MENTAL HEALTH

In this issue, practitioners in the mental health and social work fields talk about how Beckerian themes and death denial manifest in their work. As Becker noted, mental health is often not a question of delusions, but of too close a confrontation with the reality of existence. We all must regulate our levels of anxiety by balancing our denial against our knowledge of that which engenders terror (death, illness, destruction, etc.). This is why Becker talks about mental health as a universal issue and intrinsic aspect of the human condition. In the mental health fields in particular, mortality concerns may manifest more consciously, and may need to be confronted head-on.

In this issue, Matthew Valdespino talks about a community-oriented approach to mental health. He dives into an analysis of Beckerian themes, including the enormous challenges to finding meaning and creating a hero system, or immortality project. Cynthia Tomik is a clinical social worker who often works with people coming to terms with mortality. She posits that in order to get past the difficulty of mortality discussions, we have to normalize the conversation.

Psychologist Corinne Masur, in addition to examining death anxiety with her patients, was so taken with the denial she saw in her profession—amongst fellow practitioners—that she wrote a book on the topic. She recognized a striking lack of ability amongst colleagues to discuss death in an open and honest fashion. Psychiatrist and coauthor Ruth Garfield talks about how her experience with serious illness resulted in a distancing effect from colleagues, further highlighting the field’s discomfort with mortality.

We can say that the essence of normality is the refusal of reality…And so, the question for the science of mental health must become an absolutely new and revolutionary one, yet one that reflects the essence of the human condition: On what level of illusion does one live?

—Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death

These practitioners all advocate for the benefits of acknowledging the inevitable, both in terms of mental health and in the larger context of a more authentic human experience. As Becker suggests, the best illusion under which to live is “A lived, compelling illusion that does not lie about life, death, and reality; one honest enough to follow its own commandments: I mean, not to kill, not to take the lives of others to justify itself” (Becker, 1973).