Now there are times when a whole generation is caught...between two ages, two modes of life, with the consequence that it loses all power to understand itself and has no standards, no security, no simple acquiescence. — Hesse
And as for ideals, the Christian church, the brotherhood of man, international social democracy and the "solidarity" of economic interests have all failed to stand the baptism of fire - the test of reality...I say that modern man has suffered an almost fatal shock, psychologically speaking, and as a result has fallen into profound uncertainty. — Jung, Ibid, p. 200
Confusion now hath made his masterpiece. — Macduff
Anxiety only befalls the weak and the unworthy. — baker
As a member of this category of weak and unworthy humans, can anyone provide me one example of someone who has not experienced anxiety at any point in their life? — javra
You can "be" whatever you want to "be" on an anonymous forum. Even anxiety-free. :smile: — ZzzoneiroCosm
Interested to look at your quotes when I can. — ZzzoneiroCosm
And I say: Not if one hangs around the forum for a long-enough period of time. :razz: — javra
Well, found them on goodreads; no reference to where they belong in the book was given. Like them all the same, though. — javra
https://www.philosophyforlife.org/blog/modern-philosophies-as-therapyExistentialism managed to escape academia to a greater extent than many other modern philosophies, largely because of the literary skill of its champions - Sartre, Camus, Iris Murdoch and others - who embedded its ideas in narratives. That's really the key to making any philosophy take root among ordinary people. But even existentialism gradually became lost once again in thickets of jargon impenetrable to all but the specialist. So it failed to become a practical social philosophy - and when it tried to become more political and mobilised, it became sucked up by the vortex of Trotskyism (in Sartre's case) and Nazism (in Heidegger's case). — Jules Evans
Two related quotes from the book I found online:
“Anxiety has a purpose. Originally the purpose was to protect the existence of the caveman from wild beasts and savage neighbors. Nowadays the occasions for anxiety are very different - we are afraid of losing out in the competition, feeling unwanted, isolated, and ostracized. But the purpose of anxiety is still to protect us from dangers that threaten the same things: our existence or values that we identify with our existence. This normal anxiety of life cannot be avoided except at the price of apathy or the numbing of one's sensibilities and imagination.” — javra
As a psychotherapist in training — ZzzoneiroCosm
debilitating — ZzzoneiroCosm
pathological anxiety. — ZzzoneiroCosm
Only that individual can go through life without anxiety who is conscious of belonging to the fellowship of man. — Alfred Adler
Anxiety has a purpose. Originally the purpose was to protect the existence of the caveman from wild beasts and savage neighbors. Nowadays the occasions for anxiety are very different - we are afraid of losing out in the competition, feeling unwanted, isolated, and ostracized. But the purpose of anxiety is still to protect us from dangers that threaten the same things: our existence or values that we identify with our existence. — Rollo May, The Meaning of Anxiety, p. 329 (bolds mine)
As a psychotherapist in training, this favorite of mine, with its positive spin on an at times debilitating habit of mind, will be central to my approach to clients with pathological anxiety. — ZzzoneiroCosm
Unscrupulously. — Agent Smith
That's just too general a characterization for what psychotherapists do. — baker
Anxiety accompanies intellectual activity as its shadow. — Liddell
Are more creative personalities more frequently confronted with anxiety-creating situations? We have seen that impoverished personalities have relatively little neurotic anxiety...Paul Torrance describes how creative children continually seek out anxiety-creating situations to further their own self-realization. — Rollo May - The Meaning of Anxiety, p. 349
...impoverishment of personality is related to the absence of anxiety. Anxiety tends to impoverish and constrict the personality, and where impoverishment is accepted and structuralized in the personality - i.e., once one has become impoverished - subjective conflicts and anxiety are avoided. [But] a moderate amount of anxiety has a constructive effect on the organism. Simple contentment, in other words, is not the aim of life. Such things as vitality, commitment to values, breadth of sensitivity, I propose, are more adequate goals. — Rollo May - The Meaning of Anxiety, p. 351
In neurotic anxiety, the cleavage between expectations and reality is in the form of a contradiction...the individual [therefore] engages in a neurotic distortion of reality...In productive activity, on the other hand, the expectations are not in contradiction to reality, but are used as a means of creatively transforming reality. The cleavage is constantly being resolved by the individual's bringing expectations and reality progressively into greater accord....our creative power - is at the same time our power to transcend neurotic anxiety and to live with normal anxiety. — Ibid, p. 353
Self-realization - i.e., expression and creative use of the individual's capacities - can occur only as the individual confronts and moves through anxiety-creating experiences. The freedom of the healthy individual inheres in his capacity to avail himself of new possibilities in the meeting and overcoming of potential threats to his existence. By moving through anxiety-creating experiences, one seeks and partially achieves realization of himself. He enlarges the scope of his activity and, at the same time, measure of selfhood. It is also a prerequisite to working through the anxiety. — Ibid, p. 354
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