The Denial of Death

Cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker argues in his 1973 book that most human action is an attempt to ignore or escape the certainty of death. Civilization, in his account, is a defense against the knowledge of mortality, and each person's character forms around denying it. Becker sees people as split between a physical self and a symbolic self, and says they seek significance through culturally shaped heroism, or immortality projects, meant to outlast the body. The chapters work through depth psychology and the ideas of Kierkegaard, Freud and Otto Rank, with a final chapter on psychology and religion. In 1974, after Becker's death, it won the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction, and it later inspired terror management theory.

Jordan B. Peterson included it on his list of recommended books, and Mark Manson named it among his nine best psychology books, describing how it traces our anxieties and motives back to the fear of not existing.