Revisiting Ernest Becker’s Psychology of Human Striving

Abstract

Ernest Becker’s psychology of human striving is a unique blend of pragmatic, post-Freudian, and existential thought that explicates central features of the human condition and experience. It is both a psychological and philosophical anthropology. In consequence, despite being mostly ignored by psychologists, Becker’s work continues to be relevant, even instructive, to past and more recent attempts to formulate a psychology of personhood, especially one that focuses on the interactivity of persons within their biophysical and sociocultural contexts. What is offered here is an integrative explication of Becker’s psychology of human striving that merges important aspects of his early and later work and points to critical considerations and possible extensions of his ideas.