The “Oceanic Feeling” and Confrontation with Death

Abstract

Freud’s explanation of Rolland’s “oceanic feeling” is reconsidered in the light of similar phenomena that occur in the face of impending death, such as the experiences described by Socrates in Plato’s Phaedo, and the aesthetic and transformational experiences described by Christopher Bollas. These phenomena are included in what Karl Jaspers calls “ciphers.” Other examples are presented to indicate the need to consider such phenomena in human psychology, phenomena that have been neglected in psychoanalysis due to the profound but arbitrary influence of Freud’s analysis of the “oceanic feeling,” an analysis based on the outmoded rigid assumptions of classical nineteenth-century science.