[3] It is the main work responsible for the development of terror management theory, which provides empirical support for Becker's ideas.

In turn, an individual's character is essentially formed around the process of denying one's own mortality, that this denial is a necessary component of functioning in the world, and that this character-armor masks and obscures genuine self-knowledge.

This enables the individual to imagine at least some vestige of those meanings continuing beyond their own life-span; thus avoiding the complete "self-negation" we perceive when other biological creatures die in nature.

[6] By being part of symbolic constructs with more significance and longevity than one's body—cultural activities and beliefs—one can gain a sense of legacy or (in the case of religion) an afterlife.

In other words, by living up to (or especially exceeding) cultural standards, people feel they can become part of something eternal: something that will never die as compared to their physical body.

This feeling that their lives have meaning, a purpose, and significance in the grand scheme of things i.e. that they are "heroic contributors to world life" and thus that their contributions last beyond their biological lifespan is what's referred to as an "immortality project".

Becker describes the current prevalence of hedonism and triviality as a result of the downfall of religious worldviews such as Christianity that could take "slaves, cripples... imbeciles... the simple and the mighty" and allow them all to accept their animal nature in the context of a spiritual reality and an afterlife.

Science attempts to serve as an immortality project, something that Becker believes it can never do because it is unable to provide agreeable, absolute meanings to human life.

Here Becker offers a summary observation that "mental illness represents styles of bogging-down in the denial of creatureliness" that is part and parcel of immortality projects.

In 2015, cultural historian Morris Berman observed that "Becker's exploration of the dialectical tension between the individual and the community has never been surpassed.

"[20] The Denial of Death continues to be praised for its post-Freudian approach to psychoanalysis,[21] although it has also been criticized for its reductive depictions of mental health and humanity.

[23] Former United States President Bill Clinton quoted The Denial of Death in his 2004 autobiography My Life; he also included it as one of 21 titles in his list of favorite books.