As we can ourselves clearly see, we are, we remain, utterly baffled by ourselves and the world! It is this, it is that, it is both, it is neither:

Confusion now hath made his masterpiece. — Macduff

:confused:

Oh, but man is the beauty of the world, the best thing that ever happened to the Universe! Anxiety only befalls the weak and the unworthy.

The paragon of animals!

From the wiki link above:

The book is notable for questioning fundamental assumptions about mental health and asserts that anxiety in fact aids in the development of an ultimately healthy personality.

Nice quote. :smile:

Anxiety only befalls the weak and the unworthy. — baker

:rofl: Oh, man, that gave me a good laugh. 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?

It’s like claiming to learn in manners perpetually devoid of questioning, and hence in manners devoid of any uncertainty. Yea, I know, uncertainty being for unworthy weaklings as well - or so some will say - rather than being the driving force behind new insights, be these in the form of knowledge or wisdom. This latter take as the book "Meaning of Anxiety" might want us to believe.

… Like anxiety over global warming pertaining to those weak and unworthy that might lead to insights in how to satisfactorily resolve the matter sooner rather than later, this verses the robust confidence of those strong and worthy who don’t give a damn regardless of the existential risks right in front of their nose.

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.”

and

“But attempts to evade anxiety are not only doomed to failure. In running from anxiety you lose your most precious opportunities for the emergence of yourself, and for your education as a human being.”

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:

Interested to look at your quotes when I can.

You can "be" whatever you want to "be" on an anonymous forum. Even anxiety-free. :smile: — ZzzoneiroCosm

And I say: Not if one hangs around the forum for a long-enough period of time. :razz:

(The forum's mostly about philosophical bickering, where we think we're right but where each believes some other shmuck is wrong. Smug oversimplification, granted. And in no way demeaning the forum's good.)

Interested to look at your quotes when I can. — ZzzoneiroCosm

Well, found them on goodreads; no reference to where they belong in the book was given. Like them all the same, though.

And I say: Not if one hangs around the forum for a long-enough period of time. :razz: — javra

That's a good point. Time is revealing.

Well, found them on goodreads; no reference to where they belong in the book was given. Like them all the same, though. — javra

I've read the book but I'm looking to get a deeper understanding so I may be able to put them in context. :)

Will the simple biconditional statement below contribute?

I am anxious $\leftrightarrow$ I care!

A motto of mine which, unfortunately, I haven't been able to implement: Always Panic!

I suppose the OP boils down to the hot passion vs. cold logic debate. I would prefer both, but, it just dawned on me, if one has to choose one and only one, I'd go for cold logic. However, that's cold logic self-promoting. Trust issues crop up!

It's a long time since I read any Rollo May, I always thought of him as a decent conservative trying to understand these wild modern radicals - as personified by fellow existentialist R D Laing, for example (as quoted here).

My own view though is that what is being diagnosed here is the necessary condition of every psychological theory, for every generation. This is because one's psychological theory is the lens through which one understands and relates to, oneself and other people. As such, to a considerable extent it modifies the psyche itself, just as the particular character of one's own psyche will influence how one interprets that of others.

Thus to crudely illustrate, my parents lived at some particular time and had psychological understanding X, and in order to understand my parents and their time, and particularly their imperfections and failings, I have to take a critical view of theory X - "Well at the time people thought X and so they didn't understand ... blah blah..." This is theory Y, an obvious improvement on X. Thus the lifespan of any psychological theory is about 25 years.

Existentialism 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

https://www.philosophyforlife.org/blog/modern-philosophies-as-therapy

Philosophies have a longer life than psychologies. But one sees in this short paragraph something of the interaction of philosophy, psychology, politics, and daily life, and how impossible it is to arrive at a complete and stable understanding of them.

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

This still implicitly frames anxiety as a pathological state, and, more importantly, it paints people as amorphous, unsystematic blobs.

It's not that anxiety has a purpose, it's that people have standards.

For example, when you are concerned whether you have done your work well, this reflects your good work ethics. You're not "anxious", you have standards. It's not that anxiety that alerts you to possible mistakes in your work, it's that you have standards.

I'll let others comment on this as they will.

Thanks for posting. :smile:

I wanted to let you know that I'm looking at the long game here as I don't always have a ton of time to read and post. 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.

As a psychotherapist in training — ZzzoneiroCosm

A psychotherapist ... Cool.

If the book's theme intrigues you, see is you can do anything with the musing that "depression is nature's way of telling there's something wrong". No references; kinda a personal partial takeaway from "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger". Basic point: figure out what's wrong, resolve it to a good enough extent, and you grow as a human being because of it, rather than being debilitated by the same states of mind. No problem if not interested. But it's helped me out in my life often enough.

Good luck in your endevors!

My approach is humanist-existentialist. I'll reserve some time this summer to familiarize myself with the existentialist take on depression. With any luck, they've managed a positive spin on that one too.

debilitating — ZzzoneiroCosm

pathological anxiety. — ZzzoneiroCosm

Documented and confirmed!

A vicious cycle: Anxiety leads to irrationality and irrationality leads to anxiety. From a Darwnian point of view, I don't quite understand this destructive positive feedback loop? What is its final cause (telos)? :chin:

Great observation about the life span of psychological models.

Jules Evan's observation that such models are vulnerable to becoming tools for nefarious ends is very interesting.

The closing chapter of the text ("Methods of Dealing with Anxiety") begins with a quote from Adler:

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)

This notion of an anxiety-inducing threat to our value system is key. If the age-old, tried and true value system of a whole civilization finds itself menaced by novel and unanticipated cultural, theological, political, or philosophical transmogrifications, we have entered - The Age of Anxiety.*


*See Auden's anti-epic by that name.

I find this very incomplete and generalizing. I could be missing the point.

But often anxiety leads me to want to sleep and wake up refreshed and elated.

The reason for this is is that anxiety can reach a threshold where the thing you are doing in spite of anxiety where the thing you are doing is not enjoyable whatsoever anymore and you're just doing the thing because of some future reward where you might conquer or evolve beyong the anxiety. This is a gamble because you might not at all.

Ofcourse there is a subtle anxiety or excitiation which you could call eustress where the thing your doing is still enjoyable even though you have a little anxiety but you can't really call it anxiety, it's just a subtle fear or excitement.

And then there is also possibly a genetic, soul-level, component where some people thrive from anxiety whilst others do not at all.

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

So how do you intend to approach scrupulosity?

So how do you intend to approach scrupulosity? — baker

Unscrupulously. :snicker:

Unscrupulously. — Agent Smith

That's just too general a characterization for what psychotherapists do.

Good question. I wasn't familiar with the term. I know CBT has been successful with these kinds of obsessive, self-destructive habits of mind.

I hope to learn a wide variety of treatment options and take it case by case.

Meditation cured my "scrupulosity" - but that takes years of painstaking practice.

That's just too general a characterization for what psychotherapists do. — baker

Keeps us sane, these helpful, though less-than-perfect, generalizations.

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

A confrontation with anxiety is a fork in the road; there are two possibilities: constrict the personality to avoid the anxiety-laden circumstance or welcome anxiety as reflecting an opportunity for psychical and creative ascent.

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

A confrontation with anxiety is a fork in the road: there are two possibilities: a neurotic distortion of the real or a creative transformation of the real. The first increases, the second decreases, the discord between expectations and the real.

Anxiety as linked to self-realization:

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