FEARFULNESS CONCEPTS

by F Richard Singer III         edition date 11/07/07

website: www.conceptualstudy.org      email: richardsinger3@sbcglobal.net

Abstract: This is a conceptual paper, and thus it does not presuppose any non-conceptual commitments, other than those that are essential to having at least some conceptual competence. Nor does it propose any noteworthy non-conceptual information. However as with any conceptual paper, it illustrates the role concepts might play in thinking and actions, thus bearing some relation to some ordinary aspects of realms in which these concept might play a role. In fact, its secondary purpose to help me see this role for my life and perhaps suggest conceptual tools that others might find useful, This is one reason it includes text that may not seem directly conceptual. For instance, examples sound as if they give information about real states of affairs, but at most they were suggested by realistic ones. Context should allow the reader to distinguish between text focusing directly on concepts and text that is intended to add perspective. In presenting the concepts in this paper, I freely use concepts from PNDP (Public Net for Descriptive Psychology). These concepts are used in a manner that is close enough to ordinary usage that this should not be a problem. However I sometimes indicate the PNDP versions. Anyone interested in more about these PNDP versions of these concepts can consult Concept Encyclopedia on the Descriptive Psychology Section of this website.

Personal Background: On 3/10/89 I slipped from my roof and crushed a vertebrae in my back. Just prior to dawn on the next the morning I experienced a sense of personal isolation so deep that it seemed it would not only persist thruout my life, but thruout eternity. It was not until 1999 that an understanding of this emerged as an insight linking so many events. Perhaps this is because feeling personally isolated manifested itself at first as extreme pathological anxiety and despair. It was not until early in 1993, when I was able to replace a major part of the anxiety as fear, that I was able to lift myself from this pathological state and regain some stable power of will. Before this, I could observe that at any time my pathological state would place me in situations where I felt personally helpless. Moreover nobody could give me the help I needed when this happened. I had also been afraid that my ability to function effectively would never return. Once this fear was recognized, I was able to see that each time my will reemerged and my helplessness begin to fade. However while strength returned, a less pathological state of pain and sadness and tension remained. This state did not prevent creative activity, but it did slow it down, making life a grim struggle, sapping the joy from even the most positive experiences. What was this 1999 insight, and will I be able to build on it in my quest to live more effectively? Before discussing the events that this insight linked, I sketch some of the concepts being used.

Note: Altho I have chosen words for these concepts whose ordinary meaning is close to my usage, I am not trying to explicate their ordinary usage. The letter P denotes an arbitrary person.

A Pathological State: A pathological state is conceptualized as one in which P’s ability to engage in deliberate action is severely limited, and thus is conceptually equivalent to having severe limits on P’s behavior potential in the situations P is encountering. A pathological state can be emotional, such as extended grief. It can be spiritual as in being plagued by a sense of sin. It can be physical, such being blind. However in any of these case there are some people who can be in such a state without it being pathological. Consider Helen Keller. States vary in how long they last. I will not classify states that only briefly interfere with normal activity as pathological, especially if they only interfere briefly. For example being unable to tolerate normal sunlight for a few hours after having ones eyes dilated, is a example a slightly diminished state which I would not classify as pathological. It is too brief and it does not severely limit a person’s behavior potential. I prefer to classify it as merely a slightly diminished state.

Anguish: P is in a state of distress if P experiences a high level of some type of discomfort. Anguish for P is an emotional state in which P is motivated to alleviate part or all of some state that is distressing for P. Anguish may are may not be accompanied by fear or anxiety. For example, Lately when I split wood my back tends to hurt more than it used to. This is slightly distressing for me, and I am motivated work more slowly than I used to, but no fear or anxiety seems to be involved. On the other hand, if I took this as a sign that I was becoming decrepit, some anxiety would be likely to accompany my anguish.

Main Fearfulness Concepts: I will mainly focus on emotional states rather than on emotional behavior. See Appendix 1 for this distinction and for some broader context.

· A harm for P is anything undermines P’s behavior potential in a significant manner.

· A danger for P is anything that may result in a harm for P. A danger may be immediately present or it may be one that is at least somewhat likely to occur in the future. An extreme danger for P is one that could potentially result in a pathological state for P.

· A threat for P is a state that P feels is a danger for P. An extreme threat for P is one that P feels is a danger for P. A threat may or may not actually be a danger.

· P is in a state of fearfulness if P is takes it that there is some threat. P’s awareness of the threat or danger or harm may vary from very vague to extremely clear

· Fearfulness is of 2 main types, fear and anxiety. Both are related to feeling endangered but they differ in terms of how the threat is identified.

· P has imminent fear when P assesses some specific present aspect of P’s world is a threat. Imminent fear mobilizes P for action that could help P escape from what P assesses as the threatening state. P has non-imminent fear when P assesses some specific future aspect of P’s world is a threat. For either type of fear P could describe the threat if asked to do so, altho P may or may not be able to describe the potential harm. Unlike imminent fear, non-imminent fear as likely to inhibit as to mobilize behavior.

· P has anxiety when P assesses some aspect of P’s world is a threat but s unable to make the threat specific or bring the potential harm implicit in the threat into sharp focus. P has situational anxiety if P can at least identify the aspect that seems threatening, To the extent that P has anxiety but cannot identify any specific aspect giving rise to the anxiety, P has what will be called floating anxiety.

Note: Altho P will normally motivated to reduce anxiety, unlike fear, anxiety does not mobilize P for any specific type of escape action. I fact one of the main features of anxiety is that escape action may not seem to be an option.

Example: When Jo says that she is afraid to talk to Bo, I classify at least part of her emotional state as fear rather than as anxiety (altho anxiety may also be involved). My reason for considering her emotional state to be fear rather than anxiety is that the threat is apparent. She may even be able to identify the danger as being humiliated and specify some of the harm that would cause her.

Floating vs. Situational Anxiety: Situational anxiety is anxiety that arises only in certain types of situations and which fades rapidly when the situation ceases. Situational anxiety always involves one or more avoidance attitudes. During situational anxiety, P can identify the threatening situation. However to have anxiety of any type conceptually implies that the potential harm is at most vaguely understood.

Floating anxiety is persistent personal state of seeming to be vaguely threatened, altho no specific threat can even be identified. It can arise in almost any situation, altho it will tend to be muted when P is actively involved in situations that P finds interesting or engaging. Unlike fear and situational anxiety, floating anxiety is not a temporary departure from what is the norm form for a person. Thus it is not an emotional state. Instead, floating anxiety is usually a pathological state that persists in relation to an amorphous fearfulness trait that can be extremely hard to alter.

Altho P will normally motivated to reduce anxiety, anxiety does not mobilize P for any specific type of escape action. In the case of situational anxiety, P is likely to try is get out of the situation, but often without any sense of urgency. One of the main features of floating anxiety is that escape action will not even seem to be an option.

Since fear and anxiety relate only to an appraisal that there is danger, fearfulness may occur when there is a threat but there is no danger. Fear and anxiety can occur jointly, especially when the fear is mild and is accompanied by situational anxiety which P feels will pass as the situation changes. Consider a child walking thru a cemetery. The child is mobilized to escape, but there is more anxiety than fear. On the other hand, strong fear tends to mobilize a person for action in a way that at least temporarily obliterates anxiety. An owl hoots and the child runs as fast as he can. The problem with anxiety is that it is akin to fear in seeming to be threatened, but unlike fear, the implicit harm cannot be clearly identified. This can make anxiety much more difficult to manage, especially floating anxiety.

Example: Roy reacts fearfully when confronted with a harmless snake. He says that he is afraid of being bitten, thus identifying a threat. I say that being bitten may be unpleasant, but hardly dangerous, showing him that this snake has no teeth. A bite from a snake without teeth cannot even cause minor pain, much less an infection, and certainly you cannot be poisoned. Even if totally convinced, Roy may still be fearful, retaining a feeling of anxiety when trying to hold the snake but unable to identify what harm could possibly occur. This anxiety is clearly situational, and can easily be relieved. Just take the snake away and do not ask him to hold it.

Dealing With Fear: The most direct way to deal with fear is avoidance. Altho this will usually work in the short run, this may not be the best solution. Even if seldom used, avoidance could result in lost opportunities or even worse. Jo doesn’t talk to Bo and the romance she might have had never develops. Ben is afraid to admit that he accidentally caused the fire and later he is accused of arson. Avoidance works best when used in situations that can be indefinitely avoided without significant negative consequences. Jill is afraid to go swimming in the ocean, but she never get the opportunity to do so. The main problem with avoidance is that it can become a habitual response. This can easily result in a fearfulness trait that has negative utility. One way to develop a more useful habit is to deliberately practice confronting situations involving a low level of fear, not with dread but as a challenge.

The most direct way to deal with imminent fear is to escape from the threat. Another alternative can be to see that the threat is not really a danger because no harm is likely. When this can be done, imminent fear can be replaced by some other state such as dread or distaste or indifference or interest. A wasp flies close. I feel fear. I recall being stung and classify this as a minor pain. My fear vanishes. Having replaced fear by distaste, I still avoid the wasp but feel no need to escape. Sometimes I do not even try to avoid the wasp, especially if doing so would interfere with what I am trying to accomplish.

If a threat involves a real danger then escape is also usually the most prudential response. However there is often more than one escape option, and which option is taken may be extremely significant. Running from a threatening dog can be worse than confronting it and slowly backing away. Sometimes the best way to escape is to counterattack.

A powerful way to deal with fear is by acting with courage. Roy might have decided to hold the snake and risk whatever unknown harm might occur. In this case, none is possible and the risk was only apparent. However he still acts courageously, altho once a firm belief that no harm will occur is established, holding such a snake will no longer require courage. It takes reactive courage to act confront to imminent fear. Confronting non-imminent fear can be postponed. It takes proactive courage to confront it.

When harm is possible and so recognized, risk taking will involve courage. At one extreme harm can be a major disaster, but most harm is a state that can be reversed. Minor risk taking involves accepting the possibility of incurring a harm that one believes can be reversed. One purpose of minor risk taking can be to cultivate the trait of being courageous. This can actually reduce the possibility of harm, since the ability to act with courage in the face of a threat can be the most effective way to deal with it.

The most extreme type of risk taking is by deliberately taking an unnecessary risk when the possible harm would be major. Doing this with great care taken to make this unlikely may be useful for some purposes. For example jumping a motor cycle over the Grand Canyon will yield great publicity, but unless you are extremely competent, the utility of this act may be highly negative.

Dealing With Situational Anxiety: Like fear, situational anxiety can often be dealt with by avoidance. Altho the advantages and limitation of this strategy are similar to those for a specific fear, there is another factor involved. With situational anxiety, the situation seems threatening but the threat is not in clear focus. Before choosing avoidance, one option is to convert the anxiety into fear. Converting anxiety into fear involves bringing the feeling of being threatened into clear enough focus and then asking what dangers might be involved. If this can be done then a strategy for dealing with fear can be employed. Conversion can be extremely difficult, especially when the anxiety exists along with other negative feelings. Furthermore, since anxiety always involves a vague sense of danger, implicit doubts about having really identified the all the dangers involved are likely to remain.

Example: Bo is feeling anxiety about an exam, and can identify getting a bad grade as the threat. Regardless of how unpleasant failing an exam might be, this in itself is not harmful. However never getting a good job or losing confidence in oneself could qualify as a harm. This threat can be escaped without converting anxiety into fear, perhaps by convincing the instructor to give the class a take-home exam. However this may not be a viable option, and what Bo is most likely to do is to tolerate the anxiety and take the exam. Instead Bo asks why the threat of failing the exam is a danger and spots that the harm is that this failure will damage his self esteem.

Dealing With Floating Anxiety: Floating anxiety may be linked with situational anxiety, and to the extent that a person persistently deals proactively with situational anxiety, floating anxiety may become less severe. Another way to deal with floating anxiety is to become involved in some activity that interferes with the anxiety. This can be mere avoidance, but done persistently as a challenge, this can be part of an indirect strategy for eliminating the pathological nature of the anxiety. It may or may not eliminate the tendency for the anxiety to surface. The option of converting anxiety into fear can also be used with floating anxiety. This can be much more difficult for floating anxiety than for situational anxiety. The threat seems to come from almost anywhere. The danger and potential harm seem overwhelming but amorphous. Even when some danger seems immediate, it feels like an even greater danger will come later. This seems to be the case even when intellectually a person knows that even then the potential harm is not likely to occur. In fact, it is because this harm will not occur that something worse seems to be looming. The deepest fear may be that this pathological state will be permanent, and it will seem that amorphous terrible things are bound to happen.

Permanent Helplessness and Unending Isolation: The night of my 1989 accident I was overwhelmed by a fear of permanent helplessness, and I was terrified at the prospect unending personal isolation. Altho I also felt that my origin quest could never be resumed, I did not then appreciate how this linked these two fears. Perhaps this was because shortly after recognizing my fear of unending isolation, I intellectually decided that the likelihood of a state of unending isolation was nil and did not realize that it was still part of my floating anxiety. The level of this anxiety from this was pervasive but amorphous because, unlike the fear of helplessness, fear of unending isolation did not involve an impending sense of threat. Strange as it might seem, altho I felt I couldn’t endure unending isolation, it was only the night of the accident that I explicitly spotted this as my deepest fear. What I find even stranger is that I did not bring all of this into focus during the period of anxiety that later emerged. I could not even specify what I meant by helplessness, nor could I bring the potential harm into clear focus. Even after I had converted my anxiety about helplessness into fear, it took four more years until I had my 1999 insight into my pathological anxiety. On reflection, I think this was because my anxiety was intertwined with a pathological state of pain and sadness, which remained even after I had converted my anxiety into fear and effectively dealt with that fear.

The key to my return to competence was an understanding that my fearfulness in relation to both unending isolation and helplessness was floating anxiety rather than fear and that both had the same root, namely that my origin quest was over. Altho I could articulate what seemed like threats, I did not realize that these were too vague to be put into focus. Both involved literally extravagant concepts that obscured my ability to convert the anxiety into fear.

Extravagant Concepts: X is an extravagant concept for a person P if X points beyond what P can imagine. This may be taken in either a figurative or a literal sense. The word used for the concept often has emphatic as well as cognitive purposes, suggesting an absence of any limitations. Words used in some contexts that may suggest extravagant include: absolute, omniscient, impossible, eternal, indestructible, immovable, indisputable, perfect, hopeless, worthless, inflexible, irrefutable, irresponsible, helpless, unending. Terminology alone is not sufficient to classify a concept as extravagant. For example, there is nothing extravagant about the absolute value concept of ordinary algebra. For more on extravagant concepts see my paper with that title.

Taken as a literal extravagant concept, being helpless would mean to be in a state in which a person was had no ability to intentionally do anything. Clearly, I have never been conscious and literally helpless. In fact, it is conceptually impossible to continue to be a person and to be literally helpless. Even in despair, a person can choose to entertain miserable thought X rather than miserable thought Y. So what can it mean for me to take helplessness as a threat, and when I did what was the harm I am trying to avoid? There is one simple reason I could not convert my helplessness anxiety into imminent fear. I never encountered a situation in which a helplessness threat presented an immediate danger. The danger always remained out of focus, receding somewhere into the future. I was afraid that I would drain all of our financial resources, have to live in the street, be hospitalized the rest of my life, that my will would never reemerge, etc. While seemly any of these would be a great harm, I still could not seem to put the harm into clear enough focus to convert this anxiety into fear. I finally realized that floating anxiety did not need to be equivalent to fear in order to convert it The conversion was a piecemeal task of identifying parts that could be converted.

Converting my financial anxiety involved a realization that the harm I feared was that I would not be able to tolerate the impact this would have on Charmayne, because my inability to function well enough to avoid this would have been one of the greatest harms I could imagine. It was not until 1992 that I was able to cope with this fear, primarily by discovering a realistic means to avoid financial ruin even if I was unable to function effectively. I had earlier realized that my fear for my own financial status was not very significant, altho I did have some fear of being homeless on the street. I tentatively experimented with this. I looked for places to sleep and for food in dumpsters. I went to a homeless shelter. Altho I found all of this distressing, the potential harm did not seem to be as great as I imagined.

One of the major components of my anxiety related to my feeling that my inability to function would be distressing to my family. This was one of the main reasons that I continue to escape to parks and other outdoor areas of temporary refuge where I could isolate myself. While reliving my anxiety over helplessness, this may have aggravated my anxiety over isolation. Hospitalization provided a way to escape that did not involve isolation. It also allowed me a constructive way to deal with my sense of helplessness, altho there was a major complicating factor. I needed to confront my fear of permanent hospitalization, but they kept releasing me too early. Nevertheless, I eventually acquired the knowledge that I could function effectively even when hospitalized. I had transformed a major component of my anxiety into a fear of lifelong hospitalization, spotted the harm I feared, knew that I could tolerate this harm. Of course, doing so removed the need to be hospitalized, so I finally spotted that this threat was not a real danger. I may now still occasionally use the extravagant concept of helplessness, but only in a figurative rather than in a literal sense.

Anxiety over unending isolation involves something so remote that it was even harder to convert into fear. If I used unending a figurative rather that literal sense, its cognitive content is something like ‘without any end that I feel that I can expect’. To think of something as literally unending is more emotional than intellectual, since intellectually I could always say that if only X would occur then this state would end. I may refer to my struggle with diabetes as unending, since I do not expect it to end anywhere in the foreseeable future. This is of course figurative. It does not mean that I must deny the possibility that a cure could be found at any time. With respect to my fear of unending personal isolation, the idea of unending extends for a period far beyond my ability to intuit very clearly. It relates primarily what might happen after death.

It is my attitude towards death that has played the most crucial role in relation to my basic sense of wellbeing. Before age 15, I was usually secure and happy, merely accepting that death was a transition to an even better life in heaven. Then I my religious heritage eroded, altho I retained a belief in personal immortality. I spent considerable intellectual effort in trying to ground this in deistic beliefs that seemed more reasonable. Before I began to question my religious heritage, I do not recall having any concerns about dying. Even in situations that were threatening, any fearfulness seemed linked to dangers that might merely involve more discomfort than I felt I could tolerate. Later as I tried to cultivate a deistic faith, the phenomena of death became extremely significant to me, both in relation to a fear of damnation and to my distaste for oblivion.

According to my religious heritage, my deistic beliefs and the attitudes in which they were rooted would condemn me to eternal damnation. Intellectually this only helped to convince me that the beliefs I had acquired from my religious conditioning were wrong. But regardless of how implausible these beliefs might be, and no matter how well I can reason, I am fallible. The mere existence of a heritage that accepted such an infinite threat was a threat to my spiritual wellbeing. I had a far better than average ability to relate to Pascal’s wager, and could easily see why even extremely unlikely infinite consequences would obviously outweigh all finite considerations. What was I to do? I never understood how it was possible to choose to believe. Altho I could choose to engage in behavior that might modify my beliefs.

While attempting to formulate my deistic perspective, I was majoring in philosophy at a secular university. I had considerable confidence in my conceptual ability to see the weakness of the prevalent physicalistic ontology that I was expected to accept. Still the fact that the mainstream of contemporary philosophy did not even consider deism worth arguing against also had a negative spiritual impact.

On the one hand, there was a religious tradition that said my death would result in eternal torment. On the other was a philosophical tradition that said it would result in oblivion. My early struggle with these traditions was at least partially instrumental in my first collapse of will. The eventual failure of this struggle was the primary factor in my second collapse of will. The recovery from this second collapse was directly related to what at the time was a radically new attitude. This attitude was closely linked to the sense of power and joy that permeated my life for about 15 years, altho it was being eroded even before 1989 when it was shattered by my accident.

I think it was some time in early morning after my accident that I had the most disturbing explicit thought of my life. What if I would have died biologically and found that I was totally alone, because no supernatural persons existed and no other paranatural persons who had ever survived biological death? This was the danger involved in my deepest anxiety. This was the harm that I could not endure. This would not have been the damnation my religious heritage had conditioned me to expect nor the oblivion that my physicalistic tradition conditioned me to find inevitable. A belief that this could happen would not have been a live option before had I so radically questioned everything I had read or been told about what might happen after death. However I realized that my understanding of what I am is related to function rather than to substance. The uncertainty about death that this opened for me was staggering.

Both my religious and philosophical traditions were rooted in cosmic perspectives, and it is these that imply what happens when a human dies. My religious heritage says that God is a spiritual being, and that man is made in his image, that my essence is a soul, an indivisible immortal spiritual substance. While I can state this belief I no longer understand it, mostly because I find the underlying concept of substance far too vague. My philosophical heritage says that a human is a highly organized complex physical system. I could interpret this as one perspective for thinking about some of what a human does. However the conclusion that is drawn is that when this system breaks down I will cease to exist. This conclusion seems to be linked to a very strong ontological belief, namely that everything is physical. I suspect that this involves a way of thinking that involves the somewhat sophisticated idea of physical taken from modern physics, rather than the older notion of a material substance, but still it seems that the thinking relates to what a human is rather than to what a human does.

My concept of a human is that taken from Descriptive Psychology, namely a human is a person who is a member of the Homo Sapiens species. To be a mature person is to have a note worthy history of deliberate action in a dramaturgical pattern, and thus this concept has as a central focus what a person does. Furthermore the species concept is biological rather than physical, and while biology may utilize the notion of a physical system, it also focuses on behavior. Having no preeminent cosmic perspective and lacking sufficient relevant paraceptual information, I have no preferred conjecture about what might happen to a person after biological death. None or some or all may continue to exist. My perspective on this is developed in my book A personal Approach Conceptual Philosophy. For now I merely reflect on the extent of my uncertainty and spot how it relates to the floating anxiety that still lingers from my third collapse of will.

The explicit insight that my most fundamental fear was of unending isolation disappeared shortly after its first explicit occurrence and did not return until just before I began this paper. Unlike my fear of eternal damnation, it was not something I had been conditioned to believe, and so even its emotional plausibility faded easily. This was especially the case due to what soon followed. My accident occurred at the beginning of spring break and for a while I had more intensive interesting human interaction than at any other time of my life. For a while I did not seem to have any anxiety.

About six weeks later the anxiety returned suddenly and with intensity, but I did not recall why. One of the trigger events was reading a book entitled Who Dies. While I cannot recall much about the content, I do recall being terrified of the possibility of reincarnation. It was not that reincarnation seemed plausible. It was that, even if only barely plausible, reincarnation seemed so onerous. The other event was recalling a memory from the sixth grade that involved the worst sense of helplessness that I had ever felt. There are also some less intense childhood memories that relate to feelings about potential isolation. It was only with my current insight that I related these events to the danger of unending isolation. The other factor I spotted as being related was a recurring type of dream whose central theme involves isolation. One of my simplest such dreams is being on campus, with lots of people around, but unable to find anyone I know. These have always been much more distressing than dreams involving any other type of threat. Often in dreams when the threat is something like being chased or being in the water with a shark, I turn and confront or attack the threat. I find in myself the power to nullify whatever danger is involved.

As I understand it reincarnation seems linked to a belief in some spiritual essence, call it a soul, whose existence is independent of a particular embodiment. It is this soul that is the person. Death is only a loss of the particular characteristic of its last reincarnation, with the spiritual changes from the reincarnation are carried over into the next. Whatever those who believe in reincarnation might feel about its desirability, my reaction is highly negative. Having no ontological commitment to some underlying soul, it is these lost characteristics that I value as my spiritual achievements. To me spiritual characteristics relate to my will, and I conceptualize my will in terms of function rather than substance. Thus to talk of me as a will is to talk about what I do, and this makes neither a positive nor a negative ontological commitment to some soul that may survive the death of my body. If there is such a soul, the thought of it returning without the characteristics acquired thru so much effort, and without even a memory linking to them, seems like a horrible kind of isolation. It feels like an isolation of the will I am from the will I was and from the will I might latter become.

In the sixth grade, my father was transferred to El Paso TX, but we were only there for two weeks. I had to take a streetcar and make a transfer to reach school. This seemed exciting to me since it was the first time in my life that I did not attend a school within easy walking distance. Here I recall the most painful emotional episode of my childhood. I do not recall remembering this experience again until May 1989. When I did, it was so painful that I wanted to bury it again. While I recall the feelings, and some of the situational details, I cannot bring that childhood episode into focus. I was in a building that was unfamiliar. I was in a Spanish class, with no background in Spanish. I felt totally alone. There was a sandstorm during recess. I left the schoolyard, climbing a nearby hill. I cried. I could not walk home to escape. I do not remember whether I took the streetcar home or whether I returned to school. I have no memory of that school except those just given. Was I there only one day? I recall it as a sense of total isolation, and a feeling of complete helplessness.

Another childhood memory that I recall was a story about the last person on earth. On various occasions, I have imagined myself as that person. What would I do? As a child I simply felt a kind of quiet hopelessness, altho then I at least believed that after I died I would definitely be in heaven and no longer alone. Once when I imagined this theme I thought about trying to learn how to clone some other human cell or myself if I could find one. However remote my chances, this would at least keep some minimal hope alive.

In one recurring dream, I realize that I am dead. I find myself alone in an unending hallway. I walk forward, but no end or way out appears. This is my worst nightmare. The relation to my fear of isolation seems obvious. In another recurring dream, I am in a room with no window, but there is a door. I go thru the door into another room, also with no windows but with another door. This continues. In one such dream I finally came out but I was at the mouth of a cave looking out over an abyss. I was no longer closed in, but I was still alone and with no place to go. I realized I was dreaming. I decide that I could jump without harm, altho this still took courage. When I jumped, I landed with out harm in a lovely forest.

Unending isolation is clearly the greatest harm that I fear. Keeping this in focus removes most of my floating anxiety. Realizing this, I can focus on the fear and even remove part of the feeling that unending isolation is a danger. Some anxiety remains. The threat is too remote to keep in focus. Perhaps if I continue bringing it into focus I can transform even more of the anxiety into fear. The harm will then seem even less likely to occur. This worked in my return from my second collapse of will, and the threat there was eternal damnation. After all, my concept of unending relates to expectation rather than to some actual state that is permanent, and the very idea of there being a state that can never change is a conjecture that I find at most barely plausible.

APPENDIX 1: EMOTIONAL BEHAVIOR AND EMOTIONAL STATES (added 10/2011)

Example: Fay and Ron walk down the lane from their cabin to the road. He starts to turn right. She stops. Turning right would have taken her past a house with dogs that run loose. Fay is afraid of these dogs, and considers them dangerous. Avoiding them is a much stronger reason for acting than her desire to go the way Ron turned.

Emotions: This example illustrates three main features of the paradigm case of the concept of emotion as used in PNDP the emotion in this case being fear. This paradigm case applies to competent socialized adult humans. This concept is developed by Raymond Bergner in the article entitled Emotions. It can be found in his book entitled Studies in Psychology and in Volume 3 of Advances in Descriptive Psychology. Also see The Behavior of Persons, by Peter Ossorio for emotion concepts.

(1) An emotion is an appraisal by P of a relationship that aspect of the world seems to bear towards P.

(2) This appraisal logically involves a motivational significance for P.

(3) P has a learned automatic impulsive tendency to act on this without considering options.

Emotional Behavior: There are at least two main ways of acting that may deal effectively with an emotion, altho neither way guarantees a positive outcome for P. P can automatically carry out this tendency to act, or P can find some other way to mute or satisfy the motivational significance of P’s appraisal. If P carries out this tendency to act then P has engaged in emotional behavior.

Emotional States: Suppose P does not deal effectively with the emotion and thus the motivation significance of the appraisal remains. In such a case P is in an emotional state. Moreover suppose P has also made similar appraisals in similar aspects of P’s without effectively dealing with them, Then this current emotional state a component of a broader emotional state. This did not happen in Fay’s case because she automatically carried out her tendency to avoid going where she might confront the dogs. Moreover altho Fay is afraid of strange dogs she is seldom around them and thus seldom in a fearful state involving strange dogs.

Feelings: Saying that Fay is afraid of dogs and that her response in this case involved this fear does not mean that she is having some specific type of feeling. Moreover she did not have a noteworthy feeling about the dogs as she stopped, but this does not mean that her stopping was not emotional behavior. On other occasions, a similar emotional response of avoiding dogs has been accompanied by strong feelings. It is the three conditions above, rather than the presence or absence or extent of feeling, which characterize the concept of emotional behavior.

Appraisals: An appraisal may or may not be explicitly in focus. In Fay’s case, it was largely implicit. She merely came to the road, was aware that turning right seemed dangerous, and gave in to her strong impulse to stop. However as soon as Ron asked her about it she easily identified the possibility of dogs attacking her as a threat. Ron said that there would be less traffic the way he wanted to go and assured her that the dogs only bark and that they always back away when confronted. This did nothing to mute the motivational significance of her appraisal. Part of what it means to classify a behavior as emotional is that it carries motivational significance (as the word logically is intended to convey), altho the motivation need not be preemptive as it was with Fay. Finally, not only was Fay motivated to stop without deliberation, this was something she had learned to do in response to this type of situation. In general, she avoids going anywhere near strange dogs that are loose. As with any tendency to act, Fay might have decided instead to go the way Ron was turning, but the very fact that this would have taken a major effort shows that her appraisal carried strong motivational significance.

Since concept of an appraisal is not limited to being cognitive, one could say that a reflex action satisfies most of the conditions given for emotional behavior. They both certainly carry a strong tendency to act automatically. However, even if we allow for a broad concept of an appraisal, a reflex action still differs from emotional behavior in two important respects. The tendency to act is mostly unlearned. Nor does it involve what we normally think of as a tendency to act because a tendency is usually something that a person can counter.

The last condition explicitly distinguishes emotional behavior as a form of action that is not optional action. However there are types of non-optional action that are not emotional. In order to contrast emotional behavior with behavior having only some of these features, consider another example involving Ron. The description about to be given is primarily a performance description, with the other behavior description parameters implicit or ignored. Hopefully you can imagine enough about these to understand his actions and the interpretation given for them.

Ron is moving rocks in the creek. A crawdad shoots out and he tries to catch it. He is distracted as a horsefly lands on his head. He automatically tries to brush it away. This fly is persistent. Ron lies on his back in the creek prominently exposing a bare knee. The fly lands. Ron knows that if he swats too soon the fly will escape. He patiently waits until it begins to bite and then he swats. He casually removes the smashed fly.

His appraisal about the crawdad had the minor relation to him as something for him to catch, and his tendency to catch a crawdad in such a situation was learned and in this particular case was implemented without deliberation. What primarily distinguishes this from an emotional act is that there his appraisal alone did not carry motivational significance. He often sees crawdads and does not consider catching them. Removing the smashed fly also involved an appraisal of his relationship to it and a tendency to act automatically. Altho this act did not involve considering alternative, it act was casual. In his initial reaction to the horsefly, I doubt that an appraisal was even made, but if so the appraisal was only implicit. The tendency to act was both strong and automatic. However unlike an emotional response, there was no time to counter the inclination, so this tendency to act was reflexive rather than impulsive. Nor was this reaction learned. His methodical slaying of the fly involves an appraisal of it as an irritant. The motivational significance, while strong can be distinguished from an emotional response because his acting in this fashion was extremely deliberate. Motivational significance is obviously not restricted to emotional behavior.

Trying to catch crawdads when they appear is a habitual response for Ron. Like any other habitual response, altho involving learned tendencies to act, it differs from emotional ones by lacking logical motivational significance. For instance, Fay comes to a corner and turns because this is how she normally drives to work. Altho automatic, there is no impulse and a slight reminder that she was going to the library would have nullified this motivation.

Removing the dead horsefly was an intentional act, but one done without deliberation. It is like the multitude of non-deliberate intentional acts that follow in a course of action initiated by deliberation. After Ron and Fay deliberately turn right their continued walk was intentional, altho very little of it is deliberate and none of it involved strong motivational significance or any impulses. Even when they reached the goat farm and automatically turned around to head back, this was the case. This is just what they would do because they had initially decided to walk 2½ miles. If one of them had suggested walking further then the motivational significance of the appraisal that this is the place to turn around would have been considerably muted.