This book was recommended by Mark Manson in the Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck. He seems pretty down to Earth, so a recommendation from him sounded interesting. Oh boy was I wrong.
Here’s the good news, you can read the Wikipedia Summary (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Denial_of_Death) of the book and it’s good. It has some valuable ideas. Things like the causa sui project make sense to me. Basically, the causa sui is your immortality project, what you will leave behind when you die. I’d say it’s a useful concept and helps you understand why people do some of the things that they do.
Unfortunately, the book spends an inordinate amount of time trying to refute Freud and other psychoanalysts and philosophers. The author, Ernest Becker, really seems to have it out for Freud. Fair enough, Freud’s ideas seemed really off from the first moment I heard them. It sounds like Freud himself had some serious issues and then tried to claim that all men have them, they’re just repressing them. It’s stupid, Becker points out that it’s wrong and then he keeps going and going and going.
I made the mistake of listening to this book as an audiobook and I found my mind wandering way too much. I’ve listened to plenty of other books in the same genre and I have very little issues with staying engaged and understanding what is being said. This book made my eyes glaze over just listening to it. When my mind wandered, I wasn’t even tempted to rewind a bit like I would in other books. I just wanted to get this one over with. Maybe I would have had a chance if I had read it rather than listening to it. If it was my sole focus, it’s possible I would have gotten more out of it, but it still seems heavily flawed.
It spends very little time making its own points and a huge amount of time trying to refute others. If you’re really into philosophers and psychoanalysts (Kierkegaard, Freud, Rank, and others), maybe you’ll get more out of it. Maybe you’ll already have a good understanding of what is being refuted, but I definitely go into psychology from a mostly layman’s perspective. Way too much went over my head. It reeks of using too many technical terms to hide a weak argument.
It seems to have some valuable information within, but I’d say read the Wikipedia summary, skip the book.