The meaning of anxiety

362 Pages·1996·1.85 MB·English

by  May

ROLLO
MAY
THE
MEANING
OF
ANXIETY
W. W.NORTON & COMPANY
NEW YORK
CONTENTS
Foreword to the First Edition
Foreword to the Revised Edition
Acknowledgments
PART I
MODERN INTERPRETATIONS OF ANXIETY
1. ANXIETY IN MID-TWENTIETH CENTURY
In Literature
In Social Studies
In the Political Scene
In Philosophy and Theology
In Psychology
Purpose of This Book
2. PHILOSOPHICAL INTERPRETERS OF ANXIETY
Spinoza: Reason Overcoming Fear
Pascal: The Inadequacy of Reason
Kierkegaard: Anxiety in the Nineteenth Century
3. ANXIETY INTERPRETED BIOLOGICALLY
The Startle Pattern
Anxiety and the Catastrophic Reaction
Anxiety and the Loss of the World
Origins of Anxiety and Fear as Seen by Goldstein
The Capacity to Bear Anxiety
Neurological and Physiological Aspects of Anxiety
Perception of Danger
Balance in the Autonomic System
Voodoo Death
Psychosomatic Aspects of Anxiety
An Example: Gastric Functions
The Case of Tom
Culture and the Meaning of Disease
4. ANXIETY INTERPRETED PSYCHOLOGICALLY
Do Animals Have Anxiety?
The Study of Children’s Fears
Maturation in Anxiety and Fears
Fears Masking Anxiety
A Note on Stress and Anxiety
Recent Research on Anxiety
Anxiety and Learning Theory
Personal Comments
5. ANXIETY INTERPRETED BY THE PSYCHOTHERAPISTS
Freud’s Evolving Theories of Anxiety
Anxiety and Repression
Origins of Anxiety as Seen by Freud
Trends in Freud’s Theories of Anxiety
Rank: Anxiety and Individuation
Adler: Anxiety and Inferiority Feelings
Jung: Anxiety and the Threat of the Irrational
Horney: Anxiety and Hostility
Sullivan: Anxiety as Apprehension of Disapproval
6. ANXIETY INTERPRETED CULTURALLY
The Importance of the Historical Dimension
Individualism in the Renaissance
Competitive Individualism in Work and Wealth
Fromm: Individual Isolation in Modern Culture
Anxiety and the Market Place
Mechanisms of Escape
Kardiner: Western Man’s Growth Pattern
7. SUMMARY AND SYNTHESIS OF THEORIES OF ANXIETY
The Nature of Anxiety
Normal and Neurotic Anxiety
Origins of Anxiety
Maturation of the Capacity for Anxiety
Anxiety and Fear
Anxiety and Conflict
Anxiety and Hostility
Culture and Community
PART II
CLINICAL ANALYSIS OF ANXIETY
8. CASE STUDIES DEMONSTRATING ANXIETY
What We Seek to Discover
Harold Brown: Conflict Underlying Severe Anxiety
Conclusions
9. THE STUDY OF UNMARRIED MOTHERS
Methods Used
Helen: Intellectualizing as a Defense against Anxiety
Nancy: Expectations at War with Reality
Agnes: Anxiety Related to Hostility and Aggression
Louise: Rejection by Mother without Anxiety
Bessie: Rejection by Parents without Anxiety
Dolores: Anxiety Panic While under Severe Threat
Phyllis: Absence of Anxiety in an Impoverished Personality
Frances: Constriction versus the Creative Impulse
Charlotte: Psychotic Developments as an Escape from Anxiety
Hester: Anxiety, Defiance, and Rebellion
Sarah and Ada: Absence and Presence of Anxiety in Two Black Women
Irene: Anxiety, Overconscientiousness, and Shyness
10. GLEANINGS FROM THE CASE STUDIES
Anxiety Underlying Fear
Conflict: Source of Anxiety
Rejection by Parents and Anxiety
Cleavage between Expectations and Reality
Neurotic Anxiety and the Middle Class
PART III
THE MANAGEMENT OF ANXIETY
11. METHODS OF DEALING WITH ANXIETY
In Extreme Situations
Destructive Ways
Constructive Ways
12. ANXIETY AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE SELF
Anxiety and the Impoverishment of Personality
Creativity, Intelligence, and Anxiety
The Realization of the Self
Appendices
Notes
Bibliography
Index
FOREWORD TO THE FIRST EDITION
T
HIS BOOK IS THE RESULT OF SEVERAL YEARS OF EXPLO-ration, research, and
thought on one of the most urgent problems of our day. Clinical experience has
proved to psychologists and psychiatrists alike that the central problem in
psychotherapy is the nature of anxiety. To the extent that we have been able to
solve that problem, we have made a beginning in understanding the causes of
integration and disintegration of personality.
But if anxiety were merely a phenomenon of maladjustment, it might well be
consigned to the consulting room and the clinic and this book to the professional
library. The evidence is overwhelming, however, that we live today in an “age of
anxiety.” If one penetrates below the surface of political, economic, business,
professional, or domestic crises to discover their psychological causes, or if one
seeks to understand modern art or poetry or philosophy or religion, one runs
athwart the problem of anxiety at almost every turn. The ordinary stresses and
strains of life in the changing world of today are such that few if any escape the
need to confront anxiety and to deal with it in some manner.
For the past hundred years, for reasons which will appear in the following
chapters, psychologists, philosophers, social historians, and other students of
humanity have been increasingly preoccupied with this nameless and formless
uneasiness that has dogged the footsteps of modern man. Yet in all that time, to
my knowledge, only two attempts have been made in book form—one essay by
Kierkegaard and one by Freud—to present an objective picture of anxiety and to
indicate constructive methods of dealing with it.
This study seeks to bring together in one volume the theories of anxiety
offered by modern explorers in different areas of our culture, to discover the
common elements in these theories, and to formulate these concepts so that we
shall have some common ground for further inquiry. If the synthesis of anxiety
theory presented here serves the purpose of producing some coherence and order
in this field, a good part of my goal will have been achieved.
It is of course clear that anxiety is not merely an abstract theoretical concept,
any more than swimming is to a person whose boat has capsized a mile from
shore. A discussion of anxiety that was not geared to immediate human
problems would not be worth either writing or reading. Hence the theoretical
problems would not be worth either writing or reading. Hence the theoretical
synthesis has been tested by investigation of actual anxiety situations and
selected case studies to discover what concrete evidence there may be to support
my conclusions as to what anxiety means and what purpose it serves in human
experience.
In order to keep this study within manageable limits, I have restricted its
scope to the observations of persons who are our contemporaries in all important
respects, and even within these limits only the most significant figures. These are
persons who represent Western civilization as we experience it, whether they are
philosophers like Kierkegaard, psychotherapists like Freud, novelists, poets,
economists, social historians, or others with keen insight into human problems.
These restrictions in time and space serve to bring the problem of anxiety into
sharp focus, but they should not be taken to imply that anxiety is exclusively a
modern problem or solely a Western one. I hope that this book will stimulate
similar surveys in other parts of the field.
Because of the vital general interest in the subject of anxiety, I have stated
my findings so that they will be clear not only to professional readers but also to
students, to social scientists, and to readers who seek a psychological
understanding of modern problems. This book is in fact pertinent to the concerns
of intelligent citizens who feel on their own pulse the tensions and anxiety-
creating conflicts of our day and who have asked themselves what the meaning
and causes of this anxiety may be and how the anxiety can be dealt with.
For those interested in a comparative survey of modern schools of
psychotherapy, this volume should serve as a convenient textbook, presenting as
it does the views of a dozen leaders in this field. There is no better way to
understand these various schools than to compare their theories of anxiety.
During the years I was working on this book, my ideas on anxiety were
sharpened and broadened by discussions with many professional colleagues and
friends, too numerous to be mentioned here. But I wish to express appreciation
to Dr. O. H. Mowrer, Dr. Kurt Goldstein, Dr. Paul Tillich, and Dr. Esther Lloyd-
Jones, who read the manuscript at its various stages and who discussed with me
through many stimulating hours the problem of anxiety in the fields they
represent. I am also indebted for direct and indirect help in this study to Dr.
Erich Fromm and other colleagues in the William Alanson White Institute of
Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis and Psychology. A final word of appreciation is
directed to the psychiatrist and the social workers at the institution in which the
case studies of unmarried mothers were made. These colleagues gave expert help
in the understanding of the cases, though for obvious reasons they must remain
anonymous.
ROLLO MAY
New York, New York
February, 1950
FOREWORD TO THE REVISED EDITION
S
INCE THE FIRST EDITION OF THIS BOOK APPEARED IN 1950, there has been an
enormous amount of research and interest in anxiety. In contrast to the fact that
only two books were written on anxiety before 1950, a score of volumes were
published in the last quarter century. And in contrast to the half-dozen papers
exploring the subject before 1950, it has been estimated that at least 6,000
studies and dissertations on anxiety and tangential subjects have appeared since
1950. Anxiety has certainly come out of the dimness of the professional office
into the bright light of the market place. I am gratified that the original Meaning
of Anxiety spurred some of this surge of interest.
But with all the devoted efforts on the part of gifted persons, I know of no
one who would claim that the riddle of anxiety has been solved. Our knowledge
has increased but we have not learned how to deal with anxiety. Though the
concept of normal anxiety, as advanced in the first edition of this book, has been
generally accepted in theory, the implications of it have not been faced. We still
cling to the illogical belief that “mental health is living without anxiety.” We
seem unaware that the delusion of living without anxiety reveals a radical
misperception of reality—a point made inescapably clear in our day of atomic
radiation and the hydrogen bomb.
Anxiety has a meaning. Though part of this meaning can be destructive,
another part also can be constructive. Our very survival is the result of steps
taken long ago to confront anxiety. Originally, primitive man, as both Freud and
Adler have said, experienced anxiety as a warning of the threat to his life from
the teeth and claws of wild animals. Anxiety played a prominent part in our
forefather’s development of his capacity to think and his ability to use symbols
and tools to extend his protective reach.
But in our day we still see our major threats as coming from the tooth and
claw of physical enemies when they are actually largely psychological and in the
broadest sense spiritual—that is they deal with meaninglessness. We are no
longer prey to tigers and mastodons but to damage to our self-esteem, ostracism
by our group, or the threat of losing out in the competitive struggle. The form of
anxiety has changed, but the experience remains relatively the same.
Anxiety is essential to the human condition. For a personal example, I