Becker perceives limits on how much death anxiety we can cope with, so our choices are stark: either the psychosis of those unable to forget their fate, or the repression that translates our death anxiety into transferences and other more socially acceptable symptoms. Such repression often manifests itself as a deep need for security, as part of the low-grade neurosis called normality, but it can also appear as the compulsiveness of the person who must become wealthy or famous or powerful.
