The Denial of Death

Although Ernest Becker’s academic background was in cultural anthropology, The Denial of Death is in many ways a response to the psychological works of the pioneering Austrian psychologists Sigmund Freud and Otto Rank, as well as the philosophy of the 19th-century Danish philosopher and theologian Søren Kierkegaard. In particular, Becker taps heavily into Freudian psychoanalysis.

According to Freud’s theories, the decisive experience in every child’s life is when they notice a difference between their own genitals and those of the opposite-sex parent. For girls, they experience “penis envy,” an anxiety they feel when they realize that their bodies are very different from their father’s. On the other hand, boys undergo the “Oedipus complex.” Desiring their mothers, boys begin to resent their fathers and fear that their fathers will castrate them, making their bodies appear like those of women. Although much of Freud’s theory has been challenged and rejected in the decades since, one important and influential conclusion emerging out of Freud’s theory is that neuroses are universal. In other words, psychologically speaking, there is no such thing as completely “normal.”

Becker draws just as heavily from the work of Freud’s one-time disciple, Otto Rank. More so than Freud, Rank emphasized the importance of myth and story in understanding the human psyche. For Rank, symbols from art, literature, and myth are metaphors for psychological experiences common to all people. In particular, Rank argues that myths and literature reflect our feeling of being abandoned by our parents in early childhood and the resentment children harbor toward them. This is what Becker means when he refers to the “symbolic life” of individuals. Rank also argued that the artist uses the culture they were born into in order to try to bridge the gap between the physical and the spiritual. In addition, the artist both tries to express themselves as an individual and to embody their own time and culture. This is another view that Becker draws upon as part of The Denial of Death.

Even though Kierkegaard lived before psychology really existed as a medical discipline, Becker also heavily uses Kierkegaard’s work. Kierkegaard wrote extensively about the complexity of people’s inner lives and the fact that, externally, many people simply try to fit in with their societies. Kierkegaard described the Christian experience as a personal leap of faith that makes an individual one with the love of God. However, faith and achieving transcendence is an extremely individual and lifelong process. Further, it requires coming to terms with both one’s inner self and with the culture and society around that individual. Like Becker, Kierkegaard viewed the human condition as one shaped by interior struggles, as well as the tension between being an individual and following one’s culture while obeying social norms.