Will You Miss Me When I Am Gone? Death and Our Significance to Others: A Discussion of Frommer's "Death Is Nothing at All"

In this discussion of Martin Stephen Frommer's admirable project to fill in the gap in Freud's thinking with regard to death anxiety I critique Frommer's emphasis on what minds need from other minds to confront death as overly cerebral. When viewed from within the embodied, emotional immediacy of our subjectivity, there is validity in dreading the transition from something to nothing. To help us overcome our fear of becoming nothing, we must feel that our offerings have been internalized as significant contributions in the hearts and memories of others so that we are remembered when we are gone. In the treatment with Karen, Frommer's generous personal accessibility allowed Karen to feel reborn as a significant presence in his life and thereby helped modify her extreme fear of death.