The DENIAL OF DEATH

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Summary: A great summary of psychology
Review: Reading this book I was floored time and time again at how accurately Becker describes the condition of the modern man.Chapter Eight alone is worth the price of the book.Becker pulls no punches in smashing the pretenses of our contemporary age;an age that has tried with disastrous results to replace the loss of religious faith with romantic love,limitless self-indulgence,utopian political ideology(Marxism,etc)and psychological self-awareness.Becker rightly concludes that it is no wonder why we see such widespread neuroticism in modern society.What is most refreshing about the book is Becker's intellectual honesty,something rare for academics.He makes it clear that there is no such thing as a life without fear or repression;that these things are constants and cannot be done without.How different is such a message than the reams of gobbedlygook and inane nonsense that usually emerges from self-help books and all manner of feel-good psychology.Especially worthwhile are the chapters on Kierkegaard and Otto Rank.Overall a great book.A must read.

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Summary: For Whom Doth That Bell Toll?
Review: Stanley Hauerwas, the famed professor of Christian Ethics at Duke Divinity School, once labelled modern medicine a "death deferral industry." In his Pulitzer Prize winning book The Denial of Death Becker contends that medicine is not alone. According to Becker's thesis in fact all human enterprises are derivative of the Promethean will to tame death and rob it of its sting.

The great protagonist of Becker's work is Soren Kierkegaard. Kierkegaard's "Knight of Faith" embodies for Becker all that both ancient religion and 20th century psychoanalysis set out to attain - total consciousness in the face of the collective human tragedy we call death. Denial is in this respect a call to faith - a call for humanity to admit the limits of its own creatureliness and drink its hemlock with Socratic courage.

The great irony of Denial is Becker's analysis of his psychological forebear Freud. Becker harnesses a great deal of the psychoanalytic tradition he inherited from Freud then uses it, in good old Oedipal fashion, to knock the father from the throne. According to Becker, Freud was himself an embodiment of the kind of death denial from which psychoanalysis should have freed him. Becker argues Freud's dogged commitment to his own theories about human sexuality is an embarrassing example of Freud's refusal to let go his aspirations for intellectual immortality. When confronted by contrary evidence or conclusions it was Freud's pattern to simply feint - an example, according to Becker, of Freud's escapist defense mechanics. Or, in Neil Young's own immortal words "it's better to burn out than just fade away."

If Becker's analysis of Freud is correct then we can see in ourselves some startling parallels. We cling to life through all kinds of ways and means until the end comes. And then we hope for a short, painless death. There is little talk of getting right with our maker. No one knows what it means to die well.

Given the fact that we live in an age of genetic manipulation, cryogenic freezing and extreme makeovers the myth of immortality must still be alive. When it is all said and done, however, most of us could care less about discovering why we want our spouse to get a new set of boobs. Freud's old answer - sex - seemed as good as any. But Becker's thesis does have immediate implications for us as we contemplate the virtues of peace, freedom, democracy and whatever else we might be willing to kill and die for. Are modern values nothing more than fetishized expressions of our desire to out ring the bell which doth toll for all? At the very least Becker's book gives us pause to consider the possibility that even our most altruistic actions might be driven by blind self-interest.

Becker seems to want to call the human species to a radical honesty about its place in the cosmos. It is uncertain, however, what coming to terms with the reality of death can alone do to mend the way we live our lives and die our deaths. What, apart from other virtues like courage, peacemaking, hope and love, do we have to gain from admitting that it is indeed from dust that we come and to dust we shall return. It is here that Becker's psychoanalysis seems to fall short. Liberating the unconsciousness is interesting, but not all that edifying - especially if, as Becker asserts, the will of the unconscious is altogether ineluctable anyway.

This is perhaps what made the apostle Paul candidly admit that if Christ were not raised from the dead then all his labors for the gospel were in vain (1 Cor. 15:13). For Paul the resurrection was the gospel and the only thing capable of rescuing us from death's long shadow.

All Becker's heroes, Kierkegaard, Luther, and in acknowledged ambivalence even Jung, point toward a resurrection. The Kierkegaardian Leap is always occasioned by the hope for a soft landing. It is a shame that Becker's life was so dramatically cut short. He may well have gone on to develop a theory of the resurrection. As it stands, however, Becker's thesis leaves us perhaps exactly where he had intended - naked before our God and finally conscious of our sin.

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Summary: Life Changing
Review: The book changed my life. Truly.

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Summary: Masterpiece of synthesis and insight
Review: There are some books that are brilliant because they delve deeply into one subject. There are other books that are brilliant because they synthesize a panorama of other great books. Finally, there are perhaps the rarest of works that in one book combine the insights of many other brilliant tomes and make the synthesis seem like one subject. "The Denial of Death" belongs to this rarest of books. The excellence of the insights on so many pages is breathtaking, and it's only fitting that Becker, certainly a great writer previously, made his last book, published shortly and ironically before his death, his best.

Becker states at the outset the problem in our day is not that there isn't enough knowledge, the problem is that there isn't enough integration of this knowledge into a kind of wisdom that would properly summarize the accumulated knowledge. At the outset he acknowledges the difficulty in claiming that there is one direct insight into what causes (almost) all of the neuroses of life, which is the inability of people to see and overcome what I feel is the ultimate paradox of life, that we live and die at the same time. Yet in one book Becker succeeds so well it is astounding!

To summarize a summarizing book is difficult indeed! Basically what Becker claims is that man has twin but conflicting ontological needs/motives - to individuate and yet at the same time to feel a part of something greater. Man is a paradox in many other ways. Unlike other animals inside he (I will omit she to keep it simple) is largely symbolic - in his mind he can imagine the farthest mysteries of the universe, he can philosophize about the deepest meanings of life and its purpose. Yet like other animals man is anal (discussed extensively!) and possesses a body that is only too mortal.

Countless times Becker makes the point that the way most people live with these paradoxes is a "lie in the face of reality." That is, starting from childhood most people use all kinds of repressions to pretend that they aren't going to die. Much of society is based on symbolic systems for people to feel heroic, because when we achieve heroism we feel that we have transcended our mortality. Much of this heroism is in fact false, even disempowering, because for example most pointedly with entertainers and athletes we often in fact project our need for heroism onto them. In psychology this is called transference, which manifests itself in group psychology and other ways that Becker thoroughly covers.

Modern man has lost its way because science has removed the need for God, something transcendent beyond the physical life. Transcending Freud, citing Otto Rank most by far, as well many other fine psychologists, and even including Kirkegaard who predated them, Becker claims that it has been "scientifically" proven that the only way for man to deal with his fate, to achieve his innate heroic need, is to give his life up to something greater than the physical, call it God or whatever you wish. Thus he merges psychology with religion, in my opinion, quite correctly.

In bare form these are some of the main themes of "The Denial of Death." The book is a must read if a person has the courage to tackle this most "urgent" issue. I don't think you'll find a better analysis than Becker's. It could dramatically change the way you look at the world and the people who live in it.

In the end I did feel that Becker got somewhat carried away with his insight that the denial of death is the key to understanding people's deepest neuroses - he took it to what I felt was the extreme that it is simply impossible to transcend the denial of death. People who have had near death experiences in many cases seem to have overcome the fear of death, people who have mastered Eastern disciplines like meditation have done the same, and finally self-actualized people who simply live knowing that they are souls having a physical experience can also overcome the angst of physical mortality.

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Summary: The ultimate lie
Review: There is a truly brilliant thesis in this Pulitzer Prize winning book, one that ties together the advancements in psychology and philosophy of some of the greatest minds ever, like Freud and Kierkegaard and Rank. Becker argues convincingly that the fear of death is the single greatest human motivator, and that everything we do, all of our paranoia and perversions, stem from this fear. In order to survive and function in this world, we are forced to deny the reality of our own mortality, a mortality that is obvious in everything around us, especially in our own flawed physical bodies.

From this premise, Becker moves on to many brilliant insights. His exploration of the earliest contradictions that infants face, trying to reconcile their feelings of omnipotence with the obvious flaws of their anatomy, is absolutely fascinating. Also fascinating is his treatment of how humans approach sexuality, a topic many would consider to be life-affirming but which in reality is one of the strongest indicators of the fragile and ephemeral nature of our existence.

As with most works of non-fiction thirty years after their publication, this one is not perfect. Even a reader with no experience in psychology or philosophy will find an obvious flaw here and there. And the book is dense enough that it can be a frustrating read - indeed, some passages get so chewy that you might feel like skimming them. But it still remains a landmark work in its field, and one that has given me new insight into my own ideas about life and death.


Rating:
Summary: As Good As It Gets
Review: There's not a time when I read one of Becker's books--or even quotations which I've excerpted from them--without feeling a sense of loss. If only he had lived longer! He died at the peak of his powers, in 1974. His superb book, Escape from Evil, was published posthumously in 1975. We can only guess what other works he might have tackled had he lived another 20-30 years!

There's not a philosopher or psychologist in our time who could synthesize the disciplines that Becker seemed capable of doing with such ease. He was trained as a cultural anthropologist but was truly a master of the humanities, having a good footing in all the major fields and the ability to weave them together to create fresh insights.

The Denial of Death is surely his masterpiece; in it he convincingly portrays mankind's challenging relationship with mortality--and the fruits of this confrontation. Following up this book with Escape from Evil is a powerful way to understand 'why people do what they do,' the simple question that drove so much of Becker's analysis.

Because he was able to write so well--and with such poignancy--virtually anyone with a high school education can appreciate these 'ultimate' thoughts. Further, even the most refined will encounter a new take on things to drive their curiosity.

Rating:
Summary: Depends what you're looking for
Review: This book explains much of human behaviour and thought by the interesting theory that we try and deny our mortality by making ourselves heroes in some way.

My problem is just that Becker also thought he had solutions to this behaviour, in the form of some sort of surrender to God, which he seems to admit is a pragmatic solution, not neccesarily based on truth. I think it is unfair to mix up scientific research with moralising, and the two should be divided more clearly.

There are many interesting parts though. I especially enjoyed his interpretation of Freud's feinting episodes. As other reviewers mentioned, he has a great ability to write and it is difficult to put down.

Overall, this is the usual not entirely factual self-help book, and for this it would get at least 4 stars. But if advertised as an objective, researched insight into the psyche, it doesn't live up.

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Summary: The appetizer is quite the pleaser. (Worm Food)
Review: This book was highley recommended by a professor of mine and I first read it a good eight years ago, only to pick it up again recently. After graduating college and being stuck with a few existential dilemas, this book at least adds to them once again. I picked it up again for nice airplane reading, being this activity acurately reflects utterly you situation during air travel as well any other time in life- death is everpresent and immenint. Your only rubber crutch is faith. Faith that I do not have and perhaps Becker did not have as well. He was terminally ill with cancer during its writing. (Whether he was aware of this or not we will never know; Perhaps it was unconcsious.) I think this is the whole point of the book. Scientifically one will never know before it is too late. However, modern physics parallels the existential dilemma very well. Even if energy is neither created nor destroyed and is changed, the change in our bioelectrical energy upon death may not embody what we consciously perceive as our ego identity. So in effect, our identity may still be lost at death. What we consider ourselves to be will be no more. Here lies the heart of the book. Psychologically, we must experience this phenomena during life if we are to gain pure freedom, and live our lives on our own individual terms-not society's, not culture's, not even our biological oragnism's, even though this is inescapable. Paradoxes abound in this book, which may not be a bad thing. Paradox may be the only truly liberating thing in existence. And this just might be Creative design. Bon appetite.

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Summary: Magnificent book for the Human Animal.Pulitzer Prize Winner
Review: This book will change your life! What Ernest Becker has accomplished is a synthesis of the kernels of truth that lie in all psychological theories. He speaks to the reader and demonstrates, that the single overwhelming motivator of the human being is his fear of death and his subsequent denialof his impending morality. Deny your mortality, but buy this book!

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Summary: Life-Changing
Review: This is one of the most important books I've ever read.

My father was dying. I nearly had a breakdown. I found this book and began to confront, for the first time in my life, my profound fear of death, my pathological inability to accept that it happens.

I got involved in destructive relationships, I smoked two packs a day, I drank till 4 in the morning with "friends".... two years later, I have grieved and confronted my father's death, given up smoking, stopped drinking, and began making smarter sexual choices.

Is it all because of this book? No. But Becker began me on a road confronting my mortality -- what he would call my creatureliness. This led to further reading in this area and a radical change in my perspective on my own body.

Confronting death makes one grow up -- and it also gives one a real genuine chance at authentic loving. Investigating Freud, Otto Rank, Fromm, Norman O. Brown, and Kierkegaard (among others) Becker shows himself to be lively, friendly, realistic, severe, grandiose, and humble, all at once. His genial prose is a delight to read. Even when he is illuminating the darkest, most frightening areas of human experience, he is rigorous and hopeful and, frankly, utterly bewitching.

Most of the book remains relevant on personal and political grounds. Only his more fanciful theories of mental illness strike me as irrelevant today, though there is a poetry in them that neurotics (not psychotics) may very well find illuminating.

Let's bring Becker back. It's a delight to see him referenced in Peter Shabad's new psychoanalytic book. I hope this is a harbinger in a resurgence of Beckerian thought!