How We Know What We Know in Psychoanalysis: The Case of Ernest Becker’s Denial of Death

A consideration of Ernest Becker’s legacy offers solutions to two special epistemological problems that attend the study of repression: the problem of proof and the problem of dissent. Becker’s work was largely ignored by psychoanalysts, but it inspired social psychologists to design, conduct, and publish hundreds of formal studies on defense mechanisms, providing important validation of Freud’s theory of the unconscious. On the other hand, Becker’s attempt to purge psychoanalytic theory of sex and aggression demonstrates how easily repression can contaminate dissent, narrowing the field of psychoanalytic inquiry and diminishing its explanatory power. The best solution to theoretical controversies is clearly not the dogmatism, ostracism, and splinter groups that mar psychoanalytic history, but rather an appeal to evidence. The social psychology experiments inspired by Becker offer one model for how to solve the difficult problem of evidence for the unconscious. New research instruments tailored to psychoanalytic psychology and applied in the clinical context of mortality fears provide further empirical tools to resolve ideological disputes, both with skeptics of psychoanalysis and within the psychoanalytic community.