The Ernest Becker Reader

Daniel Liechty

• Publisher: University of Washington Press
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780295984704
• eBook ISBN: 9780295801841
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

Ernest Becker (1924-1974) was an astute observer of society and human behavior during America's turbulent 1960s and 1970s. Trained in social anthropology and driven by a transcending curiosity about human motivations, Becker doggedly pursued his basic research question, "What makes people act the way they do?" Dissatisfied with what he saw as narrowly fragmented methods in the contemporary social sciences and impelled by a belief that humankind more than ever needed a disciplined, rational, and empirically based understanding of itself, Becker slowly created a powerful interdisciplinary vision of the human sciences, one in which each discipline is rooted in a basic truth concerning the human condition. That truth became an integral part of Becker's emerging social science. Almost inadvertently, he outlined a perspective on human motivations that is perhaps the most broadly interdisciplinary to date. His perspective traverses not only the biological, psychological, and social sciences but also the humanities and educational, political, and religious studies. Ernest Becker is best known for the books written in the last few years before his death from cancer, including the highly praised Pulitzer Prize-winning volume The Denial of Death (1974) and Escape from Evil (1975). These late works, however, were built on a distinguished body of earlier books, essays, and reviews. The power and strength of Becker's ideas are fully present in his early works, which underlie his later contributions and give direction for interpreting the development of his ideas. Although Ernest Becker's life and career were cut short, his major writings have remained continually in print and have captured the interest of subsequent generations of readers. The Ernest Becker Reader makes available for the first time in one volume much of Becker's early work and thus places his later work in proper context. It is a major contribution to the ongoing interest in Becker's ideas.

PART ONE

A PSYCHOSOCIAL VIEW OF MENTAL HEALTH
(1960–1963)

The chapters in this section present selections written while Ernest Becker was a lecturer in anthropology in the Department of Psychiatry at the Upstate Medical Center in Syracuse, New York. This was a plum position for a newly minted Ph.D. Becker’s Ph.D. dissertation compared the master/student and analyst/analysand relationship in Japanese Zen Buddhism and Western psychoanalysis. This research was the basis for his first book and a few articles, also published during this period. Although this work contains some interesting ideas, including in seed form the beginnings of Becker’s later formulations on social transference, Becker left this work undeveloped, and in subsequent years took a very different view of Buddhism (though not necessarily of Zen) than is expressed in this work.

The work that consumed Becker during these years was that of formulating a consistently transactional, or psychosocial, theory of mental health and mental illness. Always writing with Freud and psychoanalysis within his peripheral vision, Becker set out to demonstrate that mental health and mental illness are relatively fluid categories. Particularly keen to reject Freud’s instinct theory, Becker set forth a view of the unconscious consisting of the individual residue of early social learning and experience. This early material creates habits of behavior, habits of reactions to stimuli, and these habitual behaviors collectively do form general character types. But just as these behaviors are formed as habitual patterns based on early social learning and experience, they are amenable to change based on new social learning. The difference between conceiving behavior as rooted in thwarted natural instincts, and conceiving behavior as rooted in habitual responses to early social learning, may seem insignificant and semantic at first glance. But in Becker’s view the differences in conception were crucial, particularly in that the instinctual view sees the individual as antisocial at the deepest level, held in line only by the naked social power of society. The latter view accounts for the worst of human behavior, yet holds onto the idea that humans are at the deepest level social animals. Social bonds are those of mammalian connection, not the implied violence of social power.

These writings reflect Becker’s ongoing attempt to find in Freud that which is really valuable and enduring, while rejecting what he considered to be Freud’s uncritical acceptance of the biologism and instinctivism in the nineteenth-century intellectual milieu.

Chapter 1

ANTHROPOLOGY, PSYCHOANALYSIS, AND MENTAL ILLNESS

Socialization, Command of Performance, and Mental Illness (1962)*

THE ESSENTIALS FOR A SOCIOLOGICAL UNDERSTANDING of behavioral malfunction presented here underline a crucial but simple consideration, which has not been sufficiently stressed in discussions of mental illness. It is clear that whatever the origin of malfunction—in biological substrata or in conventional social definition of desirable norm—there are individuals who will not meet the behavioral requirements of their fellows. But in addition to this consideration, there is a less obvious one, namely, that to a self-reflexive, symbol-using animal, the purely symbolic social definition of normative behavior is as crucial to action as is instinctive patterning to any lower organism….

[I]t is becoming increasingly obvious—or should be—that a comprehensive theory of human behavior will draw upon those discoveries of Freud which figure less prominently in clinical matters and which are of more general import. I am referring specifically to the genesis of the self and the ego, and to the fact of the Oedipal transition—a transition from biological proximal relationship to a succoring figure, to a distanced, symbolic relationship to the internalized values of that figure. These two general, universal developmental trends are crucial in the humanization of Homo sapiens. It is important to underscore that they are based upon one continuous thread: the change from a stimulus-response reaction to primitive anxiety, to an ego-controlled reaction. The latter interposes a series of complex mechanisms between anxiety and the organism, which we have come to know as the self-system. The bootstraps, so to speak, by which man lifts himself above the other animals are those which enable him to handle primitive animal annihilation-anxiety with a durative defense. The self-system is an anxiety-buffering motor that is always idling.

Now it is well known that this unique development in the animal kingdom is possible for only one reason: the development of language, which permits a self-referential existence. As the infant learns ‘mine–me–I’ in that order, he fixes himself in a space-time world populated by named, identifiable objects. [Harry Stack] Sullivan referred to the self-system as largely a series of linguistic tricks by which the human conciliates his environment—allays his anxiety, that is. Thus, self-reflexivity and anxiety avoidance are two sides of the same coin. They create symbolic action possibilities by making the world safe for a symbolic, self-reflexive animal….

If the behavioral world of the self-reflexive animal is based on a pronominal ‘I,’ then the ‘I’ must be separated from the ‘not-I.’ In other words, the motivational goals, and the proper actions for reaching those goals, must be jointly defined as more desirable than other alternatives. The animal must have, in brief, a feeling of primary value in a world of meaningful objects. Culture, in this sense, is a symbolic fiction without which the psychological animal could not act. The basis of this fiction is a pattern of values, which gives vital meaning and permits action.… When we say that an individual is properly socialized, we mean simply that the process of formation of the self-system has been secure enough to enable him to sustain interaction with someone other than the agents of his immediate socialization. If he can do this, society provides him with a conventional code of rules for interaction, by which to sustain his own face and to protect the face of others….

The problem, from a social point of view, is to respect the privacy and integrity of the individual and, at the very same time, to include him in social interaction. Society does this by a series of conventions which [Erving] Goffman includes under two main headings: deferential rituals of avoidance and deferential rituals of presentation. The body privacy, separateness, and the integral self of the individual must be accorded a degree of avoidance behavior. Avoidance implies that everyone has the right to keep others at a certain distance and recognizes that the self is personal. Presentation, on the other hand, implies that everyone has the right to engage others, if it is done properly; the self is recognized as social. Thus, all the conventions of salutation, farewell, quick formal smiles of acknowledgment, facile compliments, brief adjustments of another’s tie or brushing his clothing, and so on, are presentation rituals which engage his self in social intercourse….

The further problem is that the gestures of presentation which engage the individuals in social intercourse must not encroach too much on their private selves; a peculiar tension must be maintained between avoidance and presentation rituals. The individual, in sum, must be assured that if he entrusts his fallible face to society, it will take good care of it for him.… If this all seems axiomatic, its simplicity is deceptive. It is only when we consider the complement to deference, the phenomenon of demeanor, that the fictional fabric of social life becomes transparently clear. Demeanor refers to the problem of social action from the point of view of the individual. Demeanor means proper deportment, dress, bearing—in a word, self-regard. The individual is tasked to respect and maintain a sense of self. For an individual to have a sense of self—and this is of fundamental importance—means sustaining a named, identifiable locus of symbolic causality, which can be counted on to communicate within the social conventions. Demeanor is the obligation to have a self, so that there is something socially transactable. But the self-contained locus of communication must behave in an expected manner, so that his inclusion within the larger plot is a matter of facility. Otherwise, people would endanger themselves in undertaking interaction with someone who does not present a socially viable self. They would expose their fragile self-esteem to entirely capricious monstrosity.

Crucial to our understanding of the delicately staged plot of social actors within a social fiction of learned meanings, goals, and values is this: An individual who engages us by manifesting the proper deference must have an equally appropriate sense of demeanor to make the deference socially meaningful—he must present a credible stage personality. If our interlocutor does not have proper self-regard, he threatens us at the very core of our artificial action. It is fundamental to the implicit rules of social life that there must be no hint or revelation of the unbelievably flimsy basis for our impassioned life-and-death actions: the revelation that the self is merely an attitude of self-regard and a learned set of arbitrary conventions designed to facilitate symbolic action. The hopeful enjoinder that upholds the social fiction is: ‘Let us all protect each other by sincere demeanor and convincing presentations, so that we can carry on the business of living.’ The self-esteem of plural numbers of anxiety-prone animals must be protected so that symbolic action can continue. Not only must it be protected, it must in fact be enhanced by an intricate web of rituals for delicate handling of the self. Man must make provision for the utmost sensitivity in social intercourse. This fine social sensitivity is, as Goffman observes, largely what we mean when we speak of ‘universal human nature’….

The culture protects social action in two ways. By providing a strict code of social ritual, it makes available an adaptational device designed to prevent the contamination of social intercourse with private data. The more or less ‘proper’ thing to say in each situation is provided. At the same time, it protects the ongoing action situation by ablating the irrelevancies of private data. The socially awkward person is one who is not ‘successfully’ socialized from roughly two points of view: (1) His reaction-sensitivity prevents effective communication, and the forward motion of social action in a situation. (2) He has not learned to use with facility the social ritual rules for interaction. We can ask of an individual in this context: How much ‘reaction-sensitivity’ is present in his social presentation of face (of his positive self valuation)? To what extent do his needs and susceptibilities risk contaminating the smooth flow of face-saving ritual that the culture needs in order to function? ….

It is not widely enough recognized that easy handling of the verbal context of action gives the possibility of direct exercise of power over others. The individual who uses with facility “I’m terribly sorry,” “Good show!” “Good to see you,” and so on, creates the context of action for his interlocutor, by his confident manipulation of the conventional ritual verbiage. The parent’s enjoinder “Say ‘thank you’ to the man” is not an inculcation of obsequiousness so much as it is a training in control … since action within shared meaning provides the only framework for the continual social validation of the actors, we can understand that deference is the means we have of enhancing one another. The ability to use its formulas with facility actually means the power to manipulate others by providing the symbolic context of their action….

[U]sing the deference-demeanor model, we can see how identity and selfexperience are social created: only by exercising demeanor and experiencing deference does the person fashion and renew himself by purposeful action in meaningful contexts. Thus, loneliness is not only a suspension in self-acquaintance, it is a suspension in the very fashioning of identity, because, cut off from one’s fellows, one cannot exercise demeanor or experience deference. Therefore, he cannot experience his own powers and come to know himself as agent of them. In this sense, identity is simply the measure of power and participation of the individual in the joint cultural staging of self-enhancing ceremony.… It is important to realize that the delicate balance of avoidance and presentation rituals is not an easy one to manipulate. And, in order to have any skill at it at all, one needs a clear definition of the situation. It is precisely this that is obscured by poor socialization. A clear definition of the situation demands an apprehension of one’s private self, a sensitivity to needs and expectancies in the interaction, and last but not least, a sure cognizance of self-other discreteness. Thus, in simplest terms, we might say that the basis for social ineptitude is the failure to form an adequate phenomenological self. A feeling of primary value, separation, and de-identification of self from the succoring figure, sure possession of one’s body—these have all to be under the individual’s control if he is at all to get started in the complicated game of role-playing. Otherwise, we have the familiar gaucheries of an overdoing of avoidance ritual, as, for example, by not allowing oneself to be touched when it is quite in order; or overdoing of presentation ritual by overpersonal manipulations and attentions….

In the last analysis, power over others consists in presenting an infallible self and in commanding dexterous performance of deference. The power of the ‘natural leader’ resides perhaps in such fortunate socialization that a convincing self is invariably put forth, with sharp separation of personal and reality needs. By putting forth a convincing self, the actor obliges others to a more careful deference. The strong self forces others to make an effort at performance that may often be beyond their means….

Socialization, then, is a preparation for social performance of the individual actor. Using this scheme (deference-demeanor) we might ask two key sociological questions of this individual preparation, questions familiar to the clinician: ‘With what behavioral style has the individual learned to get his self-rights respected?’ How, in other words, has the child obtained appreciation from significant adults of his discrete social self? The manner of obtaining respect for self would be his basic method of comportment, or demeanor. The other important question has to do with determining his basic pattern of orientation to deference: ‘How has he learned to react to the hierarchialized status of others?’ In other words, what kind of cognizance does he have of the plot, the fiction of social action in which he will be expected to perform? These two sets of questions are separated for conceptual purposes; actually they are part of the same judgment: How has the actor been trained as a performer? The social judgment of the individual can be phrased in stark terms of his rule-following ability….

One cannot overemphasize the fact that the basic pattern of deference-demeanor in a society is the necessary social nutrient for the continuing creation of the personal significance of the social actors—a sort of public mana in which everyone is rejuvenated and supplied. There is a continuing affirmation of meaning in deference-demeanor social transactions which, although purely on a fictional-symbolic level of discourse, seems vital to the very organization of the self. This symbolic sustenance, in other words, seems a sine qua non for creating and maintaining an integral symbolic animal. This idea in itself is certainly not new, but its consequences have still not been followed through broadly enough in psychiatry, nor with the requisite theoretical relentlessness: that we cogitate this whole problem on the organism’s purely symbolic functioning….

The view that social life is a symbolic, fictional nutrient for a self-reflexive, symbolic animal represents one direct, theoretical approach to the problems of behavioral malfunction. Seen from the individual point of view, this problem presents itself in terms of the individual’s ability to sustain a self of positive value in a world of meaning and to act according to the social conventions for sustaining and reinforcing that meaning by mutual support. When we realize that the action world of a symbolic animal is fictional and continually fabricated, nourished, and validated, this does not diminish the importance of that world to the behavior of Homo sapiens. There remains the problem of individuals who cannot follow the social ritual rules. Questions to which behavioral specialists should be sensitized are: In what ways is the manner in which this individual has learned to handle anxiety a hindrance in his performance of the ceremonial that permits sustenance of the social fiction of shared meaning? What are the rules for performance which society itself projects? Alertness to questions such as these would lead to a more sensitive understanding of the variations in performance ability of the individual actors, and (as in existing research) the reasons for that variation. Finally, and not least important, it would contribute to a greater flexibility of appraisal of the conditions for social becoming in an open democratic society.

Anthropological Notes on the Concept of Aggression (1962)*

ESPECIALLY RELEVANT TO THE DISCUSSION here is [Sigmund Freud’s] sharply delineated subject-object polarity—a man-against-nature ontology—and his infusion of man’s opposition with a powerful, aggressive instinct.… Of all animals, man alone filters his action-responses with the conceptual screen provided by culturally learned conventions. This idea is the keynote of my subsequent discussion, which is designed to contribute to the thoroughgoing cultural view of human action that has been in the making for over fifty years but has long been restrained from full fruition….

Judging from anthropological materials, there is every reason to consider aggression in large measure to be a learned reaction in the service of the ego. But this is not a new or surprising discovery. It is merely field evidence which anthropology contributes to the broad convergence of twentieth-century thinking on a view of man as a plastic, symbolic animal shaped by culture….

The intimate connection of aggression with depression seems another good reason to suppose that it is largely a cognitively mediated response to fluctuations in total personality self-esteem. In [Edward] Bibring’s reformulation of the mechanism of depression, which accords a central role to self-esteem, he cites a case that showed the marked sequence of depression, self-accusation, hypomania, and then aggression directed to the outside. He points out that fluctuation in self-esteem is the thread of continuity here, and not aggression as attempted mastery. Bibring says that the patient’s aggressive fantasies were secondary to her exaggerated self-esteem, just as her turning of aggression within was secondary to lowered self-esteem….

In sum, in many situations, aggression might be understood as an inept, sporadic way of creating a positive, acting self, of exaggerating or affirming self-esteem. Hate, after all, creates a valued self vis-à-vis an object. Paranoia functions similarly, but it is a relatively sophisticated mechanism, requiring a degree of imagination and control. In individuals whose organization is so faulty that they cannot fashion a positively valued self, rage and helplessness may replace the action possibilities of a focused hate. In situations where it is not culturally possible to sustain such a self—for example, the di...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Acknowledgments
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• Part One: A Psychosocial View of Mental Health (1960–1963)
• Part Two: Toward an Integrated Social Science of Behavior (1964–1971)
• Part Three: Denial of Death as Interpretive Organizing Principle (1971–1975)
• Bibliography
• Subject Index
• Name Index