The Denial of Death: Becker's Heroes

In my series on The Denial of Death, I did not comment on those chapters of the book which focussed on Becker's analysis of individual writers (namely, Søren Kierkegaard or Freud), because they constituted supporting arguments for Becker's thesis, rather than continuing his analysis of human motivation and behaviour.

In this latest post on The Denial of Death, however, I am going to look at Becker's treatment of psychoanalyst Otto Rank, a disciple of Freud, whom Becker lionised in the introduction to the work. In this chapter (entitled 'Otto Rank and the Closure of Psychoanalysis on Kierkegaard'), Becker appropriates Rank's work with respect to his own project of discovering how (he says) we try to fulfill our most basic desires. This chapter has a lot to say about what kind of loci Becker argues are appropriate for transference in order to secure the kind of 'creative projection' and 'life-enhancing illusion' which, as we saw at the end of the last chapter, were, Becker claimed, necessary for human flourishing. I am, therefore, going to comment upon it. It also has a lot to say about what aren't suitable objects of transference. I should mention that Becker refers frequently to Kierkegaard in this chapter, but since he doesn't cite his work, I don't have much to say about Becker's use of him. In any case Becker doesn't really have much to say about Kierkegaard, as we shall see.

On we go.