Ernest Becker's Denial of Death explicates the human propensityto create illusions which obfuscate consciousness of the immanence ofdeath and meaninglesnness. Drawing on cultural anthropology, social psychology, and psychoanalysis, Becker explores the human need to ornament reality with illusions and palliative fantasies which protect consciousness from our mortal fear and dread. Becker proposes that death is the "worm at the core" of human self-awareness, and we suffer intense fear and despair at the prospect of our own finitude, mortal decay, and meaninglesness. We therefore resort to character defenses and illusions to blot out our meaninglessness, helplessness, and creatureliness from consciousness.
Becker claims that we could not survive without such illusions, and that we create religion, myth, and ideology to establish a meaningful and dependable universe. Such fictions also provide a fantasy in which we can establish a personal sense of importance and esteem, a feeling of cosmic heroism in an otherwise terrifying universe.
However, whereas human beings functioned historically through the operation of these religious fantasies to evade death and meaninglessness, religion no longer provides a coherent meaning system for many people. Hence, we now create our own fantasies of "the dramatic apotheosis of man." We are now forced to invent our own personal illusions. In other words, where the social fantasy no longer holds, we become neurotics divorced from community and reality. According to Becker, the human animal is the sick animal. Normalcy is neurosis, since we cannot endure reality without anodynous illusions.
In addition, we engage in violent struggle against others to conquer death and weakness. Becker uses the word "sadism" to describe the means we employ to arouse euphoric power over the body and demonstrate control over life itself. By trampling in the guts of others, we achieve a sense of control and mastery which is otherwise absent in an existence where our bodies decay and putrefy, in a universe which can destroy us at any time. Hence sadism can become addictive, and the most vicious atrocities may be committed to attain that euphoric transcendence over death.
Thus Becker concludes that we must make the Kierkegaardian leap to faith if we have any hopes of overcoming our own brutality. Only by opening ourselves up to the very grounds of creation and renouncing our defensive egotism will we be able to shed our character armor and cease destroying each other in the maniacal attempt to overcome death.
Becker's analysis of the psychodynamics motivating illusion is penetrating and imaginative. Through his incorporation of anthropological and psychological theory, Becker provides a vision of broad scope and depth which avoids hasty generalization and the problem of enumerative inductivism. Becker also synthesizes his perspective from ostensibly antithetical sources within psychology. Becker's amalgamation of Freud and Rank is imaginative and of deep importance since both thinkers bequeated brilliant insights. However, such a synthesis has rarely occurred because Freud and Rank have been considered oppositional thinkers, and communications between their respective schools has been understandably infrequent. Through Becker's synthesis, we now have a dynamic understanding of unconscious motivation amalgamated with a more existential perspective that delves into the nature of human meaning.
Perhaps the most crucial problem in Becker's text is his Kierkegaardian solution to the problem of illusion formation. While advocating faith might alleviate a certain amount of human misery, it is questionable whether adherence to another system of meanings equally unamenable to reason or criticism is a sensible solution to a very serious psychological problem. We may be resigned to a certain amount of misery, and throwing ourselves headlong into faith might be an escape of the self, not a genuine solution. Nevertheless, this does not invalidate Becker's central arguments. After reading this book carefully, one must admit that Becker's insights and perspicacity are a tremendous contribution to our self understanding.
