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The Denial of Death

by Ernest Becker, Sam Keen (Foreword), Daniel Goleman (Foreword)

4.25 of 5 stars 4.25 · rating details · 1,683 ratings · 191 reviews

Winner of the Pulitzer prize in 1974 and the culmination of a life's work, The Denial of Death is Ernest Becker's brilliant and impassioned answer to the "why" of human existence. In bold contrast to the predominant Freudian school of thought, Becker tackles the problem of the vital lie -- man's refusal to acknowledge his own mortality. In doing so, he sheds new light on t...more

Paperback, 336 pages

Published May 8th 1997 by Free Press (first published 1973)

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Aug 17, 2012 Joshua Nomen-Mutatio rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: cognitive-science-and-or-psychology, cultural-and-or-political, ethics-and-or-metaethics, history, philosophy, anthropology

"The irony of man's condition is that the deepest need is to be free of the anxiety of death and annihilation; but it is life itself which awakens it, and so we must shrink from being fully alive."
—Ernest Becker

The sloppy latticework of gnarled tree branches anchors the foreground while Devlin and Geoffrey puff upon thick, stolen cigars, steathily removed from a father’s humidor, stashed in the closet of a house that was summarily purchased with blood, sweat and finely tuned 'n' directed tears....more

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Apr 27, 2007 Jafar rated it 5 of 5 stars

I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work; I want to achieve immortality through not dying. I don’t want to live in the hearts of my countrymen; I want to live in my apartment. —Woody Allen.

Becker’s main thesis in this book is that the most fundamental problem of mankind, sitting at his very core, is his fear of death. Being the only animal that is conscious of his inevitable mortality, his life’s project is to deny or repress this fear, and hence his need for some kind of a heroism. E...more I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work; I want to achieve immortality through not dying. I don’t want to live in the hearts of my countrymen; I want to live in my apartment. —Woody Allen.

Becker’s main thesis in this book is that the most fundamental problem of mankind, sitting at his very core, is his fear of death. Being the only animal that is conscious of his inevitable mortality, his life’s project is to deny or repress this fear, and hence his need for some kind of a heroism. Every grandiosity, good or evil, is intended to make him transcend death and become immortal.

To prove his thesis, Becker resorts to psychoanalysis. The depth and breadth of his understanding of psychoanalysis is truly amazing for someone who doesn’t call himself a psychologist. He wants to put psychoanalysis on a different foundation from which Freud put it on: The primary repression is not sexuality, as Freud said, but our awareness of death.

To convince you of this fundamental change, Becker treats you to a rather thorough review of psychoanalysis in order to rearrange it. If you don’t like or don’t understand psychoanalysis, don’t read this book. If you have a love/hate relationship with it (so deeply beautiful, poetic, and philosophical, and yet, so ad-hoc and unscientific), this book will show you more of psychoanalysis’s insight and explanatory powers, and its absurdities. It’s not having a morbid subject that makes this book depressing; it’s its reliance on psychoanalysis. A discipline whose aim, as Becker puts it, is to show that man lives by lying to himself about himself, leaves you depressed, cynical, and pessimistic.

Becker relies extensively on Otto Rank (a psychoanalyst with a religious bent who was one of the most trusted and intellectually potent members of Freud’s inner circle until he broke away) and the Danish theologian Søren Kierkegaard (whom Becker labels as a post-Freudian psychoanalyst even before Freud came along). It shouldn’t come as a surprise then that the solution that Becker suggests towards the end of book for ridding man of his vital lie is what he calls a fusion of psychology and religion: The only way that man can face his fate, deal with the inherent misery of his condition, and achieve his heroism, is to give himself to something outside the physical – call it God or whatever you want.

A rather disappointing solution, even though he is not talking about any traditional religion. How can we cure ourselves of our vital lie with an illusion? You can rewrite Freud’s The Future of an Illusion based on Becker’s version of psychoanalysis for a different explanation of why man invented God. Religion can’t be of any solace to a mankind who knows his situation vis-à-vis reality. Man, as Becker so chillingly puts it, “has no doubts; there is nothing you can say to sway him, to give him hope or trust. He is a miserable animal whose body decays, who will die, who will pass into dust and oblivion, disappear not only forever in this world but in all possible dimensions of the universe, whose life serves no conceivable purpose, who may as well not have been born.” Or, as Camus says in The Fall: “Ah, mon cher, for anyone who is alone, without God and without a master, the weight of days is dreadful.”

In the end, the only practical solution might be what most people do (but not everyone can do) and what Kierkegaard called tranquilizing with triviality. Numb yourself with the banalities of life to forget the insignificance of your existence. Go to school, get a job, marry, pay mortgage, raise children... Fret over every little thing you can think of: your promotion at work, the car you drive, the cavities in your teeth, finding love, getting laid, your children’s college tuition, the annoying last five pounds that are defying your diet program... Act like any of these actually mattered.(less)

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Apr 23, 2010 Tyler rated it 1 of 5 stars Recommends it for: People Who Want Answers ... Any Answers

Recommended to Tyler by: Pulitzer Prize

Shelves: non-fiction, the-worst

If Ernest Becker can show that psychoanalysis is both a science and a mythic belief system, he will have found a way around man’s anxiety over death. Or maybe not. This book is a card trick that conjures sham religion out of sham science, with death playing a supporting role.

Becker tells us that the idea that man can give his life meaning through self-creation is wrong. Only a “mythico-religious” perspective will provide what’s needed to face the “terror of death.” That’s an interesting idea, b...more

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Jan 26, 2010 Greg rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: philosophy-theory-and-other-their-i, life-is-shit, psychology

At my parents house the poster for this record is on my bedroom wall:

The poster the added text that "Some ideas are poisonous, they can fuck up your life, change you and scar you."

This poster came to mind pretty often while reading The Denial of Death.

I hope this isn't going to come as a shock to anyone, but you are going to die. But you aren't just going to die, in the big picture there is nothing you will ever do, nothing you will ever be or effect matters one bit. In the long view we die, in...more

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Sep 23, 2012 Bettie rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: autumn-2012, pulitzer, nonfiction, philosophy, published-1973, library-in-norway, lifestyles-deathstyles

Unabridged.

Points brought up:

- ersatz immortality: religion, fame, lay a garden, write a book etc etc

- practice dying

- narcissism: heroic urge

- invent worries and anxieties when there are none to be had

Pascal - 'Not to be mad would amount to another form of madness'

Animal life = body, bodily functions, urges, happiness ∴ cake AND death

Human life = mental processes, supression of urges and bodily functions advocated down the years by religion/social mores/prevailing modes of ethics or moralit...more

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Aug 20, 2008 Talat rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: religious, therapists, existentialists

Recommended to Talat by: Merlyn Mowrey

Becker introduces the very basic idea that we humans have four distinguishing features: (1) we can contemplate our death, we do contemplate -- and try to deny -- our death, and (2) we can create symbolic realities of thought and action, and (3) we project and perpetuate symbolic realities of thought and action to create systems that will outlive -- in an everyday sense "transcend" our physical mortality; we want to symbolically live on and some of us succeed in doing so (a major point at the end...more Becker introduces the very basic idea that we humans have four distinguishing features: (1) we can contemplate our death, we do contemplate -- and try to deny -- our death, and (2) we can create symbolic realities of thought and action, and (3) we project and perpetuate symbolic realities of thought and action to create systems that will outlive -- in an everyday sense "transcend" our physical mortality; we want to symbolically live on and some of us succeed in doing so (a major point at the end of the Epic of Gilgamesh); and (4) through projection and transference, and in order to feel we are participating in realities that transcend death, we latch onto heroes of all kinds, whether they be religious (Prophets, Gurus, Messiahs, saints), or cultural (writers, actors, musicians), or athletic (sports heroes and teams). But ultimately, Becker like Kierkegaard and Buber (whom he mentions often along with Otto Rank and Paul Tillach) is calling us to become our own heroes, or at least acknowledges that some of us rise to the occasion, raise the bar, so to speak and live our lives as our own kind of heroes, a life that Becker calls "cosmic heroism." For Becker, because death-anxiety is the pivot around which all symbolic action turns, because death generates the motivation for the symbolic construction of "immortality projects," society is essentially "a codified hero system" and every society is in the sense that it represents itself as ultimate, at its heart a religious system. Becker both critiques and validates our need for projection and transference because these are at times "life-enhancing" (p. 158) and "creative projections" that contribute to our relationships (here he cites Buber). Becker is also an exquisite writer. He is more than a pleasure to read -- he is an inspiration. I read Becker as saying that if we face the reality of our death, we can greater gain the power to consciously create our symbolic immortality and become "cosmic heroes." Becker has joined in my mind, for original break-through thinking the ranks of Buber, Bateson, and Burke (whom he often cites). You can read excellent essays on Becker's work at http://faculty.washington.edu/nelgee/ I present a fuller review of _Denial of Death_ and some of Becker's other writings at my site, which I encourage you to visit for a fuller review and overview of Becker and his work: www.halmantle.com . You can also find some very good YouTubes. Search under Becker, Sam Keen, & Sheldon Solomon. Sheldon Solomon is among a team of social psychologists who have empirically tested and validated Becker's ideas. Dare I say, "forever yours,"?
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Feb 12, 2008 Mark R. rated it 5 of 5 stars

I read this book for a couple reasons, the first being that I'd always been mildly interested in in it, ever since I heard Woody Allen talk about it in "Annie Hall". I asked one of my friends in school a few years ago about the book, and he said it was pretty hard reading. I'd had one psychology class at the time and figured he was probably right, that it would be difficult reading for someone who had a hard time getting through any of his text books and didn't have much interest in psychoanalys...more I read this book for a couple reasons, the first being that I'd always been mildly interested in in it, ever since I heard Woody Allen talk about it in "Annie Hall". I asked one of my friends in school a few years ago about the book, and he said it was pretty hard reading. I'd had one psychology class at the time and figured he was probably right, that it would be difficult reading for someone who had a hard time getting through any of his text books and didn't have much interest in psychoanalysis, except as a subject in Woody Allen movies.

For various reasons--and not to sound morbid--the subject of death and mortality has been on my mind for a little while, and after watching "Annie Hall" again, and being reminded of this book again, I decided I'd give it a shot.

I'm definitely glad I decided to read "The Denial of Death," because it's given me more to think about than any nonfiction book I can recall. Maybe since I'm not used to reading books on psychoanalysis, I'd have found that with another book as well, or a number of books. I have a feeling that wouldn't be the case, though; Becker's book is written in a way that a non-psychology student like myself can understand relatively easily, but that doesn't mean it isn't insightful or professionally-written. I found the book a whole lot easier to read than I thought I would, though I did have to concentrate a little harder than I do for my normal reading. But my limited knowledge of Freud, Jung, and the other important thinkers that Becker discusses, did not prevent me from understanding or getting a lot out of this book.

Becker talks about different areas of psychoanalytical thought, arguing that a human's basic and most natural struggle is to rationalize himself as a mortal animal aware of his own mortality, something which makes him unique on this planet and also in a constant state of fear. He develops different, mostly subconscious, ways of avoiding or distracting himself from that fear. Those that succeed in this distraction live as normal people, and those who cannot find a way to cope with this often have a much rougher time.

I'm not going to try to summarize the book, as all I'd end up with is a poor description written by someone with no ability to summarize a work like this (see above paragraph for an example of this inability). Becker discusses psychoanalysis in relation to religion, dimentia, depression, and perversion, among other things. I found myself hurrying to finish pages or chapters on lunch breaks at work, eager to find out what the author was going to say next--something I don't usually feel when reading nonfiction.

If there was anything I didn't "like" about "The Denial of Death" it's that, for the seven or eight days I was reading it, I had death on my mind a lot more often than usual. I'd imagine that's natural, though, when reading a book such as this. That said, there is nothing particularly pessimistic or downbeat about the book. Becker writes in a friendly, straight-forward manner, and if anything, his tone is optimistic throughout.
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Apr 20, 2009 Sandy rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: death

WHAT IS YOUR LEGACY?

Becker's Pulitzer Prize winning book was written while he was dying-- it is his final gift to humanity. Praised by Elizabeth Kubler Ross, The New York Times Book Review, Sam Keen, you name it. One of my brightest, most humane friends described it as, "The only book I've ever read twice." Becker says-- very thoroughly, too-- that everything we humans do is to blot out the understanding that we die. That includes all the monuments to our egos we leave behind: shopping centers,...more

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Mar 27, 2012 Reed rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: psychology

Solid piece of "existential psychology" - all coming from an anthropologist, no less! I recommend pairing this with Camus' The Myth of Sisyphus...the order shouldn't matter.

Also, this book (as well as The Myth of Sisyphus) carries enough potential energy to chisel away some of the ice that may have formed around your ego - or who you would call 'Me.' This experience could be likened to a 'psychedelic trip,' if you will. My advice is this: try your damnedest to shed all biases you may have accumu...more

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Aug 03, 2008 Y. Jacintho Bloom rated it 5 of 5 stars

Do you feel like your days fly by? Or, that a month disappears into another month? How does a lifetime get swallowed up? Why do we live with regret? Aren’t we just living like all the other people? Why do we take risks with our health and with our financial resources? What is it all about?

After reading this book, the sheer madness of the 20th and 21st century seems apparent-- no longer mysterious. If you think you are living on a rollercoaster-- hate how you've been strapped onto the monster's b...more

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Jan 15, 2008 Haines rated it 4 of 5 stars

The Basic Question: how does one affirm one's life when life requires that we give it up in the end, live face to face with feces and decay, and undergo neurosis along the way? This book actually tries to answer that question without recourse to any sort of messianic, new "vision," and it is primarily an interdisciplinary synthesis that shows how we have occluded our own insights into the problem all along. As primarily a fusion of psychoanalysis and Kierkegaard, it's fascinating on a strictly p...more

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Mar 05, 2009 Dean Baker rated it 5 of 5 stars

Brilliant, necessary and a synthesis of writers and thoughts who have influenced many great writers.
You won't be unchanged by this book.

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Aug 13, 2007 C. Travis rated it 4 of 5 stars

don dellilo used this to write *white noise*. denial is our birthright, as it is the birthright of all cultures--probably. though no culture is quite so adept as the american. the problem is, of course, like average intelligence, no one believes denial applies to them. and all the denial starts here, with this: you are going to die, and pretty fucking soon. that is the fate of all sexually reproducing creatures.

it's an important place to start, though montaigne had a different solution, but hey...more

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Mar 19, 2013 Savinien rated it 3 of 5 stars

The Denial of Death takes a fascinating idea and runs too far with it.

Becker believes that the fear of death--and the related fear of living in a wondrous, terrifying, unpredictable world--powers all human motivations, neuroses, character, and behavior. It's a fascinating idea, and one that often makes logical sense.

To support this book, Becker begins by summarizing basic psychological terms, ideas, and the whole life works of various philosophers and psychologists. Halfway through, he unconsc...more

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Sep 28, 2012 Mac rated it 2 of 5 stars

Going to school when I did, it’s hard to conceive of how important the psychoanalytic project was for so much of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The influence of Freud and the subsequent schools of psychology developed by his students spread into virtually every discipline, from literary analysis to economics, but by the time I got there it was all pretty much gone. I’m sure that somewhere there’s an Onoda-type holdout department that won’t let the old stuff go, or one or two octogenaria...more Going to school when I did, it’s hard to conceive of how important the psychoanalytic project was for so much of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The influence of Freud and the subsequent schools of psychology developed by his students spread into virtually every discipline, from literary analysis to economics, but by the time I got there it was all pretty much gone. I’m sure that somewhere there’s an Onoda-type holdout department that won’t let the old stuff go, or one or two octogenarian professors whose names are recognizable enough that they haven’t been forced into retirement, but for me psychoanalysis was primarily discussed in the past tense.

This book is from 1973, and clearly had quite an impact on American thought at the time (if Woody Allen movies are any representation, at least), but seems impossibly dated forty years later. In fact, aside from a handful of obscure movie references, I wouldn’t be too terribly surprised to find that this came from the 30’s or 40’s. Becker’s project here, rather than an actual mediation on death, is a reorientation of psychoanalysis, putting death at the top (or bottom?) of the pyramid in place of the sexual impulses that Freud spent so much time thinking about. This new direction for study is a kind of synthesis of Freud, Kierkegaard, and notably Otto Rank, one of Freud’s disciples who Becker believes hasn’t received the credit he is due.

In that way, there’s not a whole lot of original thought in this book, which is probably its most contemporary quality. Rather than present new ideas, he shuffles and reorganizes old ones from disparate sources that, due to various disciplinary and dispositional prejudices, have been kept at arm’s length from one another. It’s really an extended commentary on the work of prior psychoanalysts, and its (syn)thesis was apparently fairly revolutionary at the time (though, again, its late publication date makes me suspicious of that), but today it seems somewhat obvious.

And it all reads like a bunch of garbage. It’s clear that psychoanalytic thinking must have been a great deal of fun, finding all kinds of willy-nilly metaphors for everyday behaviors that can be pulled out of mythology or Shakespeare or one’s ass. When one isn’t beholden to any sort of evidence other than anecdotes from like-minded psychologists, one can say pretty much anything one wants and, if the voice is properly authoritative, say it to a whole lot of people. It’s like philosophy without all that pesky logic and rigorous thinking. It seems unfair to apply 2012 knowledge to a book that didn’t have access to it, but this is from 1973. Were we really still looking for cures-through-metaphor to things like schizophrenia and – appallingly – homosexuality at such a late date? (Psychiatric drugs for schizophrenics were available at least since the 50s, but you’ll have a hard time finding a suggestion of any potential biological/chemical causes to mental diseases here.)

Oh, and if you’re a woman, bad news: there’s either no hope for you, or Becker isn’t interested in looking for it. It’s your genitals, after all, that are causing all the problems in the world.

Even if we chock all this offensive nonsense up to being a sign o’ the times (which I can’t help but reiterate is 1973, much too late to excuse it), the book still buys into the “heroic soul” project that is to this reader extremely annoying. The idea that some people are just too sensitive for this world, and that the beautiful souls of our great men need special care is an adolescent concept that I’m always surprised can be found in so much literature written by people who should have been old enough to know better. “You just don’t get me, man.” Half of this book’s sentiments can be found on t-shirts at your local Hot Topic.

The concept that humanity lives in a state of denial of our own imminent demise is interesting, but doesn’t feel particularly new, considering mortality has been a theme in literature since… literature. That we need to shed our reliance on the common denials – materialism, status, class – and transfer them to the unhappy cure of Becker’s Rank-ian brand of psychoanalysis is not convincing in the least, and so this book feels like yet another (albeit depressive) common denial to add to the list. It may have been a big influence on everyone in the 1970’s, but thankfully we’ve put a lot of this stuff behind us.
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Jul 12, 2012 Lex rated it 4 of 5 stars

The hardest part of this book was getting past all the horrible psychoanalysis bullshit, especially about homosexuality. There was some good insights about the worship of god, and tons of insight about the developing mind, especially before the age of 5. How much is scientifically accurate is unknown (I much prefer books from neurologists who can actually test their theories). But I still deeply enjoyed this book. It was a mind trip just following the psychoanalysis.

Oh, and author asks this ques...more

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Jan 17, 2012 Bosh rated it 5 of 5 stars

A brilliant book, both as an introduction to psychoanalytical thinkers and as a recontextualization of Freud's theories that shifts the focus from the sexual to the existential.

Unfortunately Becker's treatment of religion is almost completely uncritical, leaving a gaping hole in his theoretical framework. Becker claims that transference will always be unsuccessful when applied to other humans or anything in the biological realm, and suggests that transference to a religious God figure is the onl...more A brilliant book, both as an introduction to psychoanalytical thinkers and as a recontextualization of Freud's theories that shifts the focus from the sexual to the existential.

Unfortunately Becker's treatment of religion is almost completely uncritical, leaving a gaping hole in his theoretical framework. Becker claims that transference will always be unsuccessful when applied to other humans or anything in the biological realm, and suggests that transference to a religious God figure is the only way to achieve stable mental health. The first problem here is the factual/scientific issue: is there a God? What kind of God? Is it an omnipotent religious God, or just some vague "life force" in the deistic sense? Bizarrely Becker doesn't even address this, but it seems to go without saying that effective religious transference is only possible if you actually believe in God and religion, and belief in God and religion requires some sort of specificity of belief, which then leads to all sorts of other problems. In fact many religious people operate under a cognitive dissonance where they believe in God but are still terrified of death and behave in exactly the same way as non-believers, something that Becker does not acknowledge.

Becker is condescending towards Freud's atheism, portraying it as a limitation, but Becker seems the more limited here given how unresolved his attitude towards religion is. His attitude towards scientific thought is somewhat dismissive, even though he leans heavily on the realities of evolution and humans' biological existence to set up the premise of his argument, our "creatureliness" and the terror of death that he very convincingly argues underlies our behaviour and neuroses. The second half of the book retreats from this scientific attitude and overemphasizes human uniqueness and the limitations of science. Of course, this was written 40 years ago, but it still seems a stretch that he insists that humans have almost no natural instincts, given what we now know.

In the end it seems like Becker is prescribing religious belief because he thinks it works, even though he knows it's not really true. This seems incomplete, and Becker probably thought so too, because he never quite makes clear what exactly he thinks on the subject. He probably didn't want to reach a completely pessimistic conclusion, but one comes out anyway: "Men are doomed to live in an overwhelmingly tragic and demonic world." It would have been more honest to face this conclusion head-on instead of half-heartedly trying to reach a religious solution.(less)

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Dec 07, 2011 Rodger Broome rated it 4 of 5 stars

I think Becker's existential foundations are on the spot. There is not doubt that human nature has a pervasive affinity to transcend its terrestrial limitations. The unfortunate uses of terms like "myth" and "symbolic" which are certainly part of culture seems to wash the actual physical aspect of culture that do insulate human beings from a rugged natural world. Society, infrastructure, law, technology, education, religion and so forth, are not human kinds feeble attempts to escape death, but t...more

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Apr 07, 2011 Bob Nichols rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Becker says we are motivated by many things but the fear of death is primary and overarching. We are afflicted with minds that can transcend our obvious biological being. Knowing that, we also know we are insignificant in the vast scheme of things and then we will die. From childhood on, we mold our character to deal with this reality by seeking to align ourselves with heroes through transference (to leaders, gurus, God) to gain significance that way, we seek to be heroes in our own mind, and we...more Becker says we are motivated by many things but the fear of death is primary and overarching. We are afflicted with minds that can transcend our obvious biological being. Knowing that, we also know we are insignificant in the vast scheme of things and then we will die. From childhood on, we mold our character to deal with this reality by seeking to align ourselves with heroes through transference (to leaders, gurus, God) to gain significance that way, we seek to be heroes in our own mind, and we use repression to defend against insignificance and death. From this basic view, Becker critiques and recasts much of contemporary psychological theory. He attributes, for example, the major forms of mental illness (depression occurs when we have given up hope; perversion, which includes for him homosexuality, is a protest against "species standardization"; schizophrenia is an awareness that we are burdened by an alien animal body) as the outcome of the repression of our "ontological" insignificance along with its capstone, death.

Becker is critical of most therapeutic approaches, which he characterizes as attempts at "unrepression." He says they can do good, but they can't give us immortality. While insignificance and death is an undeniable reality ("the terror of creation") that can't be repressed, Becker's own response is unsatisfactorily unclear. He points us in the direction of creating an illusion or myth that somehow works for us but, without elaboration, that suggestion is flat.

Becker is a strong and lively writer,and he does a good job of highlighting the central role that death plays in our psychological and religious makeup. Whether all of us look for "the immortality formula" in the way Becker suggests, or whether one can pull together most of the last century's psychological theory and place it under the denial of death banner, as Becker does, should be questioned. This seems to be an overreach that involves an over interpretation of what's out there in mental and emotional phenomena.

Becker is good at recognizing our essential biological makeup that goes along with our distinctive symbolic functions (e.g., "we are gods that shit" or words to that effect), but his theory does not draw on the biological evidence that could provide an alternative perspective to what he brings forward. It could be that our heroic quests are due to native ambition and need for value and rank that has less to do with the fear of death than what Becker would argue (although clearly building monuments to ourselves has the halo of an immortality quest). Our desire for merger with various social, political and religious movements may have more to do with our tribal nature and a need to belong for survival purposes than, as Becker argues, compensation for feelings of insignificance. Transference may have less to do with compensation for weakness and more to do with an evolutionary legacy to defer to leaders who will protect us. It could be that our various mental illnesses have as much to do with bad body chemistry than what the heavily-laden, overly-interpretive psychological theories argue. And, it could be that our denial of death is a natural by-product of an understandable evolutionary desire to survive, and not to compensate for a feeling of insignificance that is most powerfully revealed in our own demise. (less)

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Nov 29, 2009 Bob Grommes rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is a great thinker's last book, completed under the shadow of his untimely final illness. It is brutally honest, and it will upset you if you aren't yet ready to accept the true nature of the human condition in all its absurdity.

I'd have given it 5 stars for its insight, but for the fact that Becker lingers too long in dissecting the psyche of Freud, as if Freud's blessing or at least some reconciliation with Freud's belief system were necessary to validate the book. Probably Becker felt th...more

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Jul 01, 2009 Lani rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction, psychology, dnf

Is there a 'couldn't bring myself to finish' rating? I feel like I'm cheating by putting this one on my "read" shelf...

Here's the thing... I'm fairly well read, I've taken philosophy classes, I've powered through some pretty dry books. But apparently I CANNOT bring myself to power through a dry book about PSYCHOANALYSIS.

Being a modern psych major, and a fairly well-read one at that, AND one who has dealt with mental issues personally... I can't bring myself to believe a god damned WORD that Fre...more

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Feb 23, 2013 Mike rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The Denial of Death straddles the line between astounding intellectual ambition and crackpot theorizing; it is a compendium of brilliant intellectual exercises that are more satisfying poetically than scientifically; it is a desperately self-oblivious and quasi-futile attempt to resurrect the ruins of Freudian psychoanalysis by re-defining certain parameters and ostensibly de-Freudianizing them; there is an unhealthy mixture of jaw-dropping recognition and eye-rolling recognition.

It is important...more

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May 23, 2007 skye rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This book may have caused us to coin the phrase, "Books that destroyed me"... a huge part in the senior year radical change of worldview. Key in my process of discovering mortality. Brilliant social-anthro insight into the ways in which humans try and get immortality -- and all the harm this does. Connects Freud and Kierkegaard. This is existential psychoanalytic theory at its best!

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Jan 05, 2013 Linda rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: listened-to-audio-book, pulitzer-prize-winners

FINALLY. I really hated listening to this book. It is so lucky to get 2 stars from me. I decided to round up from the one and a half stars I have mentally assigned it because I know part of my hatred for it is my feeling that nearly all of this topic is so much hooey to begin with. Like, he goes on and on about how psychotherapy has replaced religion for the modern man -- and some of this "deep" thought on man's oedipal/anal/self-actualizing/soul/search-for-meaning shite is just about as annoyin...more

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Mar 06, 2012 Brandon Seevers rated it 4 of 5 stars

I stumble upon this book while pondering when and how I would perish, for good. The thought of death has passed through the majority of our minds, and in my case multiple times. I can honestly express I do have a slight fear of meeting Mr. Grimm. A hindrance of that nature can prevent us from accomplishments and even certain emotions. That’s were a bit of remedy comes in, The Denial of Death. Its argument is that it’s not a sexual repression that creates neurosis; it’s having a death anxiety tha...more

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Dec 08, 2010 Jamampoline rated it 5 of 5 stars

Sit too long with Mr. Becker in his cone of truth, and you may be sent running into the arms of the very frivolous small talk with other people that he reveals to be mere artifice cloaking our doomed existence. Note also that you will likely feel compelled to share some of the his revelations about the nature of human life (a composite of Freudian and otherwise psychoanalytical/philosophical theory), but that uttering the word "anality" in company is never acceptable, no matter how flimsy you pu...more

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Dec 15, 2012 Andrew Griffith added it

A book reviewing and commenting on the various psychological insights starting with Freud and his successors. Pretty heavy going, and I find it hard to relate to a lot of some of the ‘complexes’ described in psychology (Oedipus, castration, primal scene, etc.). But the fundamental duality, the borderless world (at least in theory) of the mind, and the bordered reality of the body is powerful. Some quotes to give the flavour:

"The fact is that this is what society is and always has been: a symboli...more A book reviewing and commenting on the various psychological insights starting with Freud and his successors. Pretty heavy going, and I find it hard to relate to a lot of some of the ‘complexes’ described in psychology (Oedipus, castration, primal scene, etc.). But the fundamental duality, the borderless world (at least in theory) of the mind, and the bordered reality of the body is powerful. Some quotes to give the flavour:

"The fact is that this is what society is and always has been: a symbolic action system, a structure of statuses and roles, customs and rules for behaviour, designed to serve as a vehicle for earthly heroism. Each script is somewhat unique, each culture has a different hero system…. But each cultural system is a dramatization of earthly heroics; each system cuts our roles for performances of various degrees of heroism: from the ‘high’ heroism of a Churchill, a Mao, or a Buddha, to the ‘low’ heroism of the coal miner, the peasant, the simple priest; the plain, everyday, earthy heroism wrought by gnarled working hands guiding a family through hunger and disease….

… this whole book is a network of arguments based on the universality of the fear of death, or ‘terror’ as I prefer to call it, in order to convey how all-consuming it is when we look it full in the face ….For behind the sense of insecurity in the face of danger, behind the sense of discouragement and depression, there always lurks the basic fear of death, a fear which undergoes most complex elaborations and manifests itself in many indirect ways…. No one is free of the fear of death….

Necessarily because the existential dualism [mind and body] makes an impossible situation, an excruciating dilemma. Mad because …. everything that man does in his symbolic world is an attempt to deny and overcome his grotesque fate. He literally drives himself into a blind obliviousness with social games, psychological tricks, personal preoccupations so far removed from the reality of his situation that they are forms of madness — agreed madness, shared madness, disguised and dignified madness, but madness all the same…."

Personally, while we all fear death, I am not convinced that our life is as tortured or mad as described. Part of the natural process of growing up is understanding one’s place in the world and that our time here is limited. For deeper reflections on life, I find Frankl’s theory on meaning more convincing; to use Kubrick’s phrase, in an indifferent universe, we need to create our own light. And for practical day-to-day living, Kahneman’s work on how we think (or don’t!) is more applicable. (less)

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Sep 30, 2012 Ben Robertson rated it 5 of 5 stars

The best book about psychology I ever read. Becker won the Pulitzer prize for this book and for good reason. He summarizes in their own words the driving philosophy of Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud and introduces Otto Rank who it turns out is as great a scientist of the human soul as his predecessors if less well known. While Becker's analysis is scientific his conclusions are deeply spiritual and well worth the wait. In the end he agrees with Pascal in what is now famously known as Pascal's wager...more

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Feb 18, 2012 James rated it 5 of 5 stars

This book will transform your view of everything, if you are only honest with yourself and let it. The language assumes some great familiarity with Freudian psychology, but the layman can definitely power through it with a little help from Wikipedia, Google, etc.

I was a little disappointed that as I progressed through the book, I saw fewer and fewer passages highlighted in my kindle, which means that a number of people gave up before getting to the later chapters, which were filled with amazing...more

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Feb 20, 2013 Chilly rated it 3 of 5 stars

I so much want to buy into the overall concept of this book. Unfortunately, I can't get over the sexual theories and the theories that seem so founded on infant intellect (understanding death?), that are discussed in the first 1/4 of the book. They seem so arbitrary and unlikely - I just can't seem to get through that stuff.

Maybe it's me and I need to focus on more of the works that his theories are based upon. With the hope that some of them present psychological or anthropological research ba...more

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About Ernest Becker

Dr. Ernest Becker was a cultural anthropologist and interdisciplinary scientific thinker and writer.

Becker was born in Springfield, Massachusetts to Jewish immigrant parents. After completing military service, in which he served in the infantry and helped to liberate a Nazi concentration camp, he attended Syracuse University in New York. Upon graduation he joined the US Embassy in Paris as an admi...more Dr. Ernest Becker was a cultural anthropologist and interdisciplinary scientific thinker and writer.

Becker was born in Springfield, Massachusetts to Jewish immigrant parents. After completing military service, in which he served in the infantry and helped to liberate a Nazi concentration camp, he attended Syracuse University in New York. Upon graduation he joined the US Embassy in Paris as an administrative officer. In his early 30s, he returned to Syracuse University to pursue graduate studies in cultural anthropology. He completed his Ph.D. in 1960. The first of his nine books, Zen, A Rational Critique (1961) was based on his doctoral dissertation. After Syracuse, he became a professor at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, BC (Canada).

Becker came to the recognition that psychological inquiry inevitably comes to a dead end beyond which belief systems must be invoked to satisfy the human psyche. The reach of such a perspective consequently encompasses science and religion, even to what Sam Keen suggests is Becker's greatest achievement, the creation of the "science of evil." In formulating his theories Becker drew on the work of Søren Kierkegaard, Sigmund Freud, Wilhelm Reich, Norman O. Brown, Erich Fromm, and especially Otto Rank. Becker came to believe that a person's character is essentially formed around the process of denying his own mortality, that this denial is necessary for the person to function in the world, and that this character-armor prevents genuine self-knowledge. Much of the evil in the world, he believed, was a consequence of this need to deny death.

Because of his breadth of vision and avoidance of social science specialization, Becker was an academic outcast in the last decade of his life. It was only with the award of the Pulitzer Prize in 1974 for his 1973 book, The Denial of Death (two months after his own death from cancer at the age of 49) that he gained wider recognition. Escape From Evil (1975) was intended as a significant extension of the line of reasoning begun in Denial of Death, developing the social and cultural implications of the concepts explored in the earlier book. Although the manuscript's second half was left unfinished at the time of his death, it was completed from what manuscript existed as well as from notes on the unfinished chapter.

The Ernest Becker Foundation is devoted to multidisciplinary inquiries into human behavior, with a particular focus on contributing to the reduction of violence in human society, using Becker's basic ideas to support research and application at the interfaces of science, the humanities, social action and religion.

Some of the above information is from the EBF website and used by permission.

Becker also wrote The Birth and Death of Meaning which gets its title from the concept of man moving away from the simple minded ape into a world of symbols and illusions, and then deconstructing those illusions through his own evolving intellect.

Flight From Death (2006) is a documentary film directed by Patrick Shen, based on Becker's work, and partially funded by the Ernest Becker Foundation.
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More about Ernest Becker...

Books by Ernest Becker

The Birth and Death of Meaning: An Interdisciplinary Perspective on the Problem of Man

Angel in Armor: A Post-Freudian Perspective on the Nature of Man

The Structure of Evil: An Essay on the Unification of the Science of Man

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“The road to creativity passes so close to the madhouse and often detours or ends there.” — 27 people liked it

“When we are young we are often puzzled by the fact that each person we admire seems to have a different version of what life ought to be, what a good man is, how to live, and so on. If we are especially sensitive it seems more than puzzling, it is disheartening. What most people usually do is to follow one person's ideas and then another's depending on who looms largest on one's horizon at the time. The one with the deepest voice, the strongest appearance, the most authority and success, is usually the one who gets our momentary allegiance; and we try to pattern our ideals after him. But as life goes on we get a perspective on this and all these different versions of truth become a little pathetic. Each person thinks that he has the formula for triumphing over life's limitations and knows with authority what it means to be a man, and he usually tries to win a following for his particular patent. Today we know that people try so hard to win converts for their point of view because it is more than merely an outlook on life: it is an immortality formula.” — 24 people liked it

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