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Symbolic Immortality and Social Theory:

The Relevance of an Underutilized Concept

By

Lee Garth VigilantDepartment of Sociology and Criminal Justice

Minnesota State University MoorheadMoorhead, MN 56563

and

John B. WilliamsonDepartment of Sociology

Boton CollegeChestnut Hill, MA 02467

To be published in Handbook of Thanatology: Essays on the Social Study of Death,edited by Clifton D. Bryant, Newbury Park, CA: Sage, (forthcoming).

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INTRODUCTION

The study of symbolic immortality begins with the seminal contributions of the

social psychiatrist Robert J. Lifton (1974, 1976, and 1979), whose ideas have had a notable

impact on the psychological literature on identity formation in life, and the

thanatological literature on the continuity of identity beyond (Mathews and Mister 1987;

Shneidman 1973). According to Lifton, healthy individuals seek a sense of life

continuity, or immortality, through symbolic means. When lacking a sense of

continuity, people experience psychic numbing and profound emotional difficulty, as

Lifton (1968) revealed in his analysis of the survivors of the first atomic attack. 1 Overall,

Lifton’s studies have demonstrated how and why the attainment of a sense of symbolic

immortality is an essential requisite for mental health and the realization of a vital and

enduring self.

Unfortunately, Lifton’s insights have been largely neglected by sociologists,

resulting in an important gap in the literature on identity construction and its

continuation after death. In this essay we seek to fill this gap, particularly by

highlighting the central features of Lifton’s theory of symbolic immortality, its

application in sociological research, and its relevance for sociological theories of identity

construction.

WHEN “DEATH’S ENTICING ECHO MOCKS”2: THE WORK OF SYMBOLICIMMORTALITY

Robert J. Lifton coined the concept symbolic immortality to refer to the universal

human quest to achieve a sense of continuity in the face of the incontrovertible evidence

that we will die. According to Lifton (1979, 1974), the knowledge that we will die forces

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us to confront and transcend our fears of finitude in symbolic ways, particularly through

relying upon various modes of symbolic immortality. These modes connect us to the

past and present, linking us to those who have gone before us and to those who will live

on after us and remember our contributions (Lifton 1979). Most Importantly, Lifton

asserts that the pursuit of symbolic immortality gives meaning to our existence by

preserving our connection to others in material ways in this life, while ensuring our

continued symbolic connection to others once the mortal coil is severed.

Lifton proposes that we do this through drawing upon five modes of symbolic

connectedness or immortality, which he identifies as (1) biological, (2) creative,

transcendental, (4) natural, and (5) experiential transcendence.

The first mode of achieving a sense of symbolic immortality, the biological, is

perhaps the most ubiquitous means of ensuring our connection to the future.

At the genetic level, this mode connects us to the past through our family of orientation

and to the present and future through our family of procreation both in its biologic and

social manifestations (significant others, children, friends, and kin). For Lifton (1979), a

chain of continuos biological and social attachments mark this type of symbolic

immortality mode, as in the sense of living through our children, their children, and our

culture. Moreover, at the biosocial level, this mode includes our connectedness to our

species-beings3 by way of friendships, culture, imagined communities4, and the norms

and values that give us a sense of collective social identity.

The second mode of achieving symbolic immortality is through creative acts.

Lifton observes that the creative expression of symbolic immortality is most commonly

associated with art, literature, and music where the works of the artist lives on after her

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demise. Lifton also points to the scientific enterprise and the building of cumulative

knowledge, where the work of one researcher might be carried forward by someone

else, as another expression of creative immortality. In addition, Lifton (1979: 22) directs

special attention to deep interpersonal relationships where the bonds of the

communicative act are long lasting and profound such as, for example, in the

relationships between parent and child, or psychotherapist and patient, or teacher and

student. These deep interpersonal relationships embody the potential for creative

immortality.

The third mode of achieving a sense of symbolic immortality, for Lifton (1979)

the expression of theological or religious imagery, is grounded in the idea of life power,

that is, the ability to overcome death through the power of religion or spirituality. Lifton

posits that all of the great worldly religions have this one thing in common: the quest to

get beyond the inevitability of death. Lifton remarks (1979: 20): “Whatever the imagery,

there is at the heart of religion a sense of spiritual power. That power may be

understood in a number of ways –dedication, capacity to love, moral energy –but its

final meaning is life-power and power over death.” And eschatology –beliefs in a

kingdom to come and that death is not the end- is the cornerstone of all worldly

religions.

The fourth mode of achieving a sense of symbolic immortality is through natural

means. By natural means, Lifton (1979) is referring to our connectedness to the natural

world around us –the sense that after our mortal demise, the world itself, with its trees,

its oceans and clouds, and all that constitutes the earth, will remain.

The fifth and final mode of experiencing a sense of immortality is the most

important for Lifton, and is referred to as the experience of transcendence. It is a mode

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entirely different from the other four in that it is grounded on “a psychic state –one so

intense and all-encompassing that time and death disappear” (1979: 24). As a

psychological state, the mode of experiential transcendence involves moving beyond or

transcending the mundane and profane, and can be experienced in all of the

aforementioned four modes. Thus, one might experience a sense of transcendence

through a deep spiritual experience such as a baptism and being born again in the

Christian sense, or being in a mystical trance -a signature feature of many worldly

religions. Other methods of achieving transcendence is through an epiphanic

experience such as giving birth, or a rapturous encounter such as the use of psychedelic

substances, LSD and the like, or other kinds of drugs that produce a mundane-

transcending sensation. This mode also includes the ecstatic transcendence that is

derived from orgasm. Here, according to Lifton (1979: 26), “the self feels uniquely alive –

connected, in movement, integrated –which is why we can say that this state provides at

least a temporary sense of eliminating time and death.” What is unique about

experiential transcendence is that when in the experience, be it orgasmic ecstasy, drug-

induced euphoria, or spiritual rapture, one feels as if one has overcome death because of

the immediacy and intensity of the event.

Lifton proposes that these five modes constitutes the mechanism whereby

humans are able to reduce death-anxieties by achieving a sense of mastery over

mortality, and this mastery is essential for psychological wellness. Additionally, the five

death transcending strategies play an important role in countering what Lifton (1979)

refers to as death equivalent experiences which are the antecedents of some of the most

common psychological and social disorders grounded in feelings of stasis, separation, and

disintegration. By stasis, Lifton is referring to a life without a sense of purpose -the

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experience of ‘going nowhere fast’- which, for example, forms the basis of mid-life

crises.5 By separation, Lifton (1979) means the loss of connectedness to a larger

community or the loss of the love-connection to other human beings, and this death

equivalent –along with stasis- can be the basis for certain types of depression6, a state of

both physical and psychic stasis (1979: 182). Finally there is disintegration, which Lifton

(1979: 101) describes as the absence of those ethical principles used to organize -or

ground- human experience within a historical-cultural context. In the absence of those

unifying and organizing principles, be they religiously based or ideologically

grounded7, disintegration is likely to occur, and for sociologists, social disintegration, or

anomie, is the antecedent for societal pathologies8. So then, the work of death-

transcending strategies is also inextricably linked to the need to reduce these death

equivalents and maintain psychic health in giving a sense of purpose to our individual

existences.

The five modes of death transcendence that Lifton identifies are not the only

paths to achieving a sense of symbolic immortality. Several analysts have proposed

other possible methods preserving the self after death. Edwin B. Shneidman’s (1995,

1973) work on the development of the postself is particularly noteworthy. For

Shneidman, the postself concerns a person’s reputation and continued influence after

death. Shneidman delineates five ways that the self can live on after death. The postself,

according to Shneidman (1995), can live on in (1) the memory of those who are still

living, (2) the interactions others will have with your creative works (art, music, books,

etc.), (3) the bodies of others as in the case of organ transplants, (4) the genes of your

progeny, and finally, (5) the cosmos. As a central difference between the postself and the

symbolically immortalized self, it is important to keep in mind that the postself often

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assumes an identity of its own –an identity completely unplanned for, or one wholly

unexpected by the self when it was alive.9 However, as intriguing as discussions on the

postself are, the focus of this essay is on the work of symbolically immortalizing the self

in life and not on post-mortal identity.

SOME PREVIOUS RESEARCH ON SYMBOLIC IMMORTALITY

The empirical literature on symbolic immortality, although relatively small, has

examined many of the theoretical assumptions of Lifton’s work. These empirical studies

span the range of inquiry, from studies on the biological means of achieving

immortality, to meditations on the quest to achieve a sense of symbolic immortality

through the vocation of teaching. Many of the earlier studies were done to explore the

thesis that symbolic immortality is a requisite for healthy psychological development

(Kastenbaum 1974; Mathews et al 1987; Schmitt 1982). Other work on this concept,

however, focuses on the available avenues of symbolic immortality to different groups

of people (Moremen and Cradduck 1998; Schmitt 1982).

In concert with Lifton’s biological mode of achieving symbolic immortality, an

earlier study by Robert Kastenbaum (1974) sought to examine whether the fear death

compels us to reproduce in order to ensure our continuity. In the Kastenbaum (1974)

study, 90% of respondents agreed with the sentiment “people who have children and

grandchildren can face death more easily than people who have no descendents to carry

on.” While certainly not an index of fear as an impetus for procreation, this rate of

response certainly speaks to the importance of the biological mode of achieving a sense

of immortality. Moreover, Kastenbaum’s findings are consistent with other empirical

and historical evidences on the important role that progeny plays in achieving a sense

on symbolic immortality.10 Providing further support for Kastenbaum’s work,

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Rubinstein’s (1996) “lineal emptiness”, a phenomenon that was observed in many of the

childless women in his study of 160 women at a Philadelphia geriatric center, speaks

volumes to the importance of the biological mode in achieving a sense of immortality.

For the women in the Rubinstein study, having an offspring was viewed as one way to

leave a legacy and support future generations –a quest that was propelled by both

egotistic and altruistic motives. In another study, Drolet (1990) found that the sense of

symbolic immortality becomes stronger with age, and that achieving that sense can help

to decrease the fear of death in established adults, and “thus possibly can contribute to

the enhancement of life for the individual, as well as for society at large” (Drolet 1990:

159).11

Other studies have examined the attainment of a sense of symbolic immortality

through creative activities (Blacker 1997; Cortese 1997; Goodman 1996; Lifton, Kato, and

Reich 1979; Schmitt and Leonard 1986; Talamini 1989). Two studies on sports as a

creative route to achieving symbolic immortality are noteworthy. Organized sports,

especially on university and professional levels, offer a unique arena to study the work

of immortalizing the self. Organized professional sports offer a public arena where

athletes can make history through extraordinary plays or by breaking longstanding

records. It is this unique opportunity to “leave one’s mark” that makes the study of

symbolic immortality in sports so profound. According to Schmitt and Leonard (1986),

organized sports provide unique death-transcending opportunities through “(1) role-

support, (2) engrossment through participation and communication, (3) comparison

through measurement and records, and (4) recognition through awards and

commemorative devices” (Schmitt and Leonard 1986: 1093). By role-support, Schmitt

and Leonard (1986) refer to the support that others, including teammates, fans, and

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society in general, give to the athlete that enables them to maintain their status in life

and beyond. Moreover, role-support enables greater sociality in athletes’ interactions

with fans, and their communications with the media, in print, television, and now cyber-

vision. As Schmitt and Leonard (1986) note, comparisons of records are still another way

that ensures immortality because new athletes, commentators, and fans use the

achievements of others as a measuring rod for current performance. Comparison,

through previous records and current performances, ensure that retired or dead athletes

will be remembered long after their playing days are over. And of course, the role of

commemorative halls (the Basketball and Football Halls of Fame for instance), and the

trophies that line the walls of most high school and university gymnasiums speak to the

enduring immortality of the previous generation.

In another study using sports as a creative mode of achieving a sense of symbolic

immortality, Cortese (1997) applied Schmitt and Leonard’s model to the experiences of

amateur intracollegiate boxing athletes. Cortese’s (1997) found that the same

opportunities for a sense of symbolic immortality existed in the amateur ranks through

(1) role support, (2) participation and communication, (3) comparisons of records, and

(4) commemorative awards. Cortese (1997) also found that although the manifest

function of these bouts were for charity fundraising, the athletes themselves were made

keenly aware of the opportunities for symbolic immortality through titles, awards, and

commemorative ceremonies. Moreover, the role of commemorative devices, such as

championship trophies for the winner and Notre Dame boxing jackets for all finalists,

played a crucial role for the participants, both as a catalyst for their participation in the

charity bouts and for immortalizing their post-selves in the memories of others. Finally,

symbolic immortality is ensured in another way since all of the bouts are immortalized

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in the print media which, according to Cortese (1997: 360), publishes “tidbits of the

personal histories of each fighter, often pointing to academic and personal

achievements.”

The quest for symbolic immortality in other creative activities, such as one’s

vocation, is another arena that has drawn some attention –albeit scant- from the

scholarly literature on death-transcending strategies. In her meditation on the profession

of medicine as route to achieving a sense of symbolic immortality, Palgi (1996: 229)

observed that, “The most appealing feature of the medical professional self is that it has

the potentiality of connecting with something that immortalizes, a life outside of the

physician’s own, a life that may outlive the healer.” In a sense, doctors live on in the

lives and memories of their patients, and this form of creative immortality, according to

Palgi (1996), is one of the peripheral benefits of medicine. Thankfully, the vocational

path to symbolic immortality is not limited to healers, for other studies point to the same

potential to live on in the memories of others (Blacker 1997; 1998).

In his analysis of pedagogy as a route to immortality, David Blacker (1997: 61)

reasoned that, “the ultimate payoff of education lies in the human interconnectedness it

mends, nurtures, and gives birth to; its enduring value consists in its ability to “live in”

those particular Others who are so connected, to make the extension any genuine ethic

requires: beyond our narrower and more immediate projects and toward the Other.”

Lessons taught, skills learned, and the in-class interlocutions continue long after the

pedagogy stops. The work of education, according to Blacker (1997; 1998), assures the

teacher that her pedagogical efforts will be transferred to other generations of pupils in

the great chain of knowledge and leaning. As the popular aphorism, “each-one-teach-

one”, implies, education connects students and teachers in a cycle that is perpetual,

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where the memories of both the teacher and the lesson are conjoined. Teaching, much

like the work of healing, bestows on its practitioner a creative sense of surpassing death

–a feeling that the ultimate payoff of this work are the eternal connections that both

student and teacher have to the ideas that are explicated, interrogated, and modified in

pedagogic praxis.

Within the larger context of achieving a sense of symbolic immortality, a small

body of research extends the discourse by considering the idea of identity preservation.

The work of David Unruh (1983), on strategies of identity preservation between dying

individuals and their loved ones, is of particular import here. Unruh’s (1983) study of

the quest to preserve one’s identity beyond the grave bears particular interest for

sociologists because he describes the process as one that is grounded in interaction

between dying individuals and their survivors. Unruh (1983) identifies three strategies

that the dying employ to preserve their identities after death. These include (1) attempts

to solidify identity, where the dying record, in memos, journals, and letters, aspects of

their identities that they would like to preserve12; (2) accumulating artifacts, where dying

persons collect artifacts and mementos that come to stand as symbols of their personal

histories13; and finally, (3) distributing artifacts, typically to close friends and family

members through wills and testaments, that attest to the identity of the deceased and

assist survivors in their reminiscences of the life of the deceased. Moreover, Unruh’s

(1983) strategic steps to identity preservation outlines four ways that survivors might act

to preserve the identities of their deceased loved ones. Survivors, according to Unruh

(1983), might preserve the identities of their loved ones by (1) reinterpreting the mundane,

or giving new meaning to memories of ordinary past experiences with the deceased; (2)

redefining the negative, by idealizing less desirable aspects of the deceased personality or

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lived experience; (3) continued bonding, or doing certain activities that stimulate

reminiscence about the deceased; and (4) the use of sanctifying symbols or artifacts, that

come to stand as a “sacred” representation of the deceased. As a significant departure

from the quest to achieve a sense of symbolic immortality, this model of preserving a

postself identity beyond the grave is an interactional one that requires certain actions of

the dying or deceased, and responses to those actions from the living –a relational

requisite between the deceased and her survivors that is not explicit in Lifton’s work.

The quests to achieve a sense of symbolic immortality and to preserve the self in

the face of death have been documented in a few sociological analyses among the

chronically ill and dying (Charmaz 1991; Marshall 1986, 1975a, 1975b; Sandstrom 1998).

In his work among men who were living with AIDS, Sandstrom (1998) found that the

quest to achieve a sense of symbolic immortality was omnipresent. Many of

Sandstrom’s respondents grounded their postmortal selves in their occupations and

artistic endeavors, while others secured their immortalized selves in eschatological

hopes and spiritual beliefs. Similarly, Charmaz (1991) found that concerns about

immortality were heightened among her population of sufferers of chronic pain,

especially when death seemed imminent. Charmaz (1991) observed that achieving a

sense of immorality offered meaning and purpose to the lives of her respondents.

Our review of the literature on symbolic immortality suggests that an

understanding of the individual’s quest for symbolic immortality might enrich the

knowledge of identity formation and maintenance in life, and the quest for identity

continuity after death. Unfortunately, the relevance of this quest to core themes in

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sociological theory remains underdeveloped. In order to facilitate this understanding,

the next section links symbolic immortality to some key concepts in social theory.

SYMBOLIC IMMORTALITY WITHIN SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY: USE-VALUE

The quest to achieve a sense of symbolic immortality is a deeply sociological one,

and this section links this pursuit to some key concepts in the major streams of

sociological thought: structuration, symbolic interactionism, and phenomenology.14 Our

attempt here is to broaden the existing literature on symbolic immortality by linking it to

some key identity concepts in sociology.

The Immortal Self in Structuration Theory

Anthony Giddens, the founder of the structuration perspective, has done

more than any other sociologist in recent decades to bridge the chasm between agency

and structure that has marked the science since its inception. Giddens (1984: 2) asserts

that, “The basic domain of study of the social sciences, according to the theory of

structuration, is neither the experience of the individual actor, nor the existence of any

form of societal totality, but social practices ordered across space and time.” These social

practices, mediated both by individual choice and societal influence, have profound

sway over the development of the self in late modernity, and the development of the self

in late modernity is for Giddens (1991) a reflexive project where the individual is

continuously adjusting aspects of her biography to dynamic social changes. Giddens

(1991) believes that the self in late modernity is one that is marked by existential

anxieties. These anxieties emerge from the globalizing tendencies of economies of signs15

that continue to erode those primordial and gemeinschaften caring structures that

historically functioned to build trust and inoculate against existential uneasiness.

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Modernity, as noted by Giddens (1991: 32), “introduces an elemental dynamism into

human affairs, associated with changes in trust mechanisms and in risk environments.”16

Consequently, it is reflexivity, or the self-monitoring aspect of self-identity, that is

principally responsible for reducing those anxieties inherent to the late modern period.

But more than this, it, reflexivity, is the mechanism by which the late modern self is

constructed, for as Giddens (1991: 75) notes, “We are, not what we are, but what we

make of ourselves.” Thus, a structuration perspective (Giddens 1991) might well

interpret the quest to achieve a sense of symbolic immortality as part of the reflexive

project of the self in late modernity: a project that works to reduce existential anxiety

through (1) attempts at “colonizing the future” by “strategic life planning”, (2)

addressing existential questions, and finally, (3) creating a sense of ontological security

in the “protective cocoon” that achieving a sense of symbolic immortality offers.

The quest to achieve a sense of symbolic immortality through creative, biologic,

religious, natural, or transcendental means can be understood as an attempt to colonize

the future through strategic life-planning. The work of colonizing the future, defined by

Giddens as the “creation of territories of future possibilities” (1991: 242), is itself

embodied in the quest for a sense of symbolic immortality because, as previously noted,

symbolic immortality is about gaining the assurance that one’s identity will continue on

long after one’s corporeal demise. Symbolic immortality, as a death-transcending

apparatus, colonizes the future by assuring that one’s self-identity will remain an active

part of the future, whether through an aesthetic act, a religious quest for an eternal soul,

or by biologic means through progeny. But more than providing a mere assurance of

transcending death, the quest for a sense of symbolic immortality might also reduce the

fears and uncertainties inherent to life in the late-modern age. By forcing us to confront

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death’s inevitability and certainty, the quest to continue-on necessarily embodies some

important existential questions around human connectedness.17 Moreover, existential

questions, which according to Giddens (1991: 55) are questions concerning the (1) nature

of one’s existence and being, (2) the finite and sentient nature of human life, (3) the

existence of others, and (4) the “continuity of self identity”, lie at the very heart of the

quest to achieve a sense of symbolic immortality. Answers to these existential questions

play a significant role not only in assuaging death anxiety (see Lifton 1974), but also in

building a sense of ontological security (Laing 1965; Giddens 1991). The strategic life

planning involved in procuring one’s continuation after death creates a sense of mastery

over the usual anxieties of severing one’s connectedness to the human community.

The Immortal Self in Symbolic Interactionism

Symbolic interactionism, as a branch of social psychology, is expressly concerned

with the self: principally, how the self is created through social interactions, how it

interprets those interactions, and how the self manipulates symbols to form those

interpretations (Mead 1934).18 As the progenitor of the term, Herbert Blumer (1962: 180)

reasoned that human interaction is, “[M]ediated by the use of symbols, by

interpretation, or by ascertaining the meaning of one another’s actions. This mediation is

equivalent to inserting a process of interpretation between stimulus and response in the

case of human behavior.” Within the confines of Blumer’s definition of symbolic

interaction, the work to immortalize the self thus becomes the work of manipulating

symbols and signs in social interaction for the purpose of continuing the self after death

-a self, that according to George Herbert Mead, is a social structure that arises in social

interaction (Mead 1934: 140). Consequently, the work involved in achieving a sense of

symbolic immortality –whether it is the labor involved in creative activity, the time and

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care spent in giving moral guidance to one’s progeny, or the hours spent cultivating the

soul in spiritual mediation- is a work that is deeply social, and one that involves the

manipulation of language, symbols, and signs, in communicative praxis with others, to

engender a sense of achieving that immortal identity for the self. In essence, the

immortalized self cannot exist outside the confines of the symbolic interactions that will

ensure its continued existence. Harkening back to Unruh’s (1983) analyses of identity

preservation, we find that if and how one will be remembered are questions that are

essentially grounded in strategic encounters and planning, which are the processes of

symbolic interactions. Thus, the achievement of a sense of symbolic immortality, under

the terms of symbolic interactionism, is contingent upon a “generalized other” (Mead

1934: 154), whomever or whatever the generalized other is.19 In effect, it is the

generalized other, defined by Mead (1934: 154) as the reference group that gives to a

person her unity of self, that ensures that one will achieve a sense of symbolic

immortality. It is only through social interaction, where meanings, ideas, and emotions

about death and the continuity of the self are internalized and sought out, that an

individual is ensured a sense of symbolic immortality and the continuation of the

postself identity. Consequently, the very quest to arrive at this sense of immortality is

one that is deeply social and entrenched in symbolic interaction.20

The quest to achieve a sense of symbolic immortality also involves a great deal of

self-interaction. By self-interaction, Mead (1934: 134) is referring to a reflexive process of

the “turning-back of the experience of the individual upon himself” through internal

conversations, whereby an individual’s biography is examined to give value and

meaning to her life. Internal conversations concerning one’s postself identity and

memory in the minds of generalized others are an essential aspect of the quest to achieve

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a sense of symbolic immortality. The question ‘how will I be remembered?’ and the

negotiation with others to ensure that memory, begin with an internal conversation on

the postself identity. This interactional quest to achieve a sense of symbolic immortality

is linked to the most innate and natural of all human needs: our desire for meaningful

social interactions within -and beyond- the confines of the corporeal. As noted by Mead

(1938: 477):

Human society is not at home in the world because it is trying to change that world and

change itself; and, so long as it has failed to so change itself and change its world, it is not

at home in it as the physiological and physical mechanism is. There is a need for

salvation –not the salvation of the individual but the salvation of the self as a social

being…Apart from the instinctive love of life, is that demand for immortality any more

than an assertion of the continuous character of the social value which the individual as a

social being can embody in himself?

The “salvation of the self” –the social self- is exactly what the quest to achieve a sense of

symbolic immortality is all about. And Mead (1938) connects this instinctive quest for

immortality to our most basic need for social interaction in this life and beyond.

The quest to preserve the self by achieving a sense of symbolic immortality might

also be interpreted as a form of biographical labor. In particular, it embodies the works

of legitimizing biography (Hewitt 1989), life-review (Butler 1963), and self-objectification

(Marshall 1986). Marshall (1986) posits that the work of legitimizing one’s biography,

related to what he calls an “awareness of finitude” (1986:139), is an attempt to rewrite

aspects of biography and personal history so as to arrive at a final meaning, or a closing

chapter, to life. Moreover, Marshall (1986) notes that legitimation of biography

intensifies with age, and this process reaches its peak when individuals conclude that

they only have a few more years to live. The work to achieve a sense of symbolic

immortality and, by necessity, the biographical legitimizations that occur, might well be

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understood as status passage control, what Marshall (1980: 124) posits as people’s

attempts to “seek not only to make sense of themselves as dying but also to gain

whatever control they can over the dying process, death itself, and in some cases, the

afterlife.” Similarly, Robert Butler’s (1963) notion of life review, or attempts by

individuals who are dying, or who are close to death, to make sense of their past lives

and choices, is another type of biographical work designed to find meaning and purpose

to a past life, while reducing death anxiety. All of these practices are means by which

the self experiences objectification: practices that offer “a sense of continuity to personal

experience” (Hewitt 1989: 185).

Finally, the work of symbolic immortality, in as much as it incorporates the tools

of impression management (Goffman 1958, 1955) in building a positive postself identity,

personifies a type of ‘biographical work’ (Gubrium and Buckholdt 1977) wherein

individuals, through mindful reflexiveness, take into account the perceptions that other

people have of them, accept, modify, or change those perceptions through the conscious

manipulation of interactional props, and, in so doing, negotiate new public biographies

(Gubrium and Buckholdt 1977) of themselves for interactions in the present, and for the

future encounters that others will have with their post-selves.

The Immortal Self in Phenomenology

Phenomenological sociology, which traces its roots to the German social

philosopher Edmund Husserl, is principally concerned with describing the world as

seen through the consciousness of individuals. In Collected Papers, Vol. 1, Alfred Schutz

(1962) reasoned that the phenomenological task was that of describing the “life-worlds”

or consciousness of individuals. Schutz (1962: 120) argued that, “our problem, however,

is not what occurs to man as a psychophysiological unit, but the attitude he adopts

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toward these occurrences –briefly, the subjective meaning man bestows upon certain

experiences of his own spontaneous life.” In essence, Schutz believed that the goal of

phenomenology was to understand the meanings or typifications that people attributed

to their experiences. Phenomenology places a premium on discovering how an

individual constructs and interprets the social world in her mind. While only a depth-

phenomenology can uncover the meaning behind the work to achieve a sense of

symbolic immortality for an individual, for instance the catalyzing motives that drives

an individual to acquire this sense, phenomenology does propose some essential terms

that underscore this drive.

In purely phenomenological terms, the work to achieve a sense of symbolic

immortality is seen as a byproduct of an individual’s symbolic universe, or those

symbols that an individual uses to “refer to realities other than those of everyday

experience” (Berger and Luckmann 1966 95). This universe, in addition to containing the

entire biography and social history of the individual, helps her to make sense of, and

order, biographical experiences in the process of meaning making. And, it is the

meaning-making function of this universe that is important to the quest to achieve a

sense of symbolic immortality. For Berger and Luckmann (1966), achieving a sense of

symbolic immortality is certainly under the purview of a person’s symbolic universe

because the primary role of the symbolic universe is to assuage death-anxiety –a latent

benefit that the achievement of symbolic immortality certainly provides. Commenting

on the foremost function of the symbolic universe, Berger and Luckmann (1966: 101)

posited:

The legitimation of death is, consequently, one of the most important fruits of symbolic

universes…All legitimations of death must carry out the same essential task –they must

20

enable the individual to go on living in society after the death of significant others and to

anticipate his own death with, at the very least, terror sufficiently mitigated so as to not

paralyze the continued performance of everyday life…It is in the legitimation of death

that the transcending potency of symbolic universes manifests itself most clearly, and the

fundamental terror-assuaging character of the ultimate legitimations of the paramount

reality of everyday life is revealed.

If applied to the work of achieving a sense of symbolic immortality, an individual’s

symbolic universe, according to Berger and Luckmann (1966), is principally responsible

for situating the death phenomenon within the biographical complex –transforming it

from a taken-for-granted reality to an active –indeed omnipresent- aspect of biography

and sociality that the individual must contend with. And, the quest to achieve a sense of

symbolic immortality, whether through biologic, creative, religious, natural, or

experiential transcendence means, is the mechanism that the symbolic universe employs

in dealing with death-apprehension.

Finally, one wonders, from a phenomenological perspective, if the quest to

achieve a sense of symbolic immortality is a distinctly modern phenomenon linked to

the need, whether real or perceived, to preserve our individualism. Georg Simmel, in an

essay entitled Individual and Society in Eighteenth –and Nineteenth- Century Views of Life,

was the first sociologist to distinguish the new individualism that was birthed in the

Industrial Revolution. Simmel (1950: 81) argued that, “The new individualism might be

called qualitative, in contrast with the quantitative individualism of the eighteenth

century. Or it might be called the individualism of uniqueness [Einzigkeit] as against

that of singleness [Einzelheit].” For Simmel, there was something unique about the

Industrial personality –a personality where an individual measured his individualism

not through comparison with social others for sameness, but rather by contrasting his

21

personal uniqueness to that of others for difference. This new individualism was one

that defined the self through peculiarities and singleness (Simmel 1950: 82). This simple

observation on the new personality that emerged in industrial societies raises a

profound implication for the quest to achieve a sense of symbolic immortality. Namely,

is the quest to acquire a sense of symbolic immortality merely the personality’s reaction

against death’s erosion of that unique identity –the qualitative personality? The

existential phenomenology of Jean-Paul Sartre proposes an answer to this quandary.

In an incisive essay entitled My Death, Sartre (1956: 693) proposed that the

distinctive feature of the dead life is how it strips the once vibrant –or qualitative-

personality of its uniqueness and singularity. The peculiar feature of the dead life is the

homogeneity it represents: You can live your life as you like and express your unique

individuality at will, but upon death, your agency –that qualitative individualism- is lost

forever. For Sartre, the dead life marks the erosion of one’s personality in order to be re-

constituted with the whole dead collective. While Sartre does recognize the possibility of

living on in the memories of others as a “reconstituted life,” the inevitable fate for most

personalities is a homologation into the quantitative, dead life identity (Sartre 1956: 693).

And it is this that might impel many individuals to seek a sense of symbolic immortality

for their unique, qualitative personalities –to defeat the anxieties of what the dead life

personifies: to be forgotten! Accordingly, Sartre noted (1956: 659-696):

Thus the very existence of death alienates us wholly in our own life to the advantage of

the Other. To be dead is to be prey for the living. This means therefore that the one who

tries to grasp the meaning of his future must discover himself as the future prey of

others…In this sense, to die is to be condemned no matter what ephemeral victory one

has won over the Other ; even if one has made use of the Other to “sculpture one’s own

statue,” to die is to exist only through the Other, and to owe him one’s meaning and the

very meaning of one’s victory.

22

The individual’s quest to achieve a sense of symbolic immortality might well be a

reactionary stance against the problems posed by the dead life. Why become prey for

the living when you can sculpt your own immortalized postself through one, or all, of

the five death transcending paths? Why lose your unique qualitative personality in

death by becoming one of the dead masses? In essence, from a phenomenological point

of view, the pursuit of a sense of symbolic immortality is one grounded in the need to

preserve one’s unique consciousness and individual singleness, and to be remembered

as one wishes.

CONCLUSION

We have argued that the quest to achieve a sense of symbolic immortality is one

that has a great deal of importance to sociology, and an area that is easily applicable to

some core ideas in social theory. Our treatment of the quest to achieve a sense of

symbolic immortality in various sociological traditions shows the relevance of this

underutilized concept to theories on the development of the self in late modernity. The

work to achieve a sense of symbolic immortality is one that is deeply sociological and

one that bears profound implications on our understanding of the development of the

social self, both in this life and beyond. Thus, as long as individuals are actively working

to procure a sense of immortality for their postmortal selves, their identities do not cease

to exist after their corporeal demise. Moreover, their corporeal demise does not

preclude postmortal interactions with loved ones left behind. Sociological theories on

the development of the self do have an important contribution to make in our

understanding of the quest to achieve a sense of symbolic immortality.

Finally, in analyzing the relevance of this concept to sociological theory, we

encountered questions to which a sociological inquiry should attend. One of the gifts of

23

sociology is the attention it pays to issues of social inequality by posing both critical and

reflexive questions on the roles of race, ethnicity, class, gender, and other such social

identities. The sociology of the quest to achieve a sense of symbolic immortality should,

naturally, consider the impact that the aforementioned social identities are having on

actualizing that goal. It is not surprising, then, that sociology’s failure to seriously

consider the immortalized postself has left open and unexplored questions around

access barriers to a sense of symbolic immortality by race, ethnicity, social class, and

gender. Nowhere is this omission as prominent as in the current scholarly literature on

symbolic immortality. This gap in the literature suggests that inequality issues are

irrelevant to the quest to achieve a sense of symbolic immortality.21 And yet, as death

notices in newspapers suggest, social inequalities –particularly by gender- tend to

persist even after death (Kastenbaum et al 1977; Moremen and Cradduck 1998/99; Spilka

et al 1979). Still, only scant attention is paid to these critical issues. Thus, the sociology of

the quest to achieve a sense of symbolic immortality might also make a substantial

contribution here. Some possible questions for future research are:

1. Do we find the same drive to achieve a sense of symbolic immortality across

all human societies, or are there differences by nationality, culture, or

subculture? For instance, do individuals in postindustrial societies express

different motives and drives for their quest to achieve a sense of symbolic

immortality as compared to individuals in industrial and/or agrarian

societies?

2. How are the variables race, ethnicity, social class, gender, and others possibly

affecting the pursuit to achieve a sense of symbolic immortality?

3. What happens when the pathways to a sense of symbolic immortality are

unavailable to large groups of people by certain social identities (race,

ethnicity, class, gender, disability, sexuality, etc.)?

24

4. The work to achieve a sense of symbolic immortality is one that is described

as an individual’s quest for self-preservation beyond life. From a sociological

point of view, the question arises: Is the need to achieve a sense of symbolic

immortality ever expressed as a collective or an institutional one? And if so,

how is the collective quest to achieve a sense of symbolic immortality

different from, or similar to, the ways individuals pursue this goal?

Moreover, are the motivations to achieve as sense of symbolic immortality

similar at the collective (groups and institutions) and the individual levels?22

These are but a few questions that remain unexplored –areas that have been the

historical purview of sociological inquiry. Thus, herein lies the goal of a sociological

theory on the quest to achieve a sense of symbolic immortality: That we might better

understand the need of -and the work towards- identity preservation in this life and

beyond, and the many social impediments that individuals and groups encounter as

they strive to achieve this end

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Endnotes

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1 Lifton (1974: 683) noted that psychic numbness is an adaptive strategy employed under

extreme social conditions such genocide, mass deaths, or situations of incredible

violence. Lifton defines psychic numbness as “a form of de-sensitization…an incapacity

to feel or to confront certain kinds of experience, due to the blocking or absence of inner

forms or imagery that can connect with such experience” (p.683).

2 Subtitle adopted from a line in W.H. Auden’s poem Death’s Echo.

3 In Marxian terms, species-being refers to our connection to the human community.

4 See Benedict Anderson’s (1983) Imagined Communities for a discussion of nationalism

as an expression of a type of “symbolic family.”

5 For Lifton (1979: 87) a midlife crisis, as related to the static feeling of ‘going nowhere

fast’, “is a crisis in ultimate life projects…Men and women break away from marriage

and families, seeking to take advantage of a “last chance” for loving and caring

relationships previously denied them.”

6 It is interesting that Lifton (1979: 182), a social psychiatrist, and David Karp (1996), a

sociologist, both come to define depression as a disease of disconnection.

7 For Lifton (1979: 110) both ideology and religion are organizing principles for humans

that essentially serve the same function: satisfying our quest for “utopian perfection.”

8 See Durkheim’s classic meditation Suicide for an example of this condition.

9 This is often the case with celebrities who die young such as James Dean, Jimmy

Hendrix, John Lennon, etc., and whose postself-identities are more popular in death than

in life.

10 See Lauweart’s (1994) study of the historical significance of childbirth as a mechanism

of achieving a sense of symbolic immortality in China.

29

11 See Mathews and Mister (1987-88) for a study that uses a different instrument to

measure the same need for symbolic immortality.

12 Attempts at solidifying identity (Unruh 1983) for postself preservation might well be

interpreted as a type of face-work or impression management within the micro

interactionist tradition of Erving Goffman (1958, 1955). It seems to me that the dual labor

of impression management and maintaining face, whether through journals, letters,

personal artifacts, and other such devices, are signature features of the quest to preserve

the post self identity and achieve a sense of symbolic immortality.

13 Sandstrom (1998), in his work among male AIDS sufferers, also pointed to the

importance of signifying artifacts in efforts to preserve the “vital and valued self” in the

face of death. Accordingly, Sandstrom (1998: 365) notes that the dying may “dedicate

themselves to collecting artifacts or to writing journals that will be passed on to friends

and family, or the wider public. They hope that this will allow their experiences or

“stores” to live on in the memories of others.”

14 These theoretical traditions are certainly not the only links to the symbolic immortality

concept. See Raymond L. Schmitt and Wilbert M. Leonard II (1986: 1089) for other

possible connections of the symbolic immortality concept to sociological theory.

15 For another important analysis of the self in late modernity see Scott Lash and John

Urry’s Economies of Signs & Space (CA: Sage, 1994). Economies of signs, as defined

by Lash and Urry (1994), are post-industrial economies where symbols, images,

information, and desires are the primary exchange commodities.

16 See Robert J. Lifton’s The Protean Self: Human Resilience in an Age of Fragmentation

(BasicBooks, 1993) for a similar meditation on the self in late modernity.

30

17 Giddens (1991: 55) defines existential questions as those concerning “the basic

parameters of human life, and are ‘answered’ by everyone who ‘goes on’ in the contexts

of social activity.”

18 See Joel M. Charon’s Symbolic Interactionism: An Introduction, An Interpretation, An

Integration for one of the best explications of this branch of social psychology.

19 In the previous example of education and pedagogy as a creative route to achieving a

sense of symbolic immortality, the ‘generalized other’ might be the teacher’s pupils.

Similarly, in using the theological route to achieving a sense of symbolic immortality, the

‘generalized other’ could very well become one’s religious community itself, or one’s

cleric.

20 By symbolic interaction, it is important to mention that although individuals might

share common symbols, their interpretations, or “definition of the situation” (Thomas

1923; 1928), might vary considerably. The middle-aged professor might well interpret

his pedagogic praxis as a route to achieving a sense of symbolic immortality, while his

unresponsive students might interpret the same interaction merely as a route to a good

paying job.

21 A recent article by Reuters, dated September 11th 2001 (Novel Auction Offers Chance

to Buy Immortality), reported on the opportunity that many individuals have ceased upon

to buy “literary immortality” by paying for the privilege to have a best-selling author

name a character in a forth-coming novel after themselves. Some bidders, according to

the article, have paid in excess of $9,000 for this privilege to achieve a sense of symbolic

immortality. As trite as this example may appear, it does illustrate how social class

inequities might act as a barrier to achieving a sense of symbolic immortality. Stated

31

otherwise, there are some routes to achieving a sense of symbolic immortality that are

simply unavailable to the masses.

22 Professor Kent Sandstrom, who reviewed several versions of this article, brought this

question to our attention.