The Denial of Death
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The Denial of Death (ISBN 0-684-83240-2) is a psychology/philosophy work written by Ernest Becker and published in 1973. It was awarded the Pulitzer prize for general non-fiction in 1974, two months after the author's death. The book builds largely on the works of Søren Kierkegaard, Sigmund Freud, and one of Freud's colleagues, Otto Rank.
The main theme of The Denial of Death is that most human activity ultimately concerns the denial of one's mortality. The full realization of one's own mortality is mostly unbearable, absolutely terrifying and horrific. Man transcends this problem in the concept of heroism. By being heroic, man feels he has meaning, a purpose, something that will never die. One can be a hero to the eye of God, to the State, to the eyes of his peers, to his family, etc. Mental illness is thus most insightfully interpreted as a bogging down in one's hero system(s).
Another theme running throughout the book is that humanity's traditional "hero-systems" i.e. religion, are no longer convincing in the age of reason; science is attempting to solve the problem of man, something that it can never do. The book states that we need new convincing "illusions" that enable us to feel heroic in the grand scheme of things, i.e. immortal.
[edit] Trivia
- In Woody Allen's film Annie Hall, death-obsessed Alvy Singer buys the book for his girlfriend, Annie Hall.
[edit] References
- Pulitzer Prizes website
- Becker, Ernest (1973) The Denial of Death, Simon & Schuster.
