Oliver Burkeman: The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking

"For [Ernest] Becker, mental illness is a malfunctioning of the internal death-denial machinery. Depressed people are depressed because they try but repeatedly fail to shield themselves, as others manage to do, from the truth that they are not, in reality, cosmically significant heroes – and that pretty soon they’re going to die." 

(p 182)

(originally posted probably on Tumblr or maybe on WordPress)