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Concept information

Preferred term

symbolic immortality  

Definition

  • The concept symbolic immortality was developed in the research conducted on survivors of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Japan. Robert J. Lifton theorized that humans have a basic and compelling need for mortality transcendence, and that the quest for a sense of continuity that extends farther than one's natural life is a universal phenomenon made possible by self-knowledge of the inescapability of death. [Source: Encyclopedia of Death and the Human Experience; Symbolic Immortality]

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URI

http://data.loterre.fr/ark:/67375/N9J-XZC9CN38-T

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