Gain insight into fear
(Note: This article is selected from my series of courses "Psychoanalytic Treatment of Neurosis")
(i) On fear
(1) What is fear?
◎ Fear is the fear in our hearts, and it is the nervousness and helplessness of people under internal and external threats. As an emotion, fear is a colloquial word, fear is a professional language, and the professional field will say "phobia" instead of "phobia".
◎ As emotional feelings, they may differ in degree, and the fear experienced by fear is lighter than fear. For example, a person who is afraid of heat will say "I am afraid of summer" instead of "I am afraid of summer"; once we are really faced with a sudden crisis, we are naturally very frightened, and the word non-fear can express the degree of fear at that time.
◎ Psychology is concerned with the fear of psychological feelings, not the fear of being in crisis, but the externalization of unconscious deep fear.
◎ Emotions similar to fear include anxiety, nervousness, worry, panic, etc., and there is no inevitable relationship between them that increases or transforms, but only describes people's risk premonitions in different situations, reflecting people's fears in different moods.
◎ Fear is a fundamental element of our emotional structure. The universe itself is full of bizarre, horror, and variables, and society is full of stress, risks, and variables, so for conscious human beings, fear or fear is everywhere from birth to death.
(2) Types and categories of fear
Krishnamurti said that no matter how carefully we analyze fear or create theories about it, we will eventually be afraid. But if we can dig deeper into it, we may be able to dismantle it completely.
◎ Fear signifiers, explicit and invisible, conscious and unconscious, broad and specific.
Unconscious fears of spiritual sub-inquiry include: hypochondriacal fear, sexual fear, situational fear, intimacy fear, marital fear, fear of fear, and so on.
◎ People in different situations will have the same or different fears, and people in the same situations will also have the same or different fears. For example, couples are often afraid of emotional betrayal, parents are often afraid of their children's failure, children are often afraid of separation and control, farmers are afraid of natural disasters, drivers are afraid of man-made disasters, wise people are afraid of mediocrity, mediocre people are afraid of poverty, leaders are afraid of usurping power, and the people are afraid of suffering... Wait a minute.
(2) Etiology of fear
One of the difficulties of people with phobias is that they don't know why they are afraid of things they shouldn't be afraid of, and why they can't control their fear of not being at the same level. From the perspective of symptoms, the patient is indeed threatened by the object (object) of fear, such as severe insomnia, and from the psychoanalytic point of view, there are the following dynamic roots:
(1) Fear experiences early in life
◎ The first 3 years of human life, including the fetal period, is the period of establishing a primordial sense of security, during which if you experience too many experiences such as fright, fear, threat, etc., these experiences will be imprinted in sensory memory.
◎ Traumatic experiences in childhood, such as bereavement, abuse, humiliation, abandonment, and unexpected danger, are also the deep roots of phobias.
(2) Collective unconscious fear
◎ Fear is the most basic emotion of human beings, and it is the driving force that drives human evolution, which stimulates and develops all human creative behaviors. At that time, mask group dance, totem taboo, totem worship, etc., were all early civilizations that people resisted fear, and they were the prototypes of the collective unconscious fear complex of human beings.
◎ The birth of a person is the first crisis that a person experiences. Psychoanalysis sees this first crisis as the archetype of the various crises that will be encountered later in life's journey. There is an inexplicable fear of this first crisis.
◎ This collective unconscious fear complex and the imprint of the archetypal experience of birth crisis in the depths of the human heart are also the deep roots of phobias.
(3) Sensory inhibition and thinking limitations
◎ The thinking and behavior patterns of phobias are all thought and done to prevent psychological panic. Due to the inner restlessness of the phobia, it will exert extreme energy to calm the mind, which also suppresses the feeling of noticing and appreciating other aspects, resulting in a low sensory ability. This is the seesaw principle.
For example, there is an interpersonal phobia who is afraid that he will do something stupid to stab a colleague (this is compulsion, or obsessive-compulsive disorder). In order to control and avoid this danger, he tried not to look at people and not speak in interpersonal interactions, and then developed to not interact with people and see people fearfully. He said that he only had tension in his life, and he had never felt what it meant to be comfortable or happy... It's sad to feel like you're presence.
◎ Psychoanalysis believes that the psychology of restraint begins in the early stage of psychological life, because fear and the removal of fear will plunder a large amount of libido (energy), and the energy used for other development needs is seriously insufficient. Therefore, sensory and thought inhibition, as a secondary factor, is an early cause of phobias.
and (4) the personality traits behind the fear
◎ Although there are differences in the characteristics of various neuroses, there are many homogeneous characteristics, such as: irritability, sensitivity and suspicion, excessive truthfulness, forbearance, paranoia, indifference, etc., which are the basic characteristics of personality and exist in all kinds of neurosis.
◎ In addition to being sensitive, suspicious, and extremely cautious, phobias also have significant traits such as cowardice and avoidance, which "force" them to smell (of course, a mental fantasy, or a vulnerability presented by themselves) even if they are in a safe situation. In terms of behavioral style, they unconsciously put themselves in a mode of alertness and defensiveness.
(3) Ways to perceive fear
Since fear is everywhere, so are the ways to recognize and deal with it. The physiological ability of hearing, sight, touch, smell and psychological sensation, intuition, thinking, and feeling is the basic way to understand fear. The recognition of neurotic fear is the conscious awareness of subconscious fear, which we can reach through special means.
(1) Symbolic insight into fear
◎ Language and speech are the direct ways for us to understand fear, but they are often superficial, and the way to truthfully reflect the truth of fear is precisely our body, such as physique, disease state, our non-verbal, such as expressions, attitudes, behaviors, and our unconscious behaviors, such as slips of the tongue, mistakes, dreams, daydreams, etc.
◎ Symbolism is a metaphorical technique used by human beings to express their thoughts. In the psychoanalytic sense, symbolism is an elegant defense of man to protect or avoid the truth. The symptoms of neurosis are symbols and defenses, and the fear in the heart of the patient can be seen through the symptoms. As:
o Neurosis anorexia, which symbolizes the fear of desire, and binge-eating disorder, which symbolizes the fear of nothingness. Their common symbolism is aggression, a kind of self-attack that follows fear and repression of aggression.
o Hypochondriaphic phobia, a symbolic expression of the fear of loss, such as fear of loss of self, loss of meaning or value, loss of life.
o Agoraphobia, a symbolic expression of fear out of control, fear of abandonment, exposure of privacy, etc.
o Cardiac phobia, a symbolic expression of a certain conflict between desires and taboos.
o Blushing and fear, symbolizing sexually related stigma repression.
o Zoophobia, which symbolically expresses fear or disgust for a relational person. Different animals have different symbols.
o Neurotic wheezing, or vomiting, symbolizing overwhelming stress, relationship control, etc.
◎ The above symbolic insight into fear is intended to provide multi-angle thinking to understand the essence of things, and does not necessarily refer to a certain symptom or symbolize something.
(2) Insight into fear through dreams
◎ People's psychological symptoms and dreams hide unconscious fears. Psychological symptoms can be understood through symbolic analysis, and the same is true for dreams.
◎ For obvious fear dreams, it is easy for ordinary people or dreamers to understand what they are afraid of, but they may not necessarily understand why they are afraid. For example, a man in a marriage is often awakened by nightmares in which he is either being chased or falling off a cliff, but he usually lives a peaceful and happy life, so he cannot understand why he has a nightmare and what it means.
◎ Nightmares are expressions of fear, even if you don't feel fear during the day. People who are usually very happy have fear dreams, which itself expresses that the dreamer has a suppressed subconscious fear, but what exactly is feared, what is the source of fear, what is the portent, etc., should be found with the dreamer.
◎ For many strange and bizarre dreams, maybe the dreamer has no sense of fear, but there is a deep fear hidden in the weird dream. For example, some people always dream that they are driving a bus to the top of a mountain, some people dream of losing teeth, they dream that their head has a lot of wires, some people dream that their partner has become a madman, and they dream that they are assassinated by their first love...... These dreams all reveal the dreamer's deep fear of a certain pressure, a certain ability of oneself, and an emotional crisis.
◎ What kind of unconscious danger does the dreamer, whether it is an obvious or hidden fear dream, convey it? The dreamer needs to interpret the dream under the premise of psychological analysis in order to gain insight into the truth of fear.