Lecture
Neurotic anxiety is a form of anxiety that is not adaptive and can have a substantial impact on a person's life, including his or her emotional and physical state, behavior, and quality of life. The psychotherapeutic theory of neurotic anxiety encompasses various approaches and explanations of this phenomenon. One of the best-known theoretical approaches to neurotic anxiety is Freud's theory.
Here are the main aspects of the psychotherapeutic theory of neurotic anxiety, based on the teaching of Sigmund Freud:
Internal conflicts: Freud believed that neurotic anxiety stems from internal conflicts between different parts of the personality. He divided the personality into three components: the id, the ego, and the superego. Anxiety arises when these parts of the personality are in conflict with one another.
The conflict between instincts and morality: Freud argued that the instinctive desires and needs characteristic of the id can contradict the moral and social norms represented by the superego. This conflict can produce anxiety.
Defence mechanisms: Freud also described the defence mechanisms that the ego uses to soften anxiety. For example, repression, rationalization, and projection can be used to conceal and soften conflicts and anxiety.
Analysis of dreams and associations: Freud proposed the analysis of dreams and associations as methods for uncovering hidden conflicts and the sources of neurotic anxiety. In the course of psychoanalysis the patient communicates with the analyst, freely associating and recounting his dreams and thoughts.
Treatment through psychoanalysis: Freud developed the method of psychoanalysis for treating neuroses and neurotic anxiety. In the course of psychoanalysis the patient seeks understanding and resolution of internal conflicts through the analysis of his thoughts, feelings, and dreams.
Today there exist psychotherapeutic theories explaining the
origin of neurotic anxieties, anxieties arising from
chance occurrences in human life. All of these theories converge on
one point: “Anxiety is the awareness of unresolved conflicts between
the structural elements of the personality”. Beyond that, the theories diverge in
how they explain the mechanisms of anxiety. Conflicts between imagined worlds
and the experience of the real world, between unconscious drives and
repressive norms, between the striving for greatness and perfection and
the experience of one's own insignificance and imperfection, between the striving
to preserve, to fix one's attitude toward oneself, and new conceptions
of self-awareness, among others. All of these conflicts make themselves known at the moment of encounter
and produce a brief or prolonged state of anxiety.
The shortcoming of explanatory theories of the origin of anxiety is
that anxiety is investigated predominantly from the standpoint of psychology, and is not
raised to the level of culture and ontology.
The pathological anxiety with which psychology deals can be
understood, explained, and overcome if it is considered in the context
of existential anxiety. Pathological anxiety, P. Tillich asserts,
is a form of existential anxiety arising under special conditions. Thus, under
special conditions of human being (catastrophes, crises, violence),
existential anxiety manifests itself in one or several of its
forms. Anxiety pushes a person toward courage, but if he lacks the strength
to resist, then despair can become the alternative to courage. We have already
seen that anxiety strives to become fear, in order to acquire an object with
which courage can cope. Courage does not eliminate
existential anxiety; however, it takes the anxiety of non-being into itself.
Courage is self-affirmation in spite of non-being. Anxiety pushes us toward
courage, since the only alternative to courage can be despair.
If a person lacks the courage to accept anxiety upon himself, he may
evade the extreme situation of despair by fleeing into neurosis. “Neurosis
is a way of hiding from non-being by hiding from being. He continues
to affirm himself, but now within a limited area.
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In the neurotic state self-affirmation does not disappear: on the contrary,
it can be very strong and pronounced. However, the neurotic self is
a reduced self. Some of its potentialities are not allowed to be
actualized in being. The person affirms something less than his essential
or potential being. He renounces part of his potentialities in order
to save the remnants of being. This scheme explains the dual character
of the neurotic. On the one hand the neurotic is more sensitive to the threat of non-being
than the normal person. And since non-being uncovers the mystery of being,
the neurotic may turn out to be a more creative personality than a healthy
person. The limitation of extensiveness comes at the cost of greater intensity,
however, this intensity is concentrated at a single point, which leads to
a distortion of the relation to reality as a whole.
Differences between the neurotic and the healthy personality.
The neurotic personality is more sensitive to non-being and, consequently, possesses
a deeper anxiety. It prefers a fixed, though
limited and unrealistic type of self-affirmation. The self-affirmation
of such a personality is a castle into which it has withdrawn, the house of the wise
little gudgeon. This castle it guards, with the help of every possible mechanism
of psychological resistance, from any external influence.
Such resistance is not without a certain instinctive wisdom.
The neurotic realizes (or does not) that a situation may arise in which his
unrealistic self-affirmation will suffer collapse, and then no
realistic self-affirmation will replace it. The threat is quite real: either
a new neurosis, which will employ a more sophisticated defence
mechanism, or the collapse of the limited self-affirmation will lead to
boundless despair.
In the case of the self-affirmation of the healthy person the situation
is entirely different. Such self-affirmation is fragmentary. The healthy person
keeps away from extreme situations, courageously coping with
concrete objects of fear. He usually does not realize that non-being and
anxiety are present in the depths of his personality. However, his fragmentary
self-affirmation is not fixed and is not protected against the insuperable threat
of anxiety. The ordinary person is better adapted to reality than
the neurotic. He surpasses the neurotic in extensiveness, but he lacks
the intensity that can make the neurotic a creative personality.
Anxiety does not prompt the healthy person to create imaginary worlds. He
affirms himself in unity with those parts of reality that he
encounters, and they possess definite contours. This is precisely why
this person is healthy compared with the neurotic. The neurotic is ill and
needs treatment, because he is in conflict with reality.
Reality constantly traumatizes him, penetrating through the fortress walls of his
self-defence, into the imaginary world outlined by these walls. The limited
and fixed self-affirmation of the neurotic both guards him from
the unbearable pressure of anxiety and destroys him, turning him against reality,
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and reality against him, and once again provokes an unbearable attack of anxiety.
Pathological anxiety – a dangerous illness, despite its creative
potential.
However, the self-affirmation of the healthy person can also become
neurotic: this happens when the reality to which he had previously
adapted changes, and a real threat arises to that
fragmentary courage which allowed him to cope with
familiar objects of fear. This occurs in critical historical
periods. We are living through just such a period in the development of civilization
in general and of our state in particular. On this, see the writings of M.
Mamardashvili, who characterizes such a state of consciousness and
civilization as an anthropological catastrophe. Thus, if this occurs, then
self-affirmation becomes pathological. The person becomes
a fanatical defender of the existing order, since dangers lurk in
any changes and in the unknown of what is to come and the darkness of the
future that follows them. The person defends the existing order with the same persistence
with which the neurotic defends the castle of his imaginary world. The person
loses his relative openness to reality and experiences
an unfathomable depth of anxiety. If he is unable to accept this anxiety into
his self-affirmation, then his anxiety turns into neurosis.
This explains the emergence of mass neuroses, which, as a
rule, appear at the twilight of eras. In this period existential and
neurotic anxieties become intertwined to such a degree that they are difficult
to distinguish. For example, when the anxiety of condemnation, which underlies
asceticism, becomes pathological. Does the anxiety
of the demonic always have a neurotic or even psychotic character?
Freud's psychoanalysis became one of the founding movements in psychotherapy and continues to influence the understanding of neurotic anxiety and its treatment. Nevertheless, it should be noted that over time other psychotherapeutic schools and approaches have also emerged, which likewise investigate and treat neurotic anxiety.
Questions:
1. General characterization of existential anxieties
2. The anxiety of fate and death
3. The anxiety of guilt and condemnation
4. The anxiety of emptiness and the absence of meaning
5. The relationship between the categories of “anxiety” and “fear”
6. The mechanism of the emergence of pathological anxiety
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