Only reflective of psychology as it existed in 1973
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At the risk of being labeled "unhelpful" by the readers of Amazon's book evaluations, I feel I must offer a less naive and more experienced review of "The Denial of Death" than previous evaluators. Before you check the box marked 'unhelpful', let me tell you who I am. I obtained a professional degree in Psychology about the same time that this book was published and since then have spent my career working in the field of Mental Health. I have been a psychotherapist for nearly thirty years and operated counseling and rehabilitation programs for the past twenty five.
Just as one cannot state that the 1958 Edsel was the pinnacle of the auto industry, one cannot state that the psychological theories of the early to mid 1900s is the endpoint of understanding the dynamics of human personalities. If one is to solely read this book, as one would read an encyclopedia or any other authoritarian publication, one would come to that false conclusion. Some of the materials in this book, in spite of the fact that the theories behind them are nearly forty years old, have withstood the test of time and are as relevant today as they were in 1973. Maslow's self-actualization process and theory remains to be the most recognizable source for individual growth theory. The author's perception that man's universal reaction to his 'fear of life' is repression has proven itself to be true even more so now that our society has become more complex. Although the term was dropped from APA jargon decades ago, 'neurosis' does partially come from the fact that a person's defense mechanisms have failed to keep his psyche secure and must be reworked in a therapeutic setting. And, most importantly, the blurring of the lines between psychology and spirituality has increased over the past decade and a half.
In spite of the fact that the fiscal cutbacks in the area of mental health services has been severely levied over the past decades, strong advancements have been made in spite of this hindrance. While there have been more recent theorizations such as Rational Emotive Therapy, the Behavioral Model and Reality Therapy, the main driving agents to this improvement have been in the areas of ancestoral genetics, psychopharmacology and the melding of the spirit and the psyche. And while the theories of Adler, Fromm, Rank and even Kierkegaard stirred a high level of excitement prior to their release and were given serious consideration, the field has moved on rapidly since that point. The issue of Freud's credibility was settled decades ago; he correctly identified the existence of a subconscious but failed miserably in proposing that it was soley driven by sexual 'instincts'. This text makes it appear as if the constroversy is still raging on. The diagnosis manual for mental health (DSM IV) dropped their misnomer of homosexuality as being a mental illness in the early 1980s and I find it most disturbing that Becker refers to it as being an 'illness and a fettish' in this outdated book. His chapter entitled "A General View of Mental Illness", while citing himself as not being an expert on its contents, reads like something out of the psychological stone ages! Psychosis is not simply and solely caused by a person unsuccessfully experiencing the totality of the world as the text suggests. OCD and what the author calls 'other fettishes' are not solely caused by a person's vain attempt to run away from and/or repress the world around himself. A person's state of emotional health is not solely caused by his/her view of how much 'courage' one shows in his/her environment. Depression is not the direct result of a person's voluntary retreat from the confusion of the world environment. And, last but certainly not least, there are far greater and numerous causes to emotional instability other than one's fear of death and one's fear of life. While all the premises that the author states as being primary do remain as factors in the overall mental health of an individual, they do fit into the overall picture of a person's psyche but do so in a MINOR role at best. They are only one piece in a very complex puzzle. They are not the solution to the puzzle itself. A person's emotional stability in society is based on numerous factors besides these; ancestoral genetics, the biochical physical makeup of the person, psychosocial factors of various developmental stages, income levels throughout life, intelligence quotients, other significant disabilities, etc... Man has a history of seeking easy answers to very complex questions. This author is no exception. The sad part is that while making a few points that have stood up well to the test of time, he makes numerous others that have been reduced to mere footnotes in current textbooks.
If any reader takes these 1973 writings and view them as being anything but one of the many steps that has been taken in the past to the ongoing path of understanding human dynamics, you are not only mistaken but are doing yourself a serious injustice. Just like the auto makers, we have moved on from the Edsel and are looking forward to what the future of psychological research can provide for us in the future.
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One of the best books I have ever read
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As a psychologist, I believe this book should be essential reading for my profession. Unfortunately, existential and psychodynamic ideas continue to remain unpopular within the field of clinical psychology. I believe I have become a more rounded clinician as a result of being exposed to this piece of work and I would recommend it to anyone in the helping profession and anyone wanting to learn more about what makes us human and about becoming more aware of our existential realities and learning to live a more open life. Unlike many academic works that I have read, Becker's synthesis and style of writing is engaging and soaked with meaning. Every word serves puropose and some sentences, paragraphs, and ideas will leave one's spine tingling.
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The appetizer is quite the pleaser. (Worm Food)
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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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HONESTY: a terrifying black well, even for Becker.
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In Becker's The Denial Of Death, death, as it turns out in the book, equals ultimate helplessness , that is to say, man is a creature who lives in fantasizing denial of the fact that he is incapable of freeing himself from the cage of his mortality which is not only physical, but ontological, without a transcendent escape-hatch.
Throughout the book Becker skillfully and powerfully accumulates empirical and logical evidence, including a very strong analysis of infant and child psychology as well as one of adult society, to support his premise. As one approaches the end of the book the effect of all this is quite powerful and I enjoyed it immensely, but the conclusion of the book was for me rather anti-climactic and somewhat annoying and I will give the precise reason for why I feel this way. I would ask any reader who admires and takes Becker's book seriously, to please consider my viewpoint and understand that I too take very seriously what Becker struggled with in this book which, in spite of my qualification, I highly recommend.
First of all, my problem is not that Becker did not supply an 'answer' for all the dark difficulties he heaped up in front of us throughout the book. If he had attempted such an answer, I don't know how it could have looked anything but ludicrous. The word ludicrous comes from the Latin, ludus (game) and implies that one is playing a game. Becker carefully avoids the game of facile answers and prides himself on this. In fact, I think he prides himself a little too much and this pride hides what is a deeper game.
Please note how frequently Becker speaks favorably, positively and admiringly of the 'fall from grace' metaphysics of Augustine and Kierkegaard as representatives of a certain strain of Christian belief. This metaphysical position holds that man is incapable of essentially altering his condition for the good and is absolutely dependent in his fallen state on the grace and mercy of God. Becker has only scorn for any metaphysical position that allows for human consciousness having any access to anything transcendent, such as is found in the later works of Brown, Fromm, Jung and even Tillich, among others. He continually praises the insight shown by Augustine and especially Kierkegaard into human psychology, particularly the human tendency toward fantasizing false realities into existence. And even at the end of the book he praises the "beauty" of this religion. Now, the very serious problem with this is that there is no indication that Becker has the slightest belief in the reality of this religious metaphysics which he strangely uses to defend his own view of reality. And his own view seems to be, in part, that man is incapable of even formulating a valid metaphysics precisely because he has no transcendent capacity, he is helplessly mortal and that is exactly what he is in denial of. Something is clearly amiss here. Is Becker saying that Augustine and Kierkegaard had remarkable insights into human psychology but were both typical human fantasizing failures in regards to their religious belief? Or does Becker believe that maybe these men really did receive the grace of transcendent revelations from a transcendent deity? Becker is absolutely silent on these questions. What is so important about this is that after Becker does such an admirable job of laying out the human problem of the 'denial of death', he then implies that we must take this seriously and address it. But address it with what? Borrowed metaphysics? Well, presumably not. We suppose his answer would be to address it with honesty. Well, I would like an honest answer to the question of why Becker uses religious beliefs that he does not even hold to reveal and support the truth of his own viewpoint? There is something not quite forthright about this and it belies his criticism at the end of the book of what he considers Norman O. Brown's lapse into facile mysticism. And what exactly is Becker's viewpoint? That humans are generally terrified into denial and fantasy by the reality of guilt and death? That is a profound fact, but in the end I don't really need Becker to know that and it tells me nothing about how Becker himself approached his guilt and death. I am not asking Becker to tell us something that he does not know, but precisely rather to attempt to describe what he does not know instead of covering it up with the grandiose religious fantasies of Augustine. I simply wish that at the conclusion of his book he would have given a more personal vision of what he believed he was "offering... to the life force."
I recommend the book strongly, but give it only four stars because of its conclusion.
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most important book i've ever read
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I think all the reviews say this but I will reiterate it again: this book changed my life. It forced to ponder every important question in life, for me and for all of mankind, in new, difficult yet enlightening ways. I think it's completely undervalued and underrated by academia (at least at the school I teach at) not only as psychological text, but as a philosophical and spiritual text as well. It's writing is both honest and impassioned, written with the ardous care of a man who has forced himself to face life and death in a magnanimous and sober way. This is easily my favorite book.
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