The Ernest Becker Foundation

In a recent advertisement on TV for a product by Heinz, a jaded youth with a dazed expression on his face — a new customer for a new product — was shown slowly pouring Ketchup onto his yellow scraps of french fries, saying he was going to "smother french fries until they can't breathe". This attitude toward food, the body, toward objects, toward others who are even customers, and toward selling images may be the secret sign of the times. It is a form of Cynicism toward the very act of living with objects and people. Objects and people are conceived as threats or as indifferent to accepted meanings, which is a staple of how propaganda works.

Why did human beings abandon living in small bands of semi-nomadic hunters and gatherers (primitive "savages") to gather in towns and cities ("civilization")? Many anthropologists and evolutionary psychologists argue that the development of agriculture (and domestication of animals) was responsible for this transition:

If Ernest Becker had a spiritual mentor during his latter years, it was without doubt the early revisionist psychoanalyst Otto Rank. Becker was fluent in his praise for Rank's work and the profound effect his encounter with Rank's books had on his own mature thought. The intimate Rank/Becker connection has long been one of the primary foci of the Ernest Becker Foundation. On the evening of May 14th, a joint audience of the Foundation and Seattle University, co-sponsored by the Washington State Psychological Association, was treated to a summary lecture by one of the world's most productive Rankian scholars, Prof. Robert Kramer. Bob Kramer is well-known to the Seattle folks for his excellent contributions to the 'Love of Violence' conferences. On this evening, his lecture, 'Rank's Contributions to Humanistic and Relational Psychology,' condensed much of his research and recent publications on Rank.