Muerte, narcisismo y sociedad

Abstract

Humans lack an awareness of their own death; we can only know of the death of others. The ego thus assumes the fiction of its eternity, a fiction not unrelated to narcissism. Narcissism plays un important role in ego development, but, at the same time, brings us closer to death if it blocks the second moment of human development: acces to language. If, like Narcissus, we succumb to the fascination with the image, we faall into the trap of the death instinct, a disruptive, disintegrating force. Death can express itself via subtle means, supposedly aimed to alleviate our anguish. The tyranny of the image in today's society -in which the image increasingly replaces the word, the definitive form of the expression of the live instinct- is one of the great risks of our civilization.