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A review by greden
The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker
5.0
Human existence is characterized by paradox and contradiction. On one hand, we are creatures of the flesh who will eventually have the same fate as any animal, death. On the other, we are symbolic beings, we possess self-consciousness, have an identity, are capable of abstract thought, and have a concept of time and of the infinite. Having this combination, isn’t it fascinating how we all are not in a constant state of panic, terror, and awe at the state of affairs?
How is it that we can endure the awesome intensity of the infinitude of reality itself right in front of our eyes, and know that our time on this earth is finite, and some die this all will be gone someday? We are thrown into a world where we suddenly find ourselves in a body possessing bones, flesh, and bloody organs, we need to defecate, urinate and procreate, on a planet spinning around somewhere in the galaxy, at a random year in human history. And unlike any other being on this planet, we possess a rich mental inner landscape that can contemplate the miraculousness of creation, that longs for a purpose here, because we are a strange, unheard of combination of beast and angel, finite and infinite, concrete and abstract.
How is it then we’re able to care about anything trivial, repeat our mundane routines and think about anything else in spite of all this? Becker, in The Denial of Death, argues that the reason we bring the trivial to the foreground and existential to the background by repression and illusion. We cling to our problems, ideas, identities, and romantic partners because we have projected the terror of the overwhelming cosmos onto them, and they become our existential security.
Before we die, we must feel that our lives meant something before that of us which is flesh becomes once-lofty food for the worms. How can we go about achieving this? Man has two conflicting core interests, one is to feel at one with existence, a part of the greater whole, and another is to define itself as an individual, to stand out, to carve itself in reality. These two ways of feeling meaning are in conflict, and so man’s fate will be anxiety. Put it differently, because we are both animal and spiritual, we cannot live in the trust of fate and let our base instincts determine our selves, nor can we make sure control over ourselves by being outside the human condition.
Becker’s book is a psychoanalytic one, but unlike Freud who says the core of neurosis is a inner conflict of libido and oppression from parents and culture, Becker says it’s our conflict with reality, existence, with nature. The idea of death is repressed, neurosis is its symptom.
Neurosis is simply the price one has to pay in order to suppress the constant shock and panic one would naturally have given our circumstances, and “pretend” that we are sane so we can operate in the world. Becker puts a lot of emphasis on heroism as a mechanism for achieving this. We must create our own story, and project the entire world on an object to cope with the infinite complexity.
We are confronted with the problem of too little possibility and too much of it. Psychosis comes when we overvalue the symbolic self, we see too much possibility and we deny the limitations of the physical body. Depression comes when we see too little possibility when one is too identified with the physical self. In order to cope with a perspective of narrow possibility, we make ourselves believe we are worthless as a defense mechanism. It’s more unbearable to see oneself as a meaningful creature not having sufficient possibility, rather than being depressed, see oneself as worthless and everything meaningless.
Transference, for Becker, is not limited to transferring paternal figures onto people. Instead, describes the phenomenon of transference as projecting broader forces like the entire nature of things onto a manageable object, that becomes the representative of natural power. This may be parts of himself, a boss, romantic partner, a leader, parents, or a creative endeavor, something tangible.
The concept of God is useful in that fills our need of transferring the power of the cosmos into something that one can deal with Without a belief in God, we are more likely to find a person of power as an object of transference of natural power, which leads to group-hypnosis. Likewise, without a belief in God, we are more likely to use our romantic partners as the central object of natural power, which will lead to far more conflict in the relationship.
“The more you fear death and the emptier you are, the more you people the world with omnipotent father figures, extra-magical helpers.”
Becker argues that the reason sex is such a taboo topic is that it reveals our animal nature to the highest degree. Or rather, our place in nature as animals. We must procreate like any other animals. Sex is connected to death in that without sex, there would be no death. If sex didn’t exist, that would mean no birth and death. Sex reminds man that he is nothing but a link in the chain of the long lineage of the human species, and threatens the person’s sense of individual significance. Since we are terrified of this reality, we chafe at sex to protect ourselves. When a child asks about sex, what they’re really asking is why we have bodies, where it comes from, and what is its meaning. Sex is the prime symbol of the animal, the limited, the determined, the finite, fleshly, and death. Interestingly, Becker writes that sexual perversions and strange fetishes are from an existential origin, namely that the individual wants to break free from the “sexual determinism” of animalistic procreation, and rebels against this nature, to assert its individuality and conquest over its fleshly destiny. The same goes with fetishes, it symbolizes the cultural transcendence over nature.
A comment about fetishes. It seems like psychoanalysis aim to explain the strange things of human behavior that we seem to take for granted. However, when one is too embedded in psychoanalysis, it seems like you can lose wider perspective and the everyday commonsense. Freud thought that the cause of the so-common shoe fetish is that the infant first sees the shoe on the ground before they saw the genitals, and so the fetish represents a sort of fixation on an infantile stage. As for Becker, he says the fetishes symbolize the cultural transcendence over nature, that its origin is in our existential dread of mortality. But if we add some folk sense, the shoe, for many, is simply more aesthetic than the foot, and we have consciously designed it to be so. And our sense of aesthetics for sexual arousal is not only a cultural upbringing, but in biology too, and popular cultural artifacts amplify our biological values. Becker also mentions how homosexuality and “transvestites” as he called them, are existentially weaker than straights for not being able to endure the natural condition of the split of the sexes. The writers of psychoanalysis take an uttering from a couple of their patients to generalize it to a theory of humankind. Having said that, the perspectives are interesting and as Becker said, you can’t say give any perspective if you have to give all. There is some dose of truth to the psychoanalytic perspective but the danger is that it's taken too seriously, too all-encompassing.
Neurosis may be described as simply inner-conflict within a person, which stems ultimately from the core existential contractions. Our personal character is a form of neurosis and, so are our illusions that allow for an idealogy of self-justification, a heroic dimension that is life itself to the symbolic animal. This is not purely pathological however, in order to live, we need to narrow our gaze, simplify, reduce the world into manageable parts, and keep this limited worldview intact, we must deceive ourselves with illusion. The Truth shall set you free, but without limitation, without a carefully designed world of illusion, everything becomes revealed to us and we become nothing, incapable of action, identity, and meaning. There is a thin line between psychosis and spiritual enlightenment. Becker would say that without the security of illusions, it is to die symbolically, and we protect these at all costs in existential fear of loss of the symbolic idea of self and our hero story. J.B Peterson would say yes, but we would actually die. That our personal character, the ideas and values that we’ve come to depend on in our place in society, and the cultural and historical stories in which these are embedded are our safety in nature, our protection against death itself. Because to protect oneself against actual physical death one needs a functioning society and a high status within it. And then, the definition of truth comes into play. If these so-called illusions do actually keep us alive, it’s not obvious they’re “false.” It is not that illusion in itself is bad for us, it’s just that there are good illusions and bad illusions. Some are life-enhancing giving freedom, dignity, and hope, and others are suffocating and enslaving. Yes, a sense of immortality is significant, but survival is more immediate.
Becker criticizes psychology by saying that it’s incomplete in understanding human suffering, while it pretends to be so. The reason why neuroticism is such a widespread problem today is not because of sexually repressive societies, but because of the vanishing heroic cultural narratives to serve divinity, which lies on the feet at the collapse of the belief in religion. The problem with psychology is that it puts the responsibility entirely on the individual to solve their own childhood traumas and understand themselves in order to find happiness, and neglects that they are cut off from a divine mission of self-transcendence. For example, Pinel noted that the Salpietre mental hospital got cleared out at the time of the French Revolution. The neurotics found a self-transcending collective drama and a heroic identity within it, that one could easily see would solve their neurosis given this framework.
Historically, the modern man is an orphan of meaning, and the fantasies that give him meaning seem illusions because they are not shared. This is why, by the way, religious people are so keen on converting people into their belief, for the more people around him live and share this belief, the stronger their own belief will become, thus both stabilizing his psyche but also securing his status in society.
My biggest disagreement with the book is that I would change the emphasis of the existential issues to the universe itself, not merely death. It is the reality of life and death that’s truly the core of existential terror and awe. If we were to live on for infinity, if there would be no such thing as a day we die, we as human beings would still have the same issues. So if you would really want to get to the bottom of things, you’d write a book titled: “The Denial of Reality.”
But overall the book is brilliant, and it’s the best existential book I’ve read. It has plenty of psychological insights, some of which I said to myself: “wow.” And although I don’t agree with everything, it is now one of my favorite psychology books because of the interesting perspective. Becker’s work is a beautiful synthesis of great thinkers, (Mainly Freud, Rank, Kirkegård, Norman O Brown) putting them into something original of its own. My criticism would be to leave out the “Freud’s Denial of Death” chapter as an exhaustive investigation of Freud’s character isn’t very interesting to the layman. Even though I have an above-average interest in psychoanalysis and Freud, I found the chapter tedious compared to the others.
How is it that we can endure the awesome intensity of the infinitude of reality itself right in front of our eyes, and know that our time on this earth is finite, and some die this all will be gone someday? We are thrown into a world where we suddenly find ourselves in a body possessing bones, flesh, and bloody organs, we need to defecate, urinate and procreate, on a planet spinning around somewhere in the galaxy, at a random year in human history. And unlike any other being on this planet, we possess a rich mental inner landscape that can contemplate the miraculousness of creation, that longs for a purpose here, because we are a strange, unheard of combination of beast and angel, finite and infinite, concrete and abstract.
How is it then we’re able to care about anything trivial, repeat our mundane routines and think about anything else in spite of all this? Becker, in The Denial of Death, argues that the reason we bring the trivial to the foreground and existential to the background by repression and illusion. We cling to our problems, ideas, identities, and romantic partners because we have projected the terror of the overwhelming cosmos onto them, and they become our existential security.
Before we die, we must feel that our lives meant something before that of us which is flesh becomes once-lofty food for the worms. How can we go about achieving this? Man has two conflicting core interests, one is to feel at one with existence, a part of the greater whole, and another is to define itself as an individual, to stand out, to carve itself in reality. These two ways of feeling meaning are in conflict, and so man’s fate will be anxiety. Put it differently, because we are both animal and spiritual, we cannot live in the trust of fate and let our base instincts determine our selves, nor can we make sure control over ourselves by being outside the human condition.
Becker’s book is a psychoanalytic one, but unlike Freud who says the core of neurosis is a inner conflict of libido and oppression from parents and culture, Becker says it’s our conflict with reality, existence, with nature. The idea of death is repressed, neurosis is its symptom.
Neurosis is simply the price one has to pay in order to suppress the constant shock and panic one would naturally have given our circumstances, and “pretend” that we are sane so we can operate in the world. Becker puts a lot of emphasis on heroism as a mechanism for achieving this. We must create our own story, and project the entire world on an object to cope with the infinite complexity.
We are confronted with the problem of too little possibility and too much of it. Psychosis comes when we overvalue the symbolic self, we see too much possibility and we deny the limitations of the physical body. Depression comes when we see too little possibility when one is too identified with the physical self. In order to cope with a perspective of narrow possibility, we make ourselves believe we are worthless as a defense mechanism. It’s more unbearable to see oneself as a meaningful creature not having sufficient possibility, rather than being depressed, see oneself as worthless and everything meaningless.
Transference, for Becker, is not limited to transferring paternal figures onto people. Instead, describes the phenomenon of transference as projecting broader forces like the entire nature of things onto a manageable object, that becomes the representative of natural power. This may be parts of himself, a boss, romantic partner, a leader, parents, or a creative endeavor, something tangible.
The concept of God is useful in that fills our need of transferring the power of the cosmos into something that one can deal with Without a belief in God, we are more likely to find a person of power as an object of transference of natural power, which leads to group-hypnosis. Likewise, without a belief in God, we are more likely to use our romantic partners as the central object of natural power, which will lead to far more conflict in the relationship.
“The more you fear death and the emptier you are, the more you people the world with omnipotent father figures, extra-magical helpers.”
Becker argues that the reason sex is such a taboo topic is that it reveals our animal nature to the highest degree. Or rather, our place in nature as animals. We must procreate like any other animals. Sex is connected to death in that without sex, there would be no death. If sex didn’t exist, that would mean no birth and death. Sex reminds man that he is nothing but a link in the chain of the long lineage of the human species, and threatens the person’s sense of individual significance. Since we are terrified of this reality, we chafe at sex to protect ourselves. When a child asks about sex, what they’re really asking is why we have bodies, where it comes from, and what is its meaning. Sex is the prime symbol of the animal, the limited, the determined, the finite, fleshly, and death. Interestingly, Becker writes that sexual perversions and strange fetishes are from an existential origin, namely that the individual wants to break free from the “sexual determinism” of animalistic procreation, and rebels against this nature, to assert its individuality and conquest over its fleshly destiny. The same goes with fetishes, it symbolizes the cultural transcendence over nature.
A comment about fetishes. It seems like psychoanalysis aim to explain the strange things of human behavior that we seem to take for granted. However, when one is too embedded in psychoanalysis, it seems like you can lose wider perspective and the everyday commonsense. Freud thought that the cause of the so-common shoe fetish is that the infant first sees the shoe on the ground before they saw the genitals, and so the fetish represents a sort of fixation on an infantile stage. As for Becker, he says the fetishes symbolize the cultural transcendence over nature, that its origin is in our existential dread of mortality. But if we add some folk sense, the shoe, for many, is simply more aesthetic than the foot, and we have consciously designed it to be so. And our sense of aesthetics for sexual arousal is not only a cultural upbringing, but in biology too, and popular cultural artifacts amplify our biological values. Becker also mentions how homosexuality and “transvestites” as he called them, are existentially weaker than straights for not being able to endure the natural condition of the split of the sexes. The writers of psychoanalysis take an uttering from a couple of their patients to generalize it to a theory of humankind. Having said that, the perspectives are interesting and as Becker said, you can’t say give any perspective if you have to give all. There is some dose of truth to the psychoanalytic perspective but the danger is that it's taken too seriously, too all-encompassing.
Neurosis may be described as simply inner-conflict within a person, which stems ultimately from the core existential contractions. Our personal character is a form of neurosis and, so are our illusions that allow for an idealogy of self-justification, a heroic dimension that is life itself to the symbolic animal. This is not purely pathological however, in order to live, we need to narrow our gaze, simplify, reduce the world into manageable parts, and keep this limited worldview intact, we must deceive ourselves with illusion. The Truth shall set you free, but without limitation, without a carefully designed world of illusion, everything becomes revealed to us and we become nothing, incapable of action, identity, and meaning. There is a thin line between psychosis and spiritual enlightenment. Becker would say that without the security of illusions, it is to die symbolically, and we protect these at all costs in existential fear of loss of the symbolic idea of self and our hero story. J.B Peterson would say yes, but we would actually die. That our personal character, the ideas and values that we’ve come to depend on in our place in society, and the cultural and historical stories in which these are embedded are our safety in nature, our protection against death itself. Because to protect oneself against actual physical death one needs a functioning society and a high status within it. And then, the definition of truth comes into play. If these so-called illusions do actually keep us alive, it’s not obvious they’re “false.” It is not that illusion in itself is bad for us, it’s just that there are good illusions and bad illusions. Some are life-enhancing giving freedom, dignity, and hope, and others are suffocating and enslaving. Yes, a sense of immortality is significant, but survival is more immediate.
Becker criticizes psychology by saying that it’s incomplete in understanding human suffering, while it pretends to be so. The reason why neuroticism is such a widespread problem today is not because of sexually repressive societies, but because of the vanishing heroic cultural narratives to serve divinity, which lies on the feet at the collapse of the belief in religion. The problem with psychology is that it puts the responsibility entirely on the individual to solve their own childhood traumas and understand themselves in order to find happiness, and neglects that they are cut off from a divine mission of self-transcendence. For example, Pinel noted that the Salpietre mental hospital got cleared out at the time of the French Revolution. The neurotics found a self-transcending collective drama and a heroic identity within it, that one could easily see would solve their neurosis given this framework.
Historically, the modern man is an orphan of meaning, and the fantasies that give him meaning seem illusions because they are not shared. This is why, by the way, religious people are so keen on converting people into their belief, for the more people around him live and share this belief, the stronger their own belief will become, thus both stabilizing his psyche but also securing his status in society.
My biggest disagreement with the book is that I would change the emphasis of the existential issues to the universe itself, not merely death. It is the reality of life and death that’s truly the core of existential terror and awe. If we were to live on for infinity, if there would be no such thing as a day we die, we as human beings would still have the same issues. So if you would really want to get to the bottom of things, you’d write a book titled: “The Denial of Reality.”
But overall the book is brilliant, and it’s the best existential book I’ve read. It has plenty of psychological insights, some of which I said to myself: “wow.” And although I don’t agree with everything, it is now one of my favorite psychology books because of the interesting perspective. Becker’s work is a beautiful synthesis of great thinkers, (Mainly Freud, Rank, Kirkegård, Norman O Brown) putting them into something original of its own. My criticism would be to leave out the “Freud’s Denial of Death” chapter as an exhaustive investigation of Freud’s character isn’t very interesting to the layman. Even though I have an above-average interest in psychoanalysis and Freud, I found the chapter tedious compared to the others.