If you thought the book on "Bullsh*t" was unnecessary, I suggest "Terror Management Theory" as an eye-opener. It is in sciam on Mind and it has a related documentary film tied to a "foundation".
Three guys who think an author might have been onto something, might have seen society and personality for what they are - essentially are, reduced to the core, the nub. A bit scarey - (Irus Murdoch has suggested that you can scare yourself just by vividly imaging that your chair is mostly empty space and atoms - and that the atoms are mostly empty space [try not to think of fields and probability waves, just little dots] - but do not try this if you are in early stage of treatment for a schizophrenic break with reality or other psychotic episode.)
An exercise for undergraduates: devise alternate experimental protocols for the judges which relate instead to some of Ernest Becker's outrageous statements about the weakness of homosexuals, weakness and depression, your moral character as a "lie", frigidity and fetish, your unfaithful spouse, or religion and psychiatry. Shock them, but not obviously so. Create a certain unease, a sense of transience, a feeling of a need to resist or fight back.
Exercise: replicate the experiment of the three professors, but tie it to an explanation totally unrelated (best option, be able to give your theory the acronym "TMT" or at least "TM" or perhaps "TNT".
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