Another candidate for U. Chicago: Ernst Becker

Becker did not live to get an appointment at U. Of Chicago - but he had his sights set judging from his 1974 Pulitzer (General Nonfiction) prize-winner, "The Denial of Death".

I happened to find an article in the German wikipedia that seemed so incomplete that I looked to the English wikipedia and found a piece in praise of Becker.  Oh vey.

I have posted a note to the discussion at that page and linked the page to the Norman O. Brown page and vice-versa.

If you have met someone enlightened by reading Becker and you have ever met someone enlightened by reading Ayn Rand then you will know what I mean: for one, the death anxiety and the hero-denied; for the other, selfishness denied and again, the hero-denied.  Set aside history, science, philosophy, economics cuz we have hit Insight.

What follows is an edit to my post at the site for Paul Chen's film on the "great man" and the "great book":


I think that most people praising this film may not have read the book with as much care as they might - especially what he in fact says in the lengthy treatment of fetish.

Few viewers will then take the time to visit a university library and then read the referenced articles of Phyllis Greenacre.

Even fewer will then investigate the science, first, as cultural anthropology and its lack of actual field work, its inaccurate demographics let alone the problems with this "just so"  story from an evolutionary standpoint.

The index to The Denial Of Death as originally published was hopelessly inaccurate.  The "facts" presented about various aspects of normal and abnormal child development were wholly anecdotal.

For all the books reliance on Tillich, the book had not so much as a footnote on Jaspers.  For all the references to Medard Boss, not a single reference to Ludwig Binswanger.

More references to Rousseau than to Sartre.

The chapter on Kierkegaard is perhaps the weakest in the book (Dostoievsky is notable for his absence.)

Not a single dissenting view on female psychology (1973 ! ) was presented - not even in his account of sexual frigidity.  Not de Beauvoir.  Not even Betty Friedan.

What is a science documentary when the science is human science?  What could this book mean with nothing from Max Weber (good friend to Jaspers - they all knew Tillich.)

Unlike most Viennese gents of Freud's day, one suspects that Becker was never in a brothel and did no field work with homosexuals and certainly none with lesbians, transexuals or bisexuals.  His account of depression ( 1973 ) is appalling.  While he mentions Searles, his account of schizophrenia is completely sophomoric - devoid of any reference to ongoing work in VA hospitals across the US - pitiful.

His bold claim to offer a general theory of mental illness, today, in light of current knowledge of genetics and brain imaging and realization of the total inadequacy of the existing diagnostic nomenclature - well it is a sad anti-science joke reminiscent of Tom Szasz.

Had Becker done any field work with those with a known short life expectancy - and done it cross-culturally - he might have been able to make a small contribution  to human science.

But Becker felt that science had become overwhelming - in his own words - "clinical closure" was now possible.  Wrong.

His own heroic gesture was a refusal to recognize his own limits as a social scientist.  He had to proclaim what  we are - what we essentially are.

Oddity: I recall no reference to Hans Jonas, who had recently delivered the Arendt eulogy, if memory serves.

Back to this blog: what is so surprising is that the internet has no sign of what Becker actually wrote in "The Denial of Death" - it is as if most readers skipped page after page on homosexuality, fetish, the relation of religion to psychiatry.  What I suspect is that this book is still on the reading lists at liberal colleges (it could be used in Iran or Saudi Arabia, no problem.)

Oh, yes - I must be in denial. Not.