Repressed Fear of Inexistence and its Hypnotic Recovery in Religious Students

Bibliographic Data

ID13629431
AuthorsRobert Kunzendorf (0000-0003-0201-7490, University of Massachusetts Lowell, corresponding author), Robert G Kunzendorf (University of Lowell)
Year1986
Volume16
Issue1
Pages23-33
Publication date1986-02-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueOMEGA - Journal of Death and Dying (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0030-2228 • E-ISSN: 1541-3764
PublisherSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.2190/7l5q-ddr4-tpbx-2bnb
OpenAlexW2082032227
LanguageEN
Citations received4
References cited22

When college students were hypnotized and instructed to rate their “subconscious” fears of death, they expressed greater fear, of inexistence than when they were awake. At the same time, hypnotized students expressed no greater fear of death-related possibilities other than the possibility of inexistence. The hypnotically elicited fear of inexistence was marginally associated with a stronger belief in an afterlife and was significantly associated with greater hypnotic responsiveness. Such findings contradict the orthodox religious position: that death anxiety is truly eradicated, not merely repressed, by belief in an afterlife. Such findings also contradict the orthodox psychoanalytic position: that conscious death anxiety is secondarily derived from the libidinous deprivations of a subconscious mind that cannot fear its own death. Instead, the present findings suggest that the subconscious fear of inexistence is a primary-not a derived-phenomenon, from which religious and other death-denying behaviors may be derived

Afterlife · Alternative medicine · Anxiety · Death anxiety · Epistemology · Fear of death · Hypnosis · Psychiatry · Psychoanalysis · Subconscious · Death Anxiety and Social Exclusion · Medicine · Paranormal Experiences and Beliefs · Philosophy · Psychology · Religion, Spirituality, and Psychology · Social Psychology

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