarity 0.79)
• Worldview and self-esteem defense is bidirectional with death-thought accessibility. (similarity 0.79)
• No account of human behavior is complete without the awareness of death (similarity 0.79)