What is FEAR?
It's a feeling of uneasiness that one experiences when a new situation
with unforseen characteristics is to be faced. We could consider fear
a defence mechanism of men. It represents a stimulus that causes reactions
which act as men's defence against the dangerous of surroundings. For
example if a child weren't afraid of dark he could knock against something
and hurt himself or if a fawn weren't afraid of a lion it wouldn't be
able to run away and would be killed by the lion. So we must distinguish
a positive fear from a negative one.We could call the first one an "existential
fear" that is an useful fear because it allows us to use our possibilities
at our best: it's important to keep it.
The other kind of fear, the negative one, instead of defending men, makes
him insecure and unable to act. It becomes pathological when it starts
up without a real danger or express itself with excessive intensity out
of proportion to the stimulus. Sometimes it happens to somebody to become
slave of its fear and to be scared by the existence itself.
This is a clinical fear and it is to be treat. Many of the currents problems
of our society belong to this kind of fear: for example all types of phobias
like agoraphobia (fear of being in public places where a small or enclosed
space), xenophobia (fear or hatred of foreign people) and so on to more
complex pathologies. But sometimes behind these "simple " phobias,
or other idiosyncrasies, more complex problems are hidden. We are often
afraid of things thast are in reality the movement of other real fears.
In this connection there's a s famous story that Freud tell us. It's the
story of Hans, a child who was afraid of white horses .When he saw a white
horse his fear was so much so that he would faint. Freud studied this
case, analizing every details, and finally understood that the real fear
of Hans was another: Hans was afraid of his father. So the boy had moved
his fear to another object with whom it had a relation. Freud called this
movement "defence mechanism" that is a way of escaping from
difficult situations.
For the little Hans was impossible to confront his father so his subconscious
had changed the fear object. This interesting story can be useful to understood
how complex the fear mechanism can be.
But where does fear come from?
First of all we must consider "the mind" that is our biology,
but to regard only this factor would be "biological reductionism".
Infact we must consider another factor too: our personality:
Our personality devolopes during the first three years of our life: in
that period our personality is outlined. So it depends on the first three
years' experiences whether we are extrovert or introvest, confident or
discouraged. And as matters stand it's clear that to be intovert or discouraged
could mean to fear of facing up the reality:
The last important factor is the enviroment in which we grow up. It's
really important if the enviroment is reassurring or not because it will
have repercussion on our future life.
People must react to the negative fear especially when this fear is durable
and in the long term disables them of any kind of real life.
But the man's answer isn't always the right one: nowadays there are two
main answers as reaction to fear but both are as extreme as wrong.
The first one is depression. Depression is a sort of psycological escape
from reality that frightens. The depressed subject feels unable to oppose,
he feels unfit to live and sometimes for this reason he prefer dying to
living.
The violence too is born like reaction to incapacity for living in this
or that enviroment but the subject instead of becoming passive like the
depressed one, becomes aggressive, he wants to destroy everything which
surrounds him.
Fortunately we have the RIGHT means to defend ourselves from FEAR .
IT' s important to communicate with others and not to isolate ourselves
from the rest of the world, but, if we are not mentally strong enough,
we must seek the help of a psychiatric because it's never a shame to ask
for a help.
Rosanna Bianco