Fear of breakdown and the unlived life

Winnicott's Fear of breakdown is an unfinished work that requires that the reader be not only a reader, but also a writer of this work which often gestures toward meaning as opposed to presenting fully developed ideas. The author's understanding of the often confusing, sometimes opaque, argument of Winnicott's paper is as follows. In infancy there occurs a breakdown in the mother–infant tie that forces the infant to take on, by himself, emotional events that he is unable to manage. He short‐circuits his experience of primitive agony by generating defense organizations that are psychotic in nature, i.e. they substitute self‐created inner reality for external reality, thus foreclosing his actually experiencing critical life events. By not experiencing the breakdown of the mother–infant tie when it occurred in infancy, the individual creates a psychological state in which he lives in fear of a breakdown that has already happened, but which he did not experience. The author extends Winnicott's thinking by suggesting that the driving force of the patient's need to find the source of his fear is his feeling that parts of himself are missing and that he must find them if he is to become whole. What remains of his life feels to him like a life that is mostly an unlived life.     

Fear of fear,trait anxiety and aerobic fitness in relation to state anxiety during adrenalin provocation

Abstract

Psychological explanations of both spontaneous and experimentally induced panic anxiety stress the role of fear of fear, especially fear of bodily symptoms of arousal. Fear of fear is conceptually different from trait anxiety but may be associated with repeated experience of arousal symptoms in fearful situations, while frequent physical exercise may lead to habituation to these symptoms. To test this hypothesis, 44 healthy male volunteers, classified as having high or low trait anxiety and high or low aerobic fitness, underwent a single-dose adrenalin infusion (80 nanogram/kilogram bodyweight/minute). In both groups, during the experiment a significant rise in state anxiety was found; compared to the group with low trait anxiety, subjects with high trait anxiety reported higher levels of state anxiety, which could be attributed to differences in aerobic fitness. In the high-anxious group, subjects showed a greater decrease in state anxiety during the recovery phase. State anxiety during adrenalin was strongly associated with fear of bodily symptoms only in the high-anxious group. Correlations between trait anxiety and somatic anxiety were not significant; state anxiety scores tended to correlate negatively with physical fitness. It is concluded that these results lend support to a fear of fear-model of panic anxiety.     

Anxiety sensitivity and its impact on pain experiences and conditions: A state of the art

This paper serves as an introduction to the special issue of Cognitive Behaviour Therapy devoted to the topic of anxiety sensitivity (AS) and its impact on pain experiences and conditions. We provide a historical overview of relevant cognitive behavioural models of chronic pain, summarize recent models incorporating the AS construct, and introduce the papers in the special issue. These papers are organized into two sets – basic laboratory‐based investigations and relatively more applied studies. We attempt to highlight some of the most important findings from each of these investigations and studies, in turn. Then, we consider several important conclusions derived from the set of special issue papers and the implications of these for the practice of cognitive‐behavioural interventions with pain populations. Finally, we make several suggestions for directions for future investigations in this burgeoning area of cognitive behavioural research and practice.     

Eye movements during recall of aversive memory decreases conditioned fear

Cognitive-behavioral therapy for anxiety disorders typically involves exposure to the conditioned stimulus (CS). Despite its status as an effective and primary treatment, many patients do not show clinical improvement or relapse. Contemporary learning theory suggests that treatment may be optimized by adding techniques that aim at revaluating the aversive consequence (US) of the feared stimulus. This study tested whether US devaluation via a dual task – imagining the US while making eye movements – decreases conditioned fear. Following fear acquisition one group recalled the US while making eye movements (EM) and one group merely recalled the US (RO). Next, during a test phase, all participants were re-presented the CSs. Dual tasking, relative to the control condition, decreased memory vividness and emotionality. Moreover, only in the dual task condition reductions were observed in self-reported fear, US expectancy, and CS unpleasantness, but not in skin conductance responses. Findings provide the first evidence that the dual task decreases conditioned fear and suggest it may be a valuable addition to exposure therapy.     

Obstacles to development – reflections on Eugene O'Neill's play “A Moon for the Misbegotten.” Special reference to Banter,Fear and Suspicion

Obstacles for development are discussed with Eugene O'Neills play “A moon for the misbegotten as starting point” and with special reference to banter, fear and suspicion The dead mother is used to understand the characters as well as the oidipal situation and the fear of the stranger.     

Intrinsic religiosity protects believers from the existential fear of a human Jesus

ABSTRACT

The present study examined the role of internalised religious beliefs in defending against existential concerns aroused from a creaturely Jesus. Prior work has found that biologically human traits (e.g., vomiting, sweating, etc.) can increase death concerns when applied to both humans and a god. Intrinsic beliefs, however, have been shown to reduce mortality awareness. In the current study, religious participants were primed with thoughts of either a human or neutral Jesus followed by a single item measure about fear of death. A moderated regression analysis found that whereas high intrinsic individuals were buffered from existential concerns, low intrinsic individuals experienced a greater fear of death when primed with a human Jesus. These results replicate prior work within terror management theory and the psychology of religion suggesting that internalised beliefs serve a protective function against existential anxieties.     

Reading Ability and the Use of Context in Orthographic Information Processing

Reading ability and context use in orthographic processing during silent reading were investigated. Poor readers and reading-level matched controls were presented target words containing a letter substitution in two contrasting context conditions. The hypothesis was that presenting a word in a highly predictable context would induce readers to proceed through the text without completely processing orthographic units at lower processing levels in the hierarchy (e.g., constituent letters). This general context effect was found. Normal and poor readers did not differ in context dependency. Poor readers more often missed substitutions, regardless of context. Poor readers also processed orthographic information less accurately. Target letters located in final word position were missed most often. Substitutions located in high bigram-frequency letter clusters were more often missed, and this effect was independent of intraword location. The implications of these results for understanding poor readers' basic reading problems are discussed.     

Time course of attentional bias for fear-relevant pictures in spider-fearful individuals

The time course of attentional biases for spider stimuli was assessed in two groups of individuals with high or low levels of spider fear. Pairs of photographs of spiders and cats were presented in a visual probe task with three exposure durations: 200, 500 and 2000 ms. Results indicated greater attentional bias for spider stimuli in high fear, than in low fear, individuals in the 200 ms condition. The attentional bias in the high fear group significantly reduced as stimulus exposure duration increased, with no significant biases found in the longer exposure conditions. Results support the view that high fear is associated with an enhanced initial attentional bias for fear-relevant stimuli, but that this attentional bias is not maintained over time.