title: Notes on flying and dying.
abstract: Focused on selected details in the lives and creative works of Samuel Johnson, Edgar Allan Poe, and Houdini, this paper explores a seeming antinomy between claustrophobic annihilation and aviation. At first glance the latter appears as an antidote to the threat of entrapment and death. On a deeper level the distinction fades as the impression arises that in the examples cited, flying may represent an unconscious expression of a wish for death and ultimate reunion.
mesh_terms: D001359:Aviation; D003643:Death; D004739:England; D005610:Freedom; D049671:History, 18th Century; D049672:History, 19th Century; D049673:History, 20th Century; D006801:Humans; D008093:Literature, Modern; D008273:Magic; D009034:Mother-Child Relations; D010262:Paraphilic Disorders / Q000523:psychology; D010698:Phobic Disorders / Q000523:psychology*; D011573:Psychoanalytic Interpretation; D014481:United States