The Denial of Death 1st Edition by Ernest Becker (PDF)

Description

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 the nature of humanity and issues a call to life and its living that still resonates more than twenty years after its writing.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐The following sums up the central theme of this Pulitzer Prize-winner:”For now, it is enough to invoke Marcia Lee Anderson’s complete scientific formula: `Stripped of subtle complications [i.e., of all the character defenses – repression, denial, misconceptions of reality], who could regard the sun except with fear?'”(p.66)Hereafter I’ll quote extensively, as opposed to paraphrasing, in order to make it as beneficial for the interested individual as I can.Ernest chose a title that he knew would resonate with the public: The Denial of Death. But the book should have been called `The Denial of Life’, because people not only repress their inevitable demise, but even more so their lives. The book is centered on the philosophy that every person starting in childhood creates an imaginary world where, to put it simply, everything is better and the people are nicer, so not to perceive the intricately problematic reality. Ernest aptly summarized prominent thinkers and students of human nature of the past 150 years, including Soren Kierkegaard, Otto Rank, Norman Brown, and Sigmund Freud. One might rightfully say that some of the latter men’s conclusions were repudiated by modern thought. However, their fundamental findings – such as Freud’s narcissist, Kierkegaard’s `introvert’, or Rank’s artist – on characters of man are timeless. Details, tactics, and strategies of how to approach the very complex study of human nature change, but the nature itself doesn’t. As much as I wish to discuss this book at length, I won’t do it for lack of space. I’ll succinctly outline the work of one philosopher, who is one of the most astute men in history, and briefly summarize two others, Sigmund Freud and Otto Rank.The 19th-century Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard analyzed man’s inner characters. Even though more than 150 years have elapsed, his ingenuous analysis can readily be applied to our modern society.The immediate man – the modern inauthentic or insincere man – is someone who blindly follows the trends of society to the dot. Someone who unthinkingly implements what society says is “right.” “He recognizes himself only by his dress,…he recognizes that he has a self only by externals.” (p.74) He converts frivolous patterns to make them his identity. He often distorts his own personality in order to “fit into the group”. His opinion means nothing even to himself, hence he imitates others to superficially look “normal.”The introvert, the one “who tries to cultivate his interiority…he is a little more concerned with what it means to be a person”, he who “enjoys solitude and withdraws periodically to reflect.” (p.82) He enjoys reading and thinking about the deepness of life, human relations, and the universe in general. But Ernest wrote that introvert “is not an immediate man, but not a real man either, even though he gives the appearance of it.” (p.83)And finally “the one who asserts himself out of defiance of his own weakness, who tries to be a god unto himself, the master of his fate, a self-created man.” (p. 84) But “the ugly side of this Promethianism is that it, too, is thoughtless, and empty-headed immersion in the delight of technics with no thought to goals or meaning.” (p.85)The aforementioned personalities are not what Ernest considered “real” men. Ernest, by interpreting Kierkegaard, regarded “the true individual, the self-realized soul, the ‘real man,’ is the one who has transcended himself.” (p.86) (When he talks about self-transcendence throughout the book the text understandably becomes abstract.) He is the one who has admitted that his essential character has been a big lie, created to protect the self from the difficult reality of life. In order to psychologically survive such a realization one has to surrender oneself to the Ultimate Power of Creation, or so Ernest recommends.The book also talks at length about Freud, “perhaps the greatest psychologist who ever lived.” (p.256), the man who was “like a Biblical prophet, who spoke a truth that no one wants to hear…whose pessimism [was] grounded in reality, in scientific truth.” (p.94) He was a cynic who did not deceive himself about the man’s “basic creatureliness,” his inner animal. He was hated by many for unveiling that the fundamental nature of every man is weak and self-deceptive. He was the mentor of Otto Rank, who was a brilliant psychoanalyst. Eventually Freud severed his relationship with Rank due to irreconcilable disagreements.It seems that Becker worshipped Rank religiously. When Rank was 21, he impressed Freud so much with his intellect and insight that Freud made him a part of his inner-circle of confidants. Rank’s most monumental work was his `Art and Artist’. In it Rank contemplated the creative type of man, who is the one whose “experience makes him take in the world as a problem…but when you no longer accept the collective solution to the problem of existence, then you must fashion your own…The work of art is…the ideal answer…”And now I’ll briefly express my disagreement with Becker’s ultimate cure for man’s despondent predicament of “real” life. I certainly am not as knowledgeable as Becker and my opinion towards life will definitely change during the years, but now let’s not be “the modern mechanical men in Russia, the near-billion sheeplike followers in China, and the brutalized and ignorant populations of almost every continent.” (p.281) Even though Becker didn’t advocate any particular religion, “finding god” unavoidably decays one’s mind and leads him to Christianity, Islam, etc. The fact that can’t be refuted is that religion in general, Christianity in particular, has been the most efficient and cruel oppressor of intellect for millennia. And, because it has also been the most potent restraint upon progress, one would only shrink and limit his horizons by adhering to it. And what I deem especially interesting about Ernest’s prescription for a god is that it was a way to battle one’s fear and dejection. Fear, that indelible and prevalent emotion of men in any culture was relied on by religion to compel men to follow man-made Biblical laws. I’m not an advocate of atheism. But I’m a proponent of full and interesting life, something that religion takes away by promising to arrange an eternal afterlife.Notwithstanding some of the Becker’s conclusions that I don’t agree with, this book is the best work on human nature that I know of; somewhat superior to `On Human Nature’ by Edward Wilson. I must warn though that having read it thoroughly will not only alter your outlook on life and your relationships with your peers, but it will also make you sadder…but wiser.

⭐The book came exactly as described and in a timely fashion!

⭐The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker is a fascinating work that seeks to rehabilitate Freud and ground psychoanalysis in the human condition — notably our knowledge of our mortality and the strategies we use to construct denial mechanisms, or immortality projects, as he calls them, to function in the world as if we won’t die.Becker, who ironically died shortly after it was published received a posthumous Pulitzer for the book. It sets out to acknowledge the incredible, though somewhat misguided, effort of Freud to create a system of psychiatric enquiry from thin air. His major critique of Freud is twofold: that he stopped too soon (or, rather, didn’t go deep enough) and that psychoanalysis must become, in essence, another form of mortality-denying religion (not necessarily a criticism).Freud stopped to soon because, in Becker’s mind, all the mother-hating and inappropriate sexualizing loving and fear of castration and anal concerns and weird sexual stuff is really just a patina over the ACTUAL problem: fear of death and the fact that, to be successful, we must pretend to overcome — or fool ourselves into ignoring — that fear.The religion part is related to the balm religious frameworks provide in giving us an immortality project and sense of comfort in the world. Psychoanalysis, and specifically the accidental worship of the analyst — transference — is in essence, a surrogate religion. Again, he’s not saying that’s a bad thing — religion, in his opinion (and he uses Kierkegaard as the channel of thought here) can help us effectively compartmentalize our fear of death and the potential paralysis and damage that comes with it. However, worshiping your therapist can be detrimental to progress.But, oddly, progress itself can be detrimental to progress.If, as Becker believes, neuroses actually are challenges to our necessary immortality projects — the lies we tell ourselves to act as if we are immortal when, in fact, we know we’re not and are greatly affected by that subsumed knowledge — “curing” a condition requires helping people lie more effectively to themselves. Depression, fetishes, schizophrenia, etc., it seems, are all perfectly “rational” responses to the existential angst that defines human existence. Psychoanalysts, he argues, should help people repair damages to the their self-constructed shields and not strip away the defenses we need to function.It’s fascinating stuff, but now 40 years later, it’s hard to reconcile some of the core concepts in this book with the latest in cognitive research — using tools that were simply unimaginable at the time. While current thought still points to the denial of death (or, perhaps, to an affirmation of successful reproductive strategies) as a motivating factor in the concept of self, it’s grounded in much harder science — neurochemical imbalances, heuristic systems, developmental origins of health and disease, brain imagining, structural abnormalities, genetics and so forth.I’m an unabashed materialist — I believe the answers, and sources of problems, can be found in our biology and the systems we use to move through the world ¬— but this reductionism in no way degrades my sense of wonder: these biologic systems, these bodies, the disembodied forces shared between humans (though still generated by biology), are truly amazing and sources of wonder and awe.Becker stands on the shoulders of Freud and Kierkegaard, Carl Jung and Otto Rank, people who excavated the ethereal world of the human condition using only their own intellect and powers of observation. They helped create the science of psychology and continue to shape the thinking around it today, even as that science has moved ahead by light years.Here are a few of my favorite lines:“… ‘civilized’ society is a hopeful belief and protest that science, money and goods make man count for more than any other animal.”“ … the emergence of man as we know him: a hyperanxious animal who constantly invents reasons for anxiety even where there are none.”“Sex is an inevitable confusion over the meaning of his life, a meaning split hopelessly into two realms—symbols (freedom) and body (fate).“We don’t want to admit that we are fundamentally dishonest about reality, that we do no really control our own lives. We don’t want to admit that we do not stand alone, that we always rely on something that transcends us, some system of ideas and powers in which we are embedded and which support us.”This is a satisfying foundational book that, even though it seems to have weathered a bit in the passage of time, is well-worth the read.

⭐This is probably the best non-fiction book I have ever read. Humbly, Becker crosses the fields of psychology, anthropology, and literature to pose the existential questions few of us humans are brave enough to ask. He exposes the “worm at the core” – the terrors of the human dilemma.

⭐Like most of the books that have made my ever expanding reading list. This was at times a joy to read and others something I would have liked to set fire to. It undoes some fundamental ideas of how we are in the world, and surprisingly gives cause to laugh at some of them too.I would recommend for anyone wanting to read this, when finished. Engage in at least 30 mins of meditation, or something of similar ilk that suites your way, or cultural way of being, you might need the space to breathe afterwards.Can’t complain about shipping, service etc, all went swimmingly well

⭐I think Becker is more along the line of reality than Freud. It is my belief – take that with a grain of salt – that it is the refusal and running from the looming doom of death that is our prime mover is many things, not the libido.This book hit hard in a lot of places, and is a great insight into things of the mind including why dictators come to power, or why wish to become or admire the ‘hero’, in a classical sense.Beware, the page count is not the amount of time this book will take you. I found myself, like with many books of its like, setting it down after various passages to just ruminate on what I have read. A fantastic book for discussion, too.

⭐The above was a note I wrote to myself at one point while reading this book. That this work won’t the Pulitzer Prize and has been so impactful on so many people is of no surprise to me. I read this after having already read “The Worm at the Core” by Solomon et al and would recommend the same to anyone else looking to venture into Becker. Solomon and co. provided a wonderful intro to Becker’s work as well as the field of research psychology they created to investigate his work: Terror Management Theory.Both “The Worm at the Core” and “The Denial of Death” are books I would recommend to anyone who was willing to grapple with the deepest question that faces an individual human: how to live in the face of death.

⭐This may or may not be brilliant and insightful but I may never know because it is unreadable in paperback and would probably be hard going even on the Kindle with a larger font.As you can see from the attached photograph, the font is tiny and consists almost entirely of long, fully justified paragraphs (It’s actually worse than it looks because the photo is very well lit).Maybe I could have managed when I was younger and my eyesight was better but this looks like it was created by somebody who hates reading :-(Recently tried again in good lighting – Still unreadable because it is a bunch of pretensious, unsubstantiated assertions.Avoid.

⭐Just finished it and I’m left feeling disturbed. This is a good thing as some very deep questions have been answered and asked.Absolutely brilliant book. Very heavy going and may require some knowledge of psychology to get it.It gets right to the core of what it means to be human, how we ignore really and what we can do about it.

Keywords

Free Download The Denial of Death 1st Edition in PDF format
The Denial of Death 1st Edition PDF Free Download
Download The Denial of Death 1st Edition 2007 PDF Free
The Denial of Death 1st Edition 2007 PDF Free Download
Download The Denial of Death 1st Edition PDF
Free Download Ebook The Denial of Death 1st Edition