Yeah, I often find psychodynamic focused books posit wild constructs, but the logic is usually fun to hear about.

I will look those two books up. Yeah, death anxiety probably has an influence but not to the extent Becker argues for. And priming is a thing, yes. There are also studies where we just talk about old people in one group and not mention them in another, and the group that hears about old people will walk slower afterwards. We can prime people in all sorts of ways. And I imagine thoughts about death are no exception. Becker takes the fear of death from "it influences behavior" to "it is the fundamental drive behind all behavior," like when he called all human culture a hero myth that is engaged with for the singular reason that we fear death. That is a wild claim. Completely ignores genetics, for starters, and ignores cultural practices in other animals - who he said were completely governed by instinct and thus cannot reflect on death - and likewise ignores the seemingly non-random elements in culture: like that every culture speaks a language, has a family structure, has hierarchies, develops rules of governance, etc etc. If all our culture was driven by a death instinct, then why do they all our cultures have such similarities? Wouldn't he have to concede that some culture is driven by biology? I mean, he even said schizophrenia is a consequent of being too symbolic, lol. I will check the other books out, as I do agree fear of death, fear of ageing, or fear more generally influences human behavior. But I would probably disagree with anyone who reduces human motivation down to being driven only by a fear of death.

I will look it up, sounds like an interesting read. I love reading about people who were way outside the norm.

I will try to steel man. My guess would be that he thinks suicide is the ultimate denial of creaturely nature, and that by committing suicide the person allows their symbolic self to truly become immortal; since they never chanced it dying due to never trying. So, for instance, the idea that I could be a great painter continues to live on, not because I succeeded, but because I never failed due to never trying. Other than that, suicide is actually a good objection and I am not sure how he would answer it. I am sure he could make something up, that's what any good psychoanalyst would do, lol.