The Denial of Death

If only I could take back the time I spent reading this masturbatory psychobabble and instead used it to re-watch Rick And Morty, I would've learnt a whole lot more than what I got out from reading this pseudo-science.

I first learnt about The Denial of Death when I was watching my first film from Woody Allen - Annie Hall. The witty, self-deprecating humor with subtle hints about problems of humanity was right up my alley, and so naturally the book referenced also caught my attention. The Pulitzer prize was a cherry on top. Recently, it also got heavily referenced in one of videos of the film analysis channel - Like Stories of Old.

And so my curiosity peaked and with a great enthusiasm, I picked up this book.

The central theme of Death and how we shape our lives around it was an intriguing theme and our need for hero-worship was a very interesting idea. However things started to go downhill the moment Freud came into picture. Even though Ernest Becker repeatedly mentioned how Freud got a lot of the things wrong and tried to bring out later thinkers' nuanced theories, it was clear that he worshipped Freud. How else can you explain a whole chapter on root-causing the times when “The Great Freud” fainted and trying to analyze the possible reasons! And then there's one chapter called “Perversions” where he declares homosexuality a “problem” to be solved and analyzes it to say that people engage in this act because they are trying to rebel against carnal reality of their existence being for the sole purpose of procreation. What bullshit!

Maybe this book deserves a place in history as a testament to our mistakes and how we used to treat genuine illnesses not through science but by psychobabble.