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Death and Denial Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Legacy of Ernest Becker

Daniel Liechty

ISBN: 0-275-97420-0

ISBN-13: 978-0-275-97420-6

DOI:

320 pages

Praeger Publishers

Publication: 12/30/2002

List Price: $99.95 (UK Sterling Price: £68.95)

Availability: In Stock

Media Type: Hardcover

Trim Size: 6 1/8 x 9 1/4

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Description: In this edited collection of essays, professionals and academics from across the spectrum of the humanities and social sciences outline the ways in which Generative Death Anxiety theory impacts their field and discuss the work of its most famous proponent, Ernest Becker, whose ^IDenial of Death^R won the Pulitzer Prize in 1973. The essays demonstrate that recognition of this deeply rooted source of human behavior and attitudes provides a fertile organizing principle for the humanities and social sciences.

The theory of Generative Death Anxiety is based on the recognition that if there is any uniquely human characteristic, it is the ability to anticipate and prepare for death. This recognition of mortality, however, runs directly counter to our survival instincts and must be repressed, thus creating a constant supply of repressed psychic energy—which, shaped by cultural and narrative factors, emerges in a rich array of human creativity and resourcefulness, but also in racism, religious chauvinism, reactive violence, and other types of pathological behavior. In this edited collection of essays, professionals and academics from across the spectrum of the humanities and social sciences outline the ways in which this theory impacts their field and discuss the work of its most famous proponent, Ernest Becker, whose ^IDenial of Death^R won the Pulitzer Prize in 1973. The essays demonstrate that recognition of this deeply rooted source of human behavior and attitudes provides a fertile organizing principle for the humanities and social sciences.

Table of Contents:

Introduction: Generative Mortality Anxiety: An Organizing Principle for the Social Sciences and Humanities by Daniel Liechty
Psychological Reflections
A Perilous Leap from Becker's Theorizing to Empirical Science: Terror Management Theory and Research by Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski and Sheldon Solomon
Inflicting Evil as an Alternative to the Dread of Dying: An Independent Test of Generative Death Anxiety by C. Fred Alford
Forgiveness: From Heroic Illusion to Human Homecoming by Steen Halling
Cognition Creates Character: Neurotic Styles by Daniel Goleman
Waging War Against Death by Gavin de Becker
Psychotherapeutic Reflections
Death Anxiety and the Psychotherapeutic Process by James B. McCarthy
Three Forms of Death Anxiety by Robert Langs
The Paradoxical Self: An Expansive View of Death Anxiety by Kirk J. Schneider
The Hero and the Addict: Reflections on the Apprehension of Death by Jeffrey Kauffman
Death Anxiety in the Treatment of Children in Poverty by Claude Barbre
Social Scientific Reflections
The Transcendent Dimesion in Social Science by James A. Aho
The Industrial Organization of Anxiety by Kirby Farrell
Death Anxiety in Medical Education and Practice by Neil Elgee
Ernst Becker's Anti-Idealist Theory of Communication: Death, Drama, and Purgation by W. Thomas Duncanson
Our Existential Vulnerability to Toxic Leaders by Jean Lipman-Blumen
Philosophical Reflections
Ernst Becker and Emmanuel levinas: Surprising Convergences by Richard Colledge
Interrogated by the Mortal: Kenneth Burke and Ernst Becker by C. Allen Carter
What Does a Body Know? Analysis of Violence in Ernest Becker and Julia Kristeva by Martha Reineke
Denial of Death in the Dissolution of the Modern Self by Walter Truett Anderson
The Denial of No-Self: A Buddhist Perspective by David R. Loy
Religious Reflections
The Enemy as Enemy of God: Psycho-Spiritual Processes in the Ritual Transformation of the Enemy by Sam Keen
Index

About the Author: DANIEL LIECHTY is Assistant Professor in the School of Social Work at Illinois State University and a licensed clinical social worker specializing in issues related to grief, loss, and death.

LCC Class: 128


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