NEAR DEATH EXPERIENCES AND FREUD

                                      A SECULARIST PERSPECTIVE

Among anomalous phenomena attracting wide spread attention such as UFOs, synchronicities, and alien abductions is that of near death experiences. Reports of near death experiences [ndes] have been gathered from all over the world bearing striking similarities with respect to their experienced content.

To be classified as a near death experience, a person has to have been observed to have apparently died. A common experience of death is the medical professional  observing a dying patient on an operating table "flat lining" indicating that his heart has stopped pumping. Although official death is expected to follow,  people experiencing an NDE somehow regain their ability to breathe and amazingly return to the land of the living.

Many who live to tell their remarkable tales describe a wondrous process that  takes place in a relatively few seconds of consciousness that continues on after the heart has stopped breathing. Furthermore, anecdotes of this process are remarkably similar among all groups of people experiencing NDEs.

 Among the common characteristics of NDEs are: an experience of being rushed through a long tunnel, sighting an atmospheric white light, meeting up with the  presence of a familiar person who has died apparently functioning in the role of greeting the newly "dead" person, and an over arching experience of at-one-ment in which the newly "dead" person feels unconditionally accepted - bathed in a sea of love -  so to speak.  At this point, NDEs typically describe being given the choice to literally die or return to life. If they wish to return to life they are given a simple formula - breathe.  Choosing to live once more - breathing once again - they appear to  'rise from the dead."

NDEs also speak of having out of body experiences in which they report hovering above let's say an operation performed on them. They often report fine details such as what the medical staff was wearing and what was said between and among them.

What should we make of such extraordinary experiences?

Clearly there are many who offer a religious or spiritual interpretation. For them the end of the "tunnel" is heaven and the greeter is an angel. The choice to return to life is presumably due to the "grace" of God and the like. While this spiritual explanation is seductive, I am inclined to view these remarkable occurrences from a mundane and naturalistic perspective. How so? Allow me to free associate.

My first association in hearing NDEs report their similar experiences of near death is that of Freud's concept of the life and death instinct. [Among the three major issues that Freud is castigated for perhaps the chief one is the concept of the life and death instincts.] For Freud conflict is at the core of human experience both individually and collectively. And the core conflict is between the life long war between the will to live and the will to die.

Life can accurately be viewed as a never ending succession of problems. Some greet their problems with a creative attitude of bring them on. Such people feel they have been dealt a deck of cards and whether their hand is favorable or not they are prepared to play it the best they can.

Others feel beaten down, ravaged by the unfairness of life's inevitable never ending struggles, put upon, eternally frustrated, and dispirited. Such people find it difficult to get out of bed each morning to   attend to even the simplest of chores.

Most of us have experienced both extremes of this continuum experiencing good days and bad days, good periods of time and bad periods of time.  When the balance of bad times grows too large and to weighty swamping and overwhelming the good times it is not uncommon to wish to throw in the chips so to speak and sink into an eternal sleep.

Freud would add one more ingredient into this psychodynamic stew. This ingredient is that this civil war in the  non stop battle ground between the life instinct and the death instinct largely happens below the level of consciousness in the unconscious. THis means that most are unaware that such a titanic battle rages in each of us.

Such a formulation may help to explain how other wise healthy men often drop permanently dead from a heart attack that appears not to be life threatening; whereas a little old grandmother of 95 suffering from multiple debilitating ailments lives on because she absolutely must see her great granddaughter graduate from college and the like.

Now to near death experiences and Freud.

In addition to the concepts of the life and the death instincts, Freud - ever fond of inventing and or utilizing organizing concepts for ordering psychological chaos - refers to regression in the service of the ego. This concept implies that under certain psychological conditions the psyche of a given individual may regress - literally go backwards - descending through layers of stages of psychological development for the purpose of correcting a core conflict. THe first stage of developmental conflict is in that of the new born. This is the primary stage of being where one receives or fails to receive the necessary nuturance conducive to formulating or failing to formulate a solid identity. The key ingredient necessary for the formulation of a solid self - strong identity - is experiencing unconditional love.

Utilizing the concepts of the normal civil war between the life and the death instinct with regression in the service of the ego - I hypothesize that the NDE may be naturallistically explained in the following manner. NDEs may be those people who have never consciously chosen to take a clear cut position with respect to living or dying. But once once faced with the ultimate choice of continuing to be versus blowing out the candle of their existence - choose to opt for life. This opting for life is no simple affirmation of life itself but is instead a willingness to struggle with life's inevitable struggles. This means that such people  accept  all that reality presents: its pleasures and its pains; its victories and its defeats; it triumphs and its failures.

In this view - at the 'zero" point of near death - there is a heightened sensitivity to ones ordinary experience in extraordinary ways all of which are focused on the core of ones being in which one is forced to take a position with respect to the  deepest of humanely deep questions: that is: to live or to die.

When one fully accepts and  embraces and tolerates the total YIng and Yang of their personal and collective experience the result is feeling peace of mind. This experience of peace of mind is, I believe, parallel to the often described experience of unconditional acceptance - the most impactful part of the process described by most NDEs.

In this view, the near death experience is a process initiated by a person facing their actual death in which they opt probably for the first time in their lives to willingly continue  to play out their cards until their deck runs out or they choose to fold.