8/12/2019 The Death Denying Mind - Rank and Becker

1/4

MAPThe Death Denying MindOtto Rank and Ernest BeckerOtto Rank was a close pupil of Freud (see Map 9), who encouraged the former toattend university and helped pay for his studies. Rank later dissented from hismaster, but his reformulation remains respectful yet profoundly original. In1974 thesociologist Ernest Becker won a Pulitzer Prize for his rehabil itation and elaborationof Rank in The Denial of Death. The book had a special poignancy, for Becker washimself dying of cancer.

Rank and Becker take astheir point of departure that the human being is uniquein the animal kingdom. We alone are alive while consciously aware that we shalldie. Our symbolizing capacities provide endless food for thought, yet our bodieswill be food for worms. It is vain to search for a basic essence of humanity toattempt to reduce mind to a unitary source, for we are suspended in paradox,seething with vitality against the back-drop of obliteration. We exist between thelife fear and the d ea th f ear of feeling overwhelmed by potential and excitement, andof feeling abandoned to limitation and lassitude.

It was Freud who noted that the unconscious and id impulses seem not to knowof death and time. In our inner recesses we feel immortal and like Narcissus see theworld as reflections of ourselves. It is the ego and the reality principle which warn uswe are doomed, and while we believe this of others, our private impulses cry outagainst the sentence of death and will, in the words of Dylan Thomas, Rage, rageagainst the dying of the l ight .

An entirely fresh understanding isthrown upon Freud s insights if we assume thatwhat isbeing repressed isnot sexuality so much asthe terror of death. For example,the anxiety aroused by sex, nakedness, bodily functions, etc, is now seen as anunwelcome reminder of mortality. Oral, anal and phallic stages of development areinfant ile attempts to swallow, expel and penetrate a world shrunk to manageablesize. The young child has no direct knowledge of death, but has many experiencesof paradox, which has the same structure as death. For example, the child may feelomnipotent since by the simple act of yelling nurturance comes at his command.Then comes the dawning realization that his power isa tribute paid to impotence.The baby s very life hangs upon the thread of parental solicitude. Castration fear isthus focused on the mother, not the father. The boy yearns to be independent yetfears to be alone and rejected. The mother, like the legendary sphinx, has aparadoxical aspect, she can nurture through dependence, yet destroy throughoverdependence. The cradle, seemingly so warm and safe, rocks upon a darkocean. This paradox of infancy yields to the larger paradox of adult existence itself,in which another encapsulated shell rocks on another ocean. The child has nomeans of articulating this fear of paradox, save by symbols close at hand, hence thefear of long-legged beasties and things that go bump in the night.

The Oedipal complex becomes, in this view, the project of attempted self-creation. Oedipus sought to confound death by becom ing the father of himself, themotive and sin for which the gods cast him down (and for which Satan was expelledfrom heaven). Oedipus had grown to manhood by solving the riddle of the sphinx,that man emerges from the conflict between nurturance and destruction. But thatsolution had been verbal and symbolic only, so that Oedipus then stumbled intothe greater paradox, that which lies between the symbolizing power of heroes andkings and the underlying limitations of mortal flesh. He knew everything save theorigin and fate of his own body.

Mankind has sought numerous solutions to the paradox that in life we are in themidst of death . Rank and Becker have distinguished religious, heroic, romantic,philistine and creative solutions, without which we become neurotic or evenpsychotic and end up as psychological man , continually in therapy. All these

In the process of hum anperception we u s u a ll y d i s ti n g ui s hf ig u re f ro m g r ou n d o rb ac kg ro un d) . A lt ho ug h we select figure t f oc us o n a u to m at ic al ly ,t hi s c h oi ce i s a rb it ra ri ly g ov er ne db y o ur m otiv es r expectationsand is not given by the objectitse lf. O tto R an k a nd E rn estB ecker proposed that we denydeath t rid ourselves of thep ai nf ul p ar ad ox o f l if e- in -d ea th .Accordingly we f oc u s o b se s si ve lyon the w hite angel of life w hilerepressing the black devil ofdeath de ep into the recesses ofunconsciousness. We inventim mo rta lity sy ste ms, w hic h stre ssH e av en , H e ro is m , R o ma nt ic is m ,C orp ora tism , th e S ta te a ndR ev olu tio na ry I mm or ta lity . T hec ru el re ality is th at d urin g o urn atu ra l liv es th e d ar k b ac kg ro un dis m ov in g in ex or ab ly fo rw ar d. Wecann ot stand this and creates ym b oliC v is io ns o f a ll w hite ne ss ,which sw athe the grou nd inm ia sm ic m ist that we literallystum ble into the abyss to ultim atedeaths. We g iv e b ir th a str id e agrave th e lig ht g le am s a n irista ntand it s night once m ore.

8/12/2019 The Death Denying Mind - Rank and Becker

2/4

8/12/2019 The Death Denying Mind - Rank and Becker

3/4

MAP 15/LEVEL 2

solutions attempt to create a universe of symbols woven like illusions aroundcadaverous reality. For man, says Rank, is a theological being.

The historic solution appealed to other worldly religion. What is this brutishexistence of ours, this vale of tears compared with life and joy everlasting amidangels (who, as St Augustine reminded us, have fundamental orifices )? TheEastern traditions similarly invite us to dissolve paradox by mystic selflessness andceasing to strive. The whole world of oppositions recedes into the realm of no-mind,save that here the concentration is on the concrete, eg the breathing of one s ownbody. The result isthe same: the sensation of timelessness and transcendence, animmortal oneness with the universe. Death is put aside awhile and the paradox ofthe koan (a verse riddle) is used to anaesthetize us against the larger paradox ofexistence.

Heroism also promises immortality. Traditionally the hero faced death andconquered it by killing his country s foes. He left on long odysseys, as if dead, andreturned with life-enhancing knowledge or substance. Those who partake of thehero s aura will share his apparent immunity to death as he survives miraculouslyamid the slaughter. To be stronger than enemies who wish your death is to bestronger than death itself. We are still today under the spell cast by persons,whether holy warriors or the newer breed of pop-stars, gurus and daredevils.Mil lions seek to be pulled into cloud-cuckoo land on the coat-tails of Fred Astaire orthe wall-to-wall noise of rock bands.

The romantic solution attempts to make a religion of love relationships.Romanticism, the tradition of courtly love, historically challenged the inst itut ion ofChristian (arranged) marriage with a passionate cosmology of two . The love objectis celestial, sublime, perfect, and because she accepts me, I am redeemed fromdeath by her grace. Of course I must avoid her body and the relaxation that comesfrom consummated love. That iswhy romanticism feeds on frustration, why it singsto the lady within the castle wall of unrequited love, and leaves a symbolic roseupon the batt lements. To encounter a real woman would be a profound anticl imax,a dangerous mingling of heaven with halitosis. Jonathan Swift, who was torturedby such anomalies, laments:

No wonder that I lost my witsFor Caelia, Caelia, Caelia shits l

The phil istine solution finds refuge in compromise, mediocrity and shrinking theworld to bite-sized pieces. The bourgeois aspires to becoming deputy supervisor incharge of yogurt at the off ice of his grocery chain. Rank called this part ialization ,the reduction of human existence to manageable objectives. In sexual relationshipsit becomes a fetish, a whole woman reduced to boots or suspenders. It isthe adult sequivalent to the child s oral and anal fixation.

Rank placed most of his hope in the creative resolution of the life-death paradoxthrough the work of art ists. Freud, he noted, was an agnostic, desperately warninghis disciples against straying into the occult , but then creativity was Freud s privatereligion. When reproving his followers for straying from the fold, he would besubject to fainting fits. His own immortality was at stake Creative persons aremore comfortable with paradox because they tend to see life itself as a problem orquestion that evokes a personal synthesis. Art is the attempted objectification ofour subjective yearning for immortality. For the act of creation is never reallycompleted, the artist must await in desperate vulnerability for the answer to hisoffering. Nor will popular acceptance suffice. Since creativity aspires to immortality,it craves the acknowledgement of immortal authorities, be they god, culture or

Let sanguine hea/thy-mindednessdo its best with its st range powerof living for the moment andignoring and forgetting ... thesku ll wi ll g rin at the banquet .Varieties of Religious Experience

William JamesFor l if e is at the start a chaos inwhi ch o ne is lo st . Th e in di vi du alsuspects this but he is frightenedo f f ind ing h imself f ace to face withthis terrible reality and tries tocover it over with a curtain offantasy where everything is clear.It does not worry him that hisideas are not true h e u se s t hemas trenches for the defence of hisexistence as scarecrows tofrighten away reality.

T he Revol t o f t he Masse sOrtega E. Casset

8/12/2019 The Death Denying Mind - Rank and Becker

4/4

What will become of my wholelife? ... Is there any meaning inmy li fe t ha t t he in evit able d ea thawaiting me does not destroy?

Confession Leo TolstoyTh e h istory o f man kin d d ivi de sin to t wo great periods oneexisted from time immemorial .. .an d was cha racte rized b y t herit ual ist view o f n at ure. T hesecond began with themodern machine age In bothp eriods me n wan ted to controlli fe an d de at h b ut in t he f irst t heyhad to rely on non-machinet ech no log y . .. b y b uil di ng a ritualaltar and making t hat the locus oft he t ransfe r an d ren ewal o f lif e-power.

Escape from Evil Ernest Becker

MAP REFERENCESCreativity, 13 26-31 51 54 59;Death, 11-13 37 50 59; Oedipal. project, 9 40 58; Paradox,seealso contradiction, 13 52-7;Theological being, 4 6 10 2426 59; War, 22 24 34 39-4043 47 50 56.

L E V E L 2 M A P

posterity. The true creator must combine the highest level of self-expression withtotal self-surrender, Eros married to Agape. Rank would have agreed with IngmarBergman that the world s greatest art was offered to god. The modern cult of thecreative person takes its theme from Norman Mailer s Advertisements for Myself;this overly self-conscious creativity inflates its self- importance as it elbows to gainprecedence at the pearly gates.

Rank saw the symptoms of neuroses and psychoses as breakdowns in thecapacity to deny death. These people were artistes manque , tortured by theparadoxes they could not resolve and confronted by death-in-li fe. This accountedfor typical neurotic symptoms, ambivalence, hesitation, stammering, anxiety, innerconfl ict, chronic indecision, with intimate relationships equally confl icted. Oftenthere was an underlying disgust with the mortal coil, evidenced by depression,rituals of decontamination, rage turned inwards or outwards, with extremes ofhyperactivity or nervous prostration. The psychotic has totally split the death fearfrom the life fear, babbling to himself ina symbolic world divorced from social reality,or suffering beneath the weight of his body in rigid, foetal and immobile postures.

Before he died Becker came close to a major contribution to our comprehensionof genocidal man. His last, unfinished, book, Escape for Evil reveals the lethalconsequences of immortality systems. Religious dogmas rigidify and become soemotionally charged in their futile battles with death that they fall upon each otherin religious wars. Human sacrifices, warlord ism and the ritual slaughter of captivesare public demonstrations of the hero s power over death. Armies, tribes andhordes seek immersion in the aura that surrounds their leaders or in therevolutionary immortality of collective purpose. Romantic lovers like Tristan andIsolde, Romeo and Juliet escalate their passion as the forces frustrating it escalatetoo. In a grand climax they prove the immortality of their love by dying for it. Theidol love is venerated, only the people perish Before death can come for us werush to lay our lives at the feet of idols, History, Providence, God, Romance, TheParty, Patriotism, L S D But as Aldous Huxley warned, All idols, sooner or later,become Molochs hungry for human sacrifice .

The mounting tolls of war sharpen the pains of paradox, and human beingstypically respond with even more powerful repressions. For example, in the GreatWar, we refused to countenance that thousands of young men could be cut down intheir prime. Youth wasted was a paradox too sharp to bear. We had to give itmeaning. The war to end all wars we said to ourselves; Greater love hath no manthan this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. Yet it is absurd to pretend thatsuch elevated and improbable sentiments were crossing the minds of ordinarysoldiers as bullets struck them. Such rhetoric is for us, the survivors, who arethreatened by our own mortality and the meaninglessness of existence. As wecomfort the bereaved and ourselves by gathering around war memorials, are wenot laying the foundations for the next slaughter, readying another generation tocharge heroically into the jaws of paradox?

The different forms of death denial share a common structure. The life-in-deathparadox is converted into life-and-after-life, an altogether more comfortable andconsistent proposition, but one that dangerously obscures the choice of living outour span in this l ife. We shall survive death, we say, in heaven, on war memorials, inthe annals of romantic love, in the future of the corporation, in some final fix , indeathless art or prose. But death denied by abstract ideals will come upon us inconcrete reality, as we perish sooner rather than later, and earn for the humanspecies its reputation asthe most murderous animal the world has known. Man, asEliWiesel said, is not human.

67