On Some Unconscious Factors in Children’s Near-Death Experience: A Discussion of “Going to Where the World Ends: When the Bodies of Children Speak Who is Listening?”
J. Durban
March 3, 2020 DOI: 10.1080/10481885.2020.1722566 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper |
|---|---|
| Topics | Near-death experience |
| Key points | Argues that children facing social violence, abuse, illness, and early developmental impairment may retreat into a near-death defensive organization governed by an omnipotent "death-object," trading mental paralysis for relief from unbearable reality. Proposes that such children are hyper-sensitive and hyper-vulnerable, prone to archaic anxieties-of-being and a sense of nowhere-ness, and that caregivers' un-mentalized anxieties infiltrate them osmotically as "pipe children." Clinical material from a refugee girl's psychoanalytic treatment illustrates these ideas. |
Abstract
This discussion examines some unconscious characteristics of children who choose to retreat, when facing social violence, abuse, illnesses and early developmental impairments, into a near-death defensive organization. This “near-death retreat” is governed by an omnipotent “death-object” with whom a pact is made, in unconscious phantasy, so as to avoid the pain of an unbearable internal and external reality at the price of mental paralysis. Children who opt for this special retreat are very often hyper-sensitive, hyper-permeable and hyper-vulnerable. As such, they are prone to flooding by archaic anxieties-of-being often found in autistic conditions, and to an internal sense of nowhere-ness. They are “pipe children” into whom the un-mentalized anxieties of their care-givers infiltrate in an osmotic, incontrollable way. Their internal objects are often confusing, comprising of a bewildering mixture of perpetrator and victim, impervious and dangerous. Clinical material taken from a psychoanalytic treatment of a refugee girl will demonstrate these characteristics.
Comparable studies
Other theoretical and historical papers on near-death experience, most cited first.
| Study | Year | Design | Participants |
|---|---|---|---|
| Otherworld Journeys: Accounts of Near-Death Experience in Medieval and Modern Times | 1987 | Historical analysis | |
| Neuroscience and the Near-Death Experience: Roles for the NMSA-PCP receptor, the sigma receptor and the endopsychosins | 1990 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Implications of near-death experiences for a postmaterialist psychology. | 2010 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Near-Death Experience as a Probe to Explore (Disconnected) Consciousness | 2020 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Near-death experiences between science and prejudice | 2012 | Theoretical or philosophical paper |