Fear Psychology Read online

altruism, against death. Does all activity amount to that, a gamble in which pleasure (or the reduction of fear and pain) is balanced against danger? So if altruism is just a matter of pleasure overriding fear and pain, is it selfish after all? Do we simply choose to act for the greatest net gain, for the greatest pleasure or least pain or combination of the two? The argument does seem to lead there, but intuitively there is something more to altruism and if so, what could it be? Love and pleasure are sustained by courage because courage can endure the pain that arises if love and pleasure are threatened by a temporary change of circumstances. As Winston Churchill said, “Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities because it is the quality that guarantees all others”. Courage can be defined as the ability to do something that frightens or will cause pain. If one has abandoned oneself to love for pleasure and escape from fear, the possibility that the escape will fail for some reason might generate a new fear. Such dangers occur when it would advantage one of the parties to respond to some situation or event in a way that was not optimum for the maintenance of the cooperation. For example, suppose the asset-rich partner of the business referred to above needed cash to cover a personal debt and demanded to withdraw some capital, thus possibly putting the business in jeopardy. The courageous way of the partner’s dealing with such an event, being unable to dissuade the other, would usually be to endure the pain and fear in that particular case, in the interest of the cooperation expected in the future. In general a preparedness to accept on occasion, less cooperation from the other party than was given could be an altruistic act of love requiring courage. Another example of altruism is seen when spouses remain together with some pain, in consideration of the children of the marriage. An inherent inability of one party to cooperate in some situations might also be endured altruistically by the other party. So it is suggested that in admiring altruism we are admiring courage and that society admires love and altruism for their basis in courage whether it realizes it or not. There is also the pragmatic reason that they are valuable to both the individuals and the group. Courage is their stabilizer.

  Courage is questionable in the matter of anger. Animals as well as humans exhibit what appears to be angry behaviour, but its value is unclear. Many situations are better handled with quiet resolve than by anger. In 1564 Johaan Weyer, regarded by many as the father of modern psychiatry, wrote a book “On the Disease of Anger” in which he claimed ‘that of all disorders anger is the most dreadful and leads to numberless evils’. Anger might indeed be called a disease when we consider the great harm done by angry people. We have a fairly recent example in ‘road rage’ which is likely to increase as the traffic density reaches absurd levels. Intra-family violence and social unrest are becoming more frequent as the world population approaches an unmanageable state. Unfortunately the worse the conditions the more likely the recourse to anger.

  We can become angry at almost anything that discomforts us – the weather, bad luck, our own mistakes and so on, but anger can acquire a special quality and intensity when directed at other people. Perhaps it has evolved as an indicator to an aggressor that action will be taken if the discomforting behaviour does not promptly cease. It also briefly gives the angry person more courage. But some people are chronically angry, perhaps less enduring of discomfort than others, or having some underlying anxiety that finds an outlet in futile or inappropriate anger. Another morbid aspect of anger is the tendency to carry it on after a fight has removed the discomfort. This is punishment of the person for causing the original distress and may sometimes be justified as reducing the chance of a repetition in the future. At other times it reveals a lack of general empathy.

  Application of the hypothesis to effective living

  The general failure of psychotherapy to achieve significant permanent removal of symptoms, could be explained by assuming that the symptoms are more tolerable than the distress of whatever produced them, which in the present argument is the cosmic threat. We deal with life’s stresses partly by rational behaviour and partly by strategies that are more comfortable than rational behaviour but become habitual and lead to behaviour idiosyncrasies or neuroses that have the permanent effect of reducing happiness.

  This is analogous with the situation where we take analgesics to relieve pain and suffer the side effects of the analgesics. The side effects are more tolerable than the pain. Gradually the relief becomes less effective and the dose has to be increased. The side effects also increase until they become less tolerable than the original pain, at which point some alternative measures must be sought. In the case of mental pain psychotherapy may be tried. Therapy based on the cosmic threat hypothesis would encourage enduring it and discourage the seeking of immediate relief. If an itch is endured for a while it goes away, while if constantly scratched it continues and increases. The cosmic threat will not go away, but the distress it produces can be expected to subside in the same way as the itch does if not scratched.

  Our degree of readiness to endure the entrenched fear without immediately seeking relief is probably inherited, but perhaps we can improve with practice. And if we also try to sense the fear behind undesirable behaviour or symptoms such as addictions, rage, laziness, social avoidance, and so on, it might be possible to endure the fear at its origin and avoid the symptoms.

  An example of how this idea may be tested is proposed as follows. If you are an addict and at some moment have a pressing desire for whatever drug you use, you perceive the feeling as a desire for pleasure. But the cosmic threat hypothesis states that the real desire is for relief from the entrenched fear, and as with the itch example above, the more you focus on the need for relief the worse it gets, so the next step is to sit down and endure the discomfort for a while. If you don’t feel any fear check for evidence of it, anger, tenseness etc and try to sense it. In about ten minutes as the distress subsides think about doing some pleasant job or substituting another form of entertainment for the drug, for example reading a book or watching television. Refrain from thinking of the relief the drug would provide be it via unnecessary food, alcohol, nicotine or some other. Practice might begin to increase your endurance and hence decrease the need. Setting out as much of the drug as you plan to take during the day (a quantity that you decide will get progressively smaller) and focusing on the idea that the entrenched fear is the real motivator, might work. Similarly for other habits that you wish to be free of. Anger should be easy to deal with since it is more obviously rooted in fear than addictions are.

  As stated above, humans cannot survive without group living, which is therefore the environment in which survival striving takes place. Individuals restraining their selfish behavior for the sake of society and other individuals, become resentful whenever their restraint seems un-reciprocated. They fear that the love and protection of others is absent and tend to respond by withdrawing love from others. Such a reaction is usually short lived because more favorable experiences cancel it, but an unfriendly or hostile environment might offer no relief. Also the readiness for resentment is greater in those who have less ability to endure discomfort and are more narcissistic – “How dare others show disrespect or withdraw their love from such an important person as me?” The inevitable ‘vicious circle’ then develops in which others, sensing the hostility tend avoid such people, so their entrenched fear and the anger it generates increases. It seems likely that many serious crimes such as stalking and finally killing an ex (or desired or fantasized) lover, or murdering someone for what seems to be a relatively trivial reason have this basis. It is also possible that paranoia develops in this way, the fear and anger supporting a progressive loss of reality testing. Perhaps all psychosis originates from a profound inability to cope with the entrenched fear.

  More usual than these extreme cases are the ones in which it seems that the anger turns inwards against the self. This fulfills several needs at once. Being angry with someone (or with ‘fate’) finds emotional discharge only if followed by action. This is likely to
be dangerous or impossible, but if directed at oneself it is both safe and possible so the discharge is facilitated. Anger at oneself then substitutes for externally expressed anger and also relieves any feelings of guilt that tend to arise from an attitude of ill will towards others. With these advantages, self-punishment is not easily abandoned and the misery of depression that it causes is preferable to dammed up anger and guilt feelings. It is also periodically replaced by a euphoria that probably has the function of offsetting the pain of the depression and expresses the relief of finding a stable solution to the original dilemma. Presumably the rare outcome of suicide, represents a collapse of the complicated internal arrangements and a victory for society. Perhaps that victory in turn generates society’s guilt and explains religion’s and society’s strong objection not only to suicide but even to euthanasia of someone requesting it for escape from intolerable physical pain. In the voice of offended society “How dare these individuals withdraw their love and gratitude and cause us the