Defense Mechanisms and Death Anxiety in Oliver Twist S. R. Kercenna College

A confrontation with death, even if just in thoughts, always generates uneasiness, for death, as described by American existential psychiatrist Irvin D. Yalom, is “a primordial source of anxiety and the primary source of psychopathology”. Most people, upon facing this terrifying and unchangeable truth, develop adaptive coping modes; a sort of defense mechanism that consists of denial-based strategies such as suppression, repression, displacement, acceptance of socially sanctioned religious beliefs, and efforts to overcome death through achieving symbolic immortality. Charles Dickens’ 1838 novel Oliver Twist provides a wide range of examples to illustrate many of the defense mechanisms generated against death anxiety. The exploration of which will enable us to understand how such mechanisms work, and how they are often disguised and hidden under layers and layers of different patterns of behavior.

In his 1980 book Existential Psychotherapy, Yalom explains that the child’s idea of being dead has nothing in common with ours apart from the word. When it comes to death, children are kept in the dark. Adults usually refuse to inform or provide them with details concerning this topic. Therefore, the child “knows nothing of the horrors...