It is often the case that painful truths emerge first in the form of denial; one needs to create distance from what is painful. In Denial, Negation, and the Forces of the Negative Wilfried Ver Eecke constructs a comprehensive, lucid account of denial's psychological and philosophical dimensions while using Freud, Hegel, Lacan, Spitz, and Sophocles to help us understand this unavoidable aspect of human existence.

Ver Eecke acknowledges Hegel's claim that the road to truth is not a path of doubt, but a highway of despair, and argues, via Hegel's ontology of the person, that denial can be...