Anxiety

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Going Clear (2013)

  The writer who produces “too much of it too fast and too glibly” runs the risk of believing in his own creations. “It appears to me inevitable that anyone writing several million words of fantasy and science-fiction should ultimately begin to internalize the assumptions underlying the verbiage.” Dianetics, Hayakawa noted, was neither science nor fiction, but something else: “fictional science.” Not all scientists rejected Hubbard’s approach. One of his early supporters was Campbell’s brother-in-law Dr. Joseph Winter, a physician who had also written for Astounding Science-Fiction. Searching for a more holistic approach to medicine, Winter traveled to New Jersey to experience Hubbard’s method firsthand. “While listening to Hubbard ‘running’ one of his patients, or while being ‘run’ myself, I would find myself developing unaccountable pains in various portions of my anatomy, or becoming extremely fatigued and somnolent,” he reported. “I had nightmares of being choked, of having my genitalia cut off, and I was convinced that dianetics as a method could produce effects.” Hubbard’s method involved placing the patient in a state of “reverie,” achieved by giving the command “When I count from one to seven your eyes will close.” A tremble of the lashes as the eyelids flutter shut signals that the subject has fallen into a receptive condition. “This is not hypnotism,” Hubbard insists. Although a person in a Dianetic reverie may appear to be in a trance, the opposite is the case, he says: “The purpose of therapy is to awaken a person in every period of his life when he has been forced into ‘unconsciousness.’ Dianetics wakes people up.” Sara watched the effect that Ron was having on his patients. “He would hold hands with them and try to talk them into these phony memories,” she recalled. “He would concentrate on them and they loved it. They were so excited about someone who would just pay this much attention to them.” Dr. Winter tried out Hubbard’s techniques on his six-year-old son, who was afraid of the dark because he was terrified of being choked by ghosts. Winter asked him to remember the first time he saw a ghost. “He has on a long white apron, a little white cap on his head and a piece of white cloth on his mouth,” the boy said. He even had a name for the ghost—it happened to be the same as that of the obstetrician who delivered him.

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  “There is a pantry, there—” he nods toward a narrow door to the left of the table. “It’s stocked with enough food to last for months. There is a fifty-pound bag of flour. But the wood closet only has enough wood to last a few weeks. Four at most if we ration it.” I don’t want to think about the gargantuan bag of flour, so I pretend I didn’t hear him. The wood, however, bothers me. I’d rather not freeze to death. There are plenty of trees outside. If we could get outside, that is. We’d have wood. “The carousel room,” he says. “Do you find it strange?” His voice is clear, precise. It’s the one he uses with his patients. I’m not one of his patients and I don’t appreciate being spoken to like one. “Yes,” I say simply. “The book?” His voice moves to gruff. “There was nothing in there about the carousel, was there?” “No,” I say. “There wasn’t” There didn’t need to be. “Do you think this could be one of your fans? Someone obsessed?” I don’t want to think about that, but it has already crossed my mind. I didn’t want to be the one responsible for this. “It’s possible,” I say cautiously. “But that doesn’t explain you.” “Have you been getting any threats, strange letters?” “No, Isaac.” He looks up when I say his name. “Senna, you need to think carefully. This could make a difference.” “I have!” I snap. “There have been no letters out of the norm, no e-mails. Nothing!” He nods, walks to the fridge. “What are you doing?” I ask, spinning in my seat to watch him. “Making us something to eat.” “I’m not hungry,” I say quickly. “We don’t know how long we’ve been out. You need to eat and drink something or you’ll dehydrate.” He starts taking things out of the fridge and putting them on the counter. He finds a glass, fills it with water from the faucet, and brings it to me. It’s a funny color. I take it. How can I eat or drink at a time like this? I force the water down because he’s standing in front of me, waiting. I stare blindly at the snow outside as he stands at the stove. The stove is gas; brand new from the looks of it. When he comes back to the table he’s carrying two plates, each piled with scrambled eggs. The smell makes me sick. He sets it down in front of me and I pick up the fork. Weapons, we have so many: forks, knives … you’d think if someone were coming back, they wouldn’t provide us with these things to attack them with. I voice my thoughts, and Isaac nods. “I know.” Of course he had already thought of this. Always two steps ahead… “Your hair is different,” he says. “It took me a minute to recognize you … upstairs.”

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  My skin prickles. “That’s a lie.” “Is it?” My mouth is dry. My tongue is sticking to the inside of my mouth. I try to shift it around—to the roof of my mouth, the inside of my cheeks, but it sticks, sticks, sticks. “You had a psychotic break. You tried to kill yourself.” “I would never,” I say. I love death. I think about it all the time, but to actually act out a suicide is unlike me. “You called me from yourrr home at three o’clock in the morrrning. You were delusional. You werrre starving yourself. Keeping yourrrself awake with pills. When they took you in you hadn’t slept in nine days. You were experiencing hallucinations, paranoia and memory lapses.” That’s not suicide, I think. But then I’m not so sure. I lift my hands off the top of the table where they are resting and hide them between my thighs. “You were saying one thing overrr and overrr when they brought you in. Do you rememberrr?” I make a noise in the back of my throat. If I ask her what I was saying I’m acknowledging that I believe her. And I don’t believe her. Except that I can hear screaming in my head. “Pink hippo,” she says. My throat constricts. The screaming gets louder. I want to reach up and put my hands over my ears to quell the sound. “No,” I say. “Yes, Senna. You were.” “No!” I slam my fist on the table. Saphira’s eyes grow large. “I was saying Zippo .” There is silence. All consuming, chilling, silence. I realize I was baited. The corners of her mouth curl up. “Ah, yes,” she says. “Z, for Zippo. My mistake.” It’s like I’ve just woken up from a dream—not a good one—just a dream that concealed a reality I’d somehow forgotten. I’m not freaking out, I’m not panicking. It feels as if I’m waking up from a long sleep. I’m compelled to stand and stretch my muscles. I hear the screaming again, but now it’s connected to a memory. I’m in a locked room. I’m not trying to get out. I don’t care about getting out. I’m just curled up on a metal cot, screaming. They can’t get me to stop. I’ve been like that for hours. I only stop when they sedate me, but as soon as the drugs wear off, I’m screaming again. “What made me stop screaming?” I ask her. My voice is so calm. I can’t remember everything. It’s all in pieces; smells and sounds and overwhelming emotions that were there at once, making me feel like I was about to implode. “Isaac.” I jar at the sound of his name. “What are you talking about?” “I called Isaac,” she says. “He came.” “Ohgodohgodohgod.” I bend over at the waist, hugging myself. I remember. I’ve been falling, and now I’ve finally hit the ground. Flashes of him coming into the room and climbing into the cot behind me.

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  I’m not one of his patients and I don’t appreciate being spoken to like one. “Yes,” I say simply. “The book?” His voice moves to gruff. “There was nothing in there about the carousel, was there?” “No,” I say. “There wasn’t” There didn’t need to be. “Do you think this could be one of your fans? Someone obsessed?” I don’t want to think about that, but it has already crossed my mind. I didn’t want to be the one responsible for this. “It’s possible,” I say cautiously. “But that doesn’t explain you.” “Have you been getting any threats, strange letters?” “No, Isaac.” He looks up when I say his name. “Senna, you need to think carefully. This could make a difference.” “I have!” I snap. “There have been no letters out of the norm, no e-mails. Nothing!” He nods, walks to the fridge. “What are you doing?” I ask, spinning in my seat to watch him. “Making us something to eat.” “I’m not hungry,” I say quickly. “We don’t know how long we’ve been out. You need to eat and drink something or you’ll dehydrate.” He starts taking things out of the fridge and putting them on the counter. He finds a glass, fills it with water from the faucet, and brings it to me. It’s a funny color. I take it. How can I eat or drink at a time like this? I force the water down because he’s standing in front of me, waiting. I stare blindly at the snow outside as he stands at the stove. The stove is gas; brand new from the looks of it. When he comes back to the table he’s carrying two plates, each piled with scrambled eggs. The smell makes me sick. He sets it down in front of me and I pick up the fork. Weapons, we have so many: forks, knives … you’d think if someone were coming back, they wouldn’t provide us with these things to attack them with. I voice my thoughts, and Isaac nods. “I know.” Of course he had already thought of this. Always two steps ahead… “Your hair is different,” he says. “It took me a minute to recognize you … upstairs.” I blink at him. Are we really talking about my hair? I feel self-conscious about my white streak. I make sure it’s tucked away, behind my ear. “I grew it out.” Put food in mouth, chew, swallow, put food in mouth, chew, swallow. We don’t speak about my hair anymore. When I am finished eating, I announce that I need to use the restroom. I ask him to come with me. The only bathroom in the house is the one in the bedroom where I found Isaac. He waits outside the door, knife in hand. Before we leave the kitchen he upgrades to a larger one. It is almost funny, but not. Big knife, big wound.

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  Maybe I had a chronological way of dealing with things; a writer’s route to solving problems. Her insouciance over the matter was what finally won me over. It was as if the entire time I saw her I was counting down the days until I would have to tell her about the rape, dreading the pity I’d see appear her eyes. But there was none. “Life happens,” she said. “Bad things happen because we live in a world with evil.” And then she’d asked me the strangest thing. “Do you blame God?” It had never occurred to me to blame God since I didn’t believe in him. “If I believed in God, I would blame him. I suppose it’s easier not to believe, then I have nothing to be angry at.” She smiled. A cat’s curl smile. And then it was over, and I’d left a free woman, my purgatory served. Isaac would operate on me now. I would be free of cancer, free to move forward without fear. Without some of the fear. That night I started having the dreams again, hands pushing and pulling at me. Sharp pain and humiliation. The feeling of helplessness and panic. I woke up screaming, but there was no Isaac. I got in the shower to wash away the dream, shivering under the scalding water. I couldn’t fall back to sleep with those images so fresh in my mind, so I sat in my office and pretended to write the book my agent was waiting for. The book I had no words for. At noon, five days before my surgery, I dressed to go to the hospital for my pre-op appointment. It was March and the sun had been fighting the clouds for a week. Today the sky was uninterrupted blue. I felt resentful of the sun. That thought made me think of the things Nick used to say about me. You’re all grey. Everything you love, the way you see the world. I walked out to my car, stepping around puddles of rainwater from the day before. They were colored like an oyster shell, iridescent from the oil collected from my car or Isaac’s. When I got to the driver’s side door, I saw a cardboard square underneath my wiper blade. I darted a look over my shoulder before plucking it out. He had been here. Last night? This morning? Why hadn’t he rung the bell? I climbed into the car a little bit excited and slipped the CD from the sleeve. This time he’d written the name of the song on the disk in red permanent marker. Kill Your Heroes , Awolnation. My hands were shaking as I hit play. I listened with my eyes closed, wondering if all people listened to music with words this way.

• From The Erotic Mind (1995)

  Even though emotional transformations find their most dramatic expression in fantasy, peak encounters are also common settings for amazing emotional switch-overs. Once you recognize the changeability and fluidity of feelings, you will begin to notice that emotional transformations permeate erotic life. Here are the most common ways in which emotions redirect themselves during fulfilling sex: Emotional Transformations Anxiety [image "common" file=image_rsrc3FD.jpg] Security Weakness [image "common" file=image_rsrc3FD.jpg] Strength Guilt [image "common" file=image_rsrc3FD.jpg] Freedom Anger [image "common" file=image_rsrc3FD.jpg] Appreciation Emotional transformations play an important role in most of The Group’s stories. Remember how Glynis overcame her persistent fear about having sex with another woman and found a sense of celebration? Or how Denise transformed the guilt she felt about having sex with her boss into defiant liberation? Emotional aphrodisiacs follow their own rules, the first of which is that they refuse to be restricted by rationality. Whether for good or ill, feelings exist to be felt. To resist or deny our emotions is to strengthen them. True, the unpredictability of the emotional aphrodisiacs makes them potentially dangerous and bewildering. Trust your erotic mind, however, and even your least loving feelings may pull you circuitously toward pleasure and connection. 5YOUR CORE EROTIC THEMEAn internal blueprint for arousal transforms old wounds and conflicts into excitation. When you contemplate the assortment of images and encounters that have aroused you, what do you see? There are those who perceive merely a random collection of events, each the result of a unique set of circumstances, separate and unrelated. Considering the effort you’ve invested in exploring your peak turn-ons, I suspect you’ve glimpsed recurring patterns among varied erotic experiences. But like most people, you’re probably confused about what these patterns mean—or even what to call them. Borrowing a term from the dramatic arts that everybody understands, sociologists William Simon and John Gagnon have proposed that we name these patterns “sexual scripts.” Furthermore, they insist that our sexual fantasies and activities are influenced by these scripts to a far greater degree than most of us realize. They divide them into three basic types: (1) cultural scripts, (2) interpersonal scripts, and (3) intrapsychic (within the mind) scripts.1 All of us absorb an array of customs and traditions from our cultures, many having to do with sexuality. Invariably included are strong expectations for each gender along with deep-seated ideas about when, where, with whom, how, and how much sex is appropriate. Because cultural scripts are pervasive and begin impinging upon us from our first breaths, they become as much a part of who we are as our native language. Accordingly, they function automatically and are rarely questioned. Even sexual rebels are products of their cultures. They may violate society’s norms and ideals, but they can only stake out their positions in relation to the very standards they’re rejecting.

• From Going Clear (2013)

  Because fashion and novelty are outlawed, one feels comfortably encased in a timeless, unchanging vacuum. The enforced conformity dims the noise of diversity and the anxiety of uncertainty; one feels closer to eternity. One is also aware of the electrified fence of orthodoxy that surrounds and protects this Edenic paradise, and the expulsion that awaits those who doubt or question. Still, there is a kind of quiet majesty in the Amish culture—not because of their rejection of modernity, but because of their principled non-violence and their adherence to a way of living that tempers their fanaticism. The Amish suffer none of the social opprobrium that Scientologists must endure; indeed, they are generally treated like beloved endangered animals, coddled by their neighbors and smiled upon by society. And yet they are highly schismatic, willing to break off all relations with their dearest relatives on what would seem to an outsider to be an inane point of doctrine or even the question of whether one can allow eaves on a house or pictures on a wall. As adorable as the Amish appear to strangers, such isolated and intellectually deprived religious communities can become self- destructive, especially when they revolve around the whims of a single tyrannical leader. David Koresh created such a community in the Branch Davidian compound that he established near Waco and aptly called Ranch Apocalypse. In 1993, I was asked to write about the siege that was then under way. I decided not to, because there were more reporters on the scene than Branch Davidians; however, I had been unsettled by the sight of the twenty-one children that Koresh sent out of the compound shortly before the fatal inferno. Those children left behind their parents and the only life they had known. They were ripped out of the community of faith, placed in government vans, and ushered through a curtain of federal agents and reporters onto the stage of an alien world and who knows what future. I thought there must be other children who had experienced similar traumas; what had become of them? There is a strangely contorted mound in a cemetery in Oakland, California, close by the naval hospital where Hubbard spent his last months in uniform. Under an undistinguished headstone rest four hundred bodies out of the more than nine hundred followers of Jim Jones who perished in Jonestown in 1978. The caskets had been stacked on top of one another on the side of a bulldozed hillside, then the earth was filled in, grass was planted, and the tragedy of Jonestown was buried in the national memory as one more inexplicable religious calamity.

• From Sister Outsider (1984)

  Audre: Because ... I don’t write stories. I write poetry. So I had to put it under another name. Adrienne: Because it was a different piece of you? Audre: That’s right. I only write poetry and here is this story. But I used the name Rey Domini, which is Audre Lorde in Latin. Adrienne: Did you really not write prose from the time of that story until a couple of years ago, when you wrote “Poetry Is Not a Luxury”? Audre: I couldn’t. For some reason, the more poetry I wrote, the less I felt I could write prose. Someone would ask for a book review, or, when I worked at the library, for a precis about books — it wasn’t that I didn’t have the skills. I knew about sentences by that time. I knew how to construct a paragraph. But communicating deep feeling in linear, solid blocks of print felt arcane, a method beyond me. Adrienne: But you’d been writing letters like wildfire, hadn’t you? Audre: Well, I didn’t write letters as such. I wrote stream of consciousness, and for people who were close enough to me this would serve. My friends gave me back the letters I wrote them from Mexico — strange, those are the most formed. I remember feeling I could not focus on a thought long enough to have it from start to finish, but I could ponder a poem for days, camp out in its world. Adrienne: Do you think that was because you still had this idea that thinking was a mysterious process that other people did and that you had to sort of practice? That it wasn’t something you just did? Audre: It was a very mysterious process for me. And it was one I had come to suspect because I had seen so many errors committed in its name, and I had come not to respect it. On the other hand, I was also afraid of it because there were inescapable conclusions or convictions I had come to about my own life, my own feelings, that defied thought. And I wasn’t going to let them go. I wasn’t going to give them up. They were too precious to me. They were life to me. But I couldn’t analyze or understand them because they didn’t make the kind of sense I had been taught to expect through understanding. There were things I knew and couldn’t say. And I couldn’t understand them. Adrienne: In the sense of being able to take them out, analyze them, defend them? Audre: ... write prose about them. Right. I wrote a lot of those poems you first knew me by, those poems in The First Cities, * way back in high school.

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  Johnny lets out a quick breath of air, a cross between a sigh and a chuckle. He’s thinking about it. I bite my lip and wait for a response. I know I’m probably bright red so I’m thankful we are standing in the dark. Is a kiss sometimes just a kiss? Am I scandalizing him with my forwardness? “OK, let’s go back to my house. I can’t leave the dog alone much longer. Do you want to follow me?” he asks. Much as what I really want is a ride in that shiny red pickup with its fresh upholstery, I agree to follow him. His house is at least twenty minutes north of here and I don’t want to do a walk of shame back to my car later with the busybody on the balcony watching. I’m already judging myself more harshly than she possibly can and when Johnny gets into his car, I’m tempted to yell up to her, “Don’t judge me! My husband of 27 years shattered my heart and I’m trying to put it back together! I’m just starting to figure it out on the most infinitesimal level, so be kind!” But honestly, do I really care? I want to be desired and I’m about to have sex with another man. I pull out, spin around in a quick U-turn and Johnny and I are on our way to his house. Ten minutes on dark rural roads, and then ten more minutes on the Interstate. A few miles off the highway, we pull into a suburban enclave, ranch houses with long driveways and mailboxes in front. I’m surprised by the mundanity. I had imagined him and his big dog out in a starry field somewhere, in a cabin he’d built himself over time. I laugh at my romanticism as Johnny pulls into a driveway next to a split-level and points me off to the side. He drives his pickup into the detached garage and then minutes tick by as he moves other cars around, pulling his work van out of the garage and then a second work van back into the garage. I can’t help but feel this is a delay tactic and he regrets having invited me here. After an uncomfortably long wait in which I try to lean sultrily against my car but finally give up and do a crossword puzzle on my phone instead, he’s ready to go inside. As we enter, I see a set of weights to one side and a washer/dryer with dirty laundry piled on top on the other side. I’m suddenly aware that going to an anonymous hotel room with a man in which the most personal item on display was a motorcycle helmet is very different from being inside a man’s home and seeing how he lives, what he lifts and what his laundry habits are.

• From Going Clear (2013)

  Matt Dillon and Tony Danza came aboard. Heath Ledger and John Cusack agreed to work for scale, as everyone did. Still, the project dragged on. Finally, Haggis was told the movie was a go. He then sent the script to John Travolta and Kelly Preston, who he thought would be perfect as the district attorney and his wife. “That’s great, because now we really need them,” one of the producers, Cathy Schulman, told him the next day. Heath Ledger had dropped out and Cusack was not far behind. Once again, the movie would need more big-name stars to get the financing. Haggis immediately sent a note to Preston, telling her he was withdrawing his offer. As a matter of pride, he felt it was wrong to use his friends in such a way—especially other Scientologists. Preston was miffed, since he had failed to explain his decision. But without two more signature names the movie was back in limbo. Haggis was about to lose Cheadle as well, because he was scheduled to make Hotel Rwanda. Yari finally told Haggis to shut the production down. Priscilla Presley, John Travolta, and Kelly Preston at the Church of Scientology Celebrity Centre’s thirty-seventh-anniversary gala, Hollywood, August 2006 The following Monday, when Schulman came into the production office, she found Haggis there, alone. “What are you doing?” she asked. “I’m prepping the movie.” Yari agreed to keep the office open for one more week, and then another, as each Monday Schulman would find Haggis at work preparing for a movie that now had no budget at all. Gradually, other people began working with him, for no pay. “If you get Sandy Bullock, you got a green light,” Schulman told him. Haggis got Sandra Bullock for the role of the district attorney’s wife, a brittle, racist socialite, a role far from the plucky gamines she had played in the past. In the movie, she’s the one who gets carjacked at gunpoint. But the producers wanted one more name: Brendan Fraser. Haggis thought he was much too young for the part, as did Fraser, but he agreed to do it. The movie was finally green-lit, just four weeks before the shooting started. Only now, the ten million dollars had shrunk to six and a half. For Haggis, everything was riding on this film. He mortgaged his house three times; he also used it as a set, in order to save on his location budget. He canceled many of the exterior scenes and borrowed the set of the television show Monk to film interiors. He was eating carelessly and smoking constantly. He lost weight. He desperately needed more time. When he finished shooting a scene in Chinatown, Cathy Schulman caught up with him to ask about the next day’s shoot. “You look like you’re clutching your chest,” she observed. Haggis admitted that he was having some pains. “Sharp pains?” Schulman urged him to see a doctor. He didn’t want to hear that.

• From The Erotic Mind (1995)

  As we grow, our dependency decreases, and with it some of our vulnerability. But we continue to long for human connection despite the inevitable hurt. The need to reach out versus the imperative of self-protection is such a fundamentally human conflict that it affects all areas of life, including our eroticism. FROM AMBIVALENCE TO PASSIONIt is helpful to think of ambivalence as an internal form of the erotic equation. When someone is sexually ambivalent, the two key ingredients for high excitement—attraction and obstacles—are both active within the same person. In the right proportions, under the right circumstances, the result can be a compelling turn-on. Most people don’t readily think of ambivalence as an aphrodisiac because it is most likely to be so just at the moment when it disappears. After all, it isn’t ambivalence alone that turns people on but rather the transformation of mixed feelings into a single-minded focus on pleasure. For this reason, when ambivalence adds intensity to sex, it usually operates in the background. By the time we are highly aroused, ambivalence has at least momentarily been swept aside. This process is easy to see when ambivalence plays a part in The Group’s peak encounters. You can’t help noticing how reticence yields to passion as Lydia, age twenty-seven, resolves an ongoing struggle between fascination and fear: My boyfriend kept asking me to try anal sex but I always refused. Yes I was curious, but I just wasn’t sure if it was the right thing. Besides, my friends all told me it was very painful and I believed them. Eventually, I decided to try, but I couldn’t help wondering if I was making a big mistake. We used salad oil as a lubricant. I liked the way it felt as my boyfriend relaxed me with his finger. For the first five minutes I was too scared to get into it. Then I said, “Why don’t we try it with me on top?” Having just a little more control over my position did the trick for me. What a pleasure it was to try something new. Feeling his penis sliding deep inside of me was wonderful. Anal sex is now one of my favorite things. How wrong my friends were. I’ve never felt any pain at all. Although Lydia seems aware that her initial reluctance contributed to her arousal, it would not be surprising if she had left out of her story the fact of her reticence (background), concentrating instead on the joy of her new discovery (foreground). Perhaps this is one reason that only about 10 percent of The Group’s peak encounters and even fewer of their favorite fantasies include explicit references to ambivalence. In discussions with clients in therapy I’ve noticed how they often downplay or “forget” about the ambivalence that preceded an exciting erotic event, unless I specifically ask them how they were feeling.

• From The Erotic Mind (1995)

  Longing—and the associated anxiety—reaches its zenith in romantic love, for it is here that your deepest vulnerabilities are exposed. In Dr. Tennov’s study of limerence, the most commonly reported physical reactions to falling in love were heart palpitations, trembling, pallor, flushing, and general weakness—all the common fear responses.8 The great French philosopher of romance Stendhal captured the interconnection between romance and anxiety when he concluded that “the pleasures of love are always in proportion to the fear.”9 Both lusty and limerent attractions seek a response from the other. Consequently, they both leave you open to potential rejection, a prospect that grows more frightening in direct proportion to your level of attraction and need. No wonder we often act like nervous adolescents in the presence of those who turn us on most. Quite naturally, we experience our nervousness as an annoyance and embarrassment and try to hide it. But Dr. Tennov insists: However unappealing it may be in a universe conceived as orderly and humane, the fact is undeniable: fear of rejection may cause pain, but it also enhances desire.10 Anxiety can also function as an aphrodisiac when it is a response to the risks involved with searching for power. When you are a top in a dominance-submission scenario, the rush of feeling powerful may be tempered by the weight of responsibility for the outcome. Conversely, when you submit to the power of your partner, you may savor your role as the center of attention, but you may also fear being overwhelmed and pushed somewhere you do not wish to go. Anxiety has an especially close connection with violating prohibitions. Although you may not always be aware of it, at least a portion of the excitement generated by sexual rule-breaking results from the fear of being caught, disapproved of, or possibly even punished. Ron, a forty-year-old member of The Group, remembers an encounter from fifteen years ago as if it occurred yesterday. Notice how his overwhelming anxiety miraculously translates into heart-pounding passion: One of the most memorable sexual experiences of my life took place while I was living and working in a London public house. I was having an affair with the owner’s wife. One day I went down to the cellar to change a barrel of beer and she just happened to be there too. Even though the pub was busy, we started fooling around. Without speaking she grabbed at the obvious bulge in my crotch as I groped my way inside her soaking wet panties. I felt her whole body tremble and I was shaking too. She begged me to stop because someone might hear us from the kitchen but she didn’t miss a beat as she unzipped my pants. I never knew my dick could get so hard! Frantically trying to hide, we moved on top of the barrels, but it was so cold she let out a scream (which I squelched by kissing her).

• From Going Clear (2013)

  At the lunch, Miscavige announced to Gerald Feffer, one of their lawyers, “Marty and I are just going to bypass you entirely. We’re going to see Fred.” Feffer laughed at the thought that Miscavige would talk directly to the commissioner. “I’m not joking,” Miscavige said. “Marty, do you want to go?” The two men hailed a cab after lunch and went to 1111 Constitution Avenue, the IRS headquarters, and announced to the security officer that they wanted to see the commissioner. “Is he expecting you?” “No, but if you phone him on the intercom and tell him we are from the Church of Scientology, I’m sure he’d love to see us.” Within a few moments, several of the commissioner’s aides came down to the lobby. Miscavige told them that he wanted to bury the hatchet. He said he knew how much hatred there was on each side, going back for decades, and that an intervention from the top was necessary. An hour later there was a call in their hotel room saying the commissioner would see them the following week. In that first meeting with Goldberg, in a drab government conference room at a giant table, Miscavige, Rathbun, and Heber Jentzsch were facing about a dozen upper-level government bureaucrats, including the commissioner. The level of distrust between the negotiating parties was extreme, made even greater for the IRS representatives who knew that Scientologists had stolen documents and wiretapped meetings in that very building. Both sides had an incentive to bring the hostilities to an end, however. Miscavige and Rathbun made their carefully rehearsed presentation. Miscavige recited a litany of examples in which he felt the IRS had singled out Scientology for unfair treatment. “Am I lying?” he would turn and ask Rathbun theatrically. Rathbun had a briefcase stuffed with documents obtained from the 2,300 Freedom of Information Act lawsuits the church had filed, or the countless public records that the church had combed through. Among the many internal memos the Scientologists had gathered was one they called the Final Solution document. It was the minutes of a meeting in 1974 of several top IRS executives who were trying to define “religion” in a manner that excluded Scientology but not other faiths. Miscavige made it clear that the barrage of lawsuits lodged against the IRS would come to an immediate halt if the church got what it wanted, which was an unqualified exemption for all of its activities. When Miscavige finished his presentation, Goldberg called for a break, but he signaled to Rathbun to hang back. Goldberg asked him privately if the government settled, would Scientology also turn off the personal attacks in Freedom magazine? “Like a faucet,” Rathbun told him. Goldberg appointed his deputy commissioner, John Burke, who had no history with the conflict, to oversee a lengthy review of Scientology’s finances and practices.

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  My own belief is that the question of free-will is insoluble on strictly psychologic grounds. After a certain amount of effort of attention has been given to an idea, it is manifestly impossible to tell whether either more or less of it might have been given or not. To tell that, we should have to ascend to the antecedents of the effort, and defining them with mathematical exactitude, prove, by laws of which we have not at present even an inkling, that the only amount of sequent effort which could possibly comport with them was the precise amount which actually came. Measurements, whether of psychic or of neural quantities, and deductive reasonings such as this method of proof implies, will surely be forever beyond human reach. No serious psychologist or physiologist will venture even to suggest a notion of how they might be practically made. We are thrown back therefore upon the crude evidences of inception, and, on the other hand, upon a priori postulates and probabilities. He who loves to balance nice doubts need be in no hurry to decide the point. Like Mephistopheles to Faust, he can say to himself, "dazu hast du noch eine lange Frist," for from generation to generation the reasons adduced on both sides will grow more voluminous, and the discussion more refined. But if our speculative delight be less keen, if the love of a parti pris outweighs that of keeping questions open, or if, as a French philosopher of genius says, "l'amour de la vie qui s'indigne de tant de discours," awakens in us, craving the sense of either peace or power, —then, taking the risk of error on our head, we must project upon one of the alternative views the attribute of reality for us; we must so fill our mind with the idea of it that it becomes our settled creed. The present writer does this for the alternative of freedom, but since the grounds of his opinion are ethical rather than psychological, he prefers to exclude them from the present book.[514]

• From Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence (2014)

  Hence secularization has sometimes damaged religion. Even in the relatively benign atmosphere of the United States, Protestant fundamentalists became xenophobic and fearful of modernity. The horrors of Nasser’s prison polarized the vision of Sayyid Qutb; his former liberalism was transformed into a paranoid vision that saw enemies everywhere. Khomeini too frequently spoke of conspiracies of Jews, Christians, and imperialists. The Deobandis, bruised by the British abolition of the Moghul Empire, created a rigid, rule-bound form of Islam and gave us the Taliban travesty, a noxious combination of Deobandi rigidity, tribal chauvinism, and the aggression of the traumatized war orphan. In the Indian subcontinent and the Middle East, the alien ideology of nationalism transformed traditional religious symbols and myths and gave them a violent dimension. But the relationship between modernity and religion has not been wholly antagonistic. Some movements, such as the two Great Awakenings and the Muslim Brotherhood, have actually helped people to embrace modern ideals and institutions in a more familiar idiom. Modern religious violence is not an alien growth but is part of the modern scene. We have created an interconnected world. It is true that we are dangerously polarized, but we are also linked together more closely than ever before. When shares fall in one region, markets plummet all around the globe. What happens in Palestine or Iraq today can have repercussions tomorrow in New York, London, or Madrid. We are connected electronically so that images of suffering and devastation in a remote Syrian village or an Iraqi prison are instantly beamed around the world. We all face the possibility of environmental or nuclear catastrophe. But our perceptions have not caught up with the realities of our situation, so that in the First World we still tend to put ourselves in a special privileged category. Our policies have helped to create widespread rage and frustration, and in the West we bear some responsibility for the suffering in the Muslim world that Bin Laden was able to exploit. “Am I my brother’s guardian?” The answer must surely be yes. War, it has been said, is caused “by our inability to see relationships. Our relationship with our economic and historical situation. Our relationship with our fellow-men. And above all our relationship to nothingness. To death.”4 We need ideologies today, religious or secular, that help people to face up to the intractable dilemmas of our current “economic and historical situation” as the prophets did in the past. Even though we no longer have to contend with the oppressive injustice of the agrarian empire, there is still massive inequality and an unfair imbalance of power. But the dispossessed are no longer helpless peasants; they have found ways of fighting back. If we want a viable world, we have to take responsibility for the pain of others and learn to listen to narratives that challenge our sense of ourselves. All this requires the “surrender,” selflessness, and compassion that have been just as important in the history of religion as crusades and jihads.

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  “What about the blood on the books?” I ask. “Was it human?” There is a long pause. “The lab test indicated that it was animal blood. A ram or a goat, we can’t be a hundred percent sure. We found your books in her home, along with your case file from-” “I figured,” I say quickly. “There was something else,” he says. “We found the footage of your time in the house.” I squeeze my eyes closed. “What are you going to do with it?” “It’ll go into evidence,” he says. “Good. No one will see it?” “Not the media, if that’s what you’re asking.” “Okay.” “There is one more thing…” How many more things could there be? “Saphira had an apartment in Anchorage. We think that’s how she got to you so quickly when Isaac was sick. She had been watching a recording of you and Doctor Asterholder. She was only able to see what was happening in the house when the power was on, and there was only sound in certain rooms. So there are gaps in the recordings. But, it was paused. I was hoping you’d be able to tell me something about the context of what I was seeing.” “What was it paused on?” I am breathless…sick. It never occurred to me that there were multiple cameras set up around the house. “You holding a knife to Doctor Asterholder’s chest.” I lick my lips. “He was holding a knife to his own chest,” I say. My mind is ripping through what exactly Saphira was trying to tell me. “It was the moment I changed,” I say. “It was the reason she did what she did.” I look for my mother’s book. I go the local bookstore and detail the plot to a wide-eyed girl of no more than eighteen behind the counter. She calls a manager to the front to help me. He looks at me earnestly while I repeat everything I just said to the girl. When I am finished, he nods like he knows just what I am talking about. “The book I think you are talking about had a small run on the New York Times Bestsellers List,” he says. I raise my eyebrows to his back as he leads me to the rear of the store and pulls a book off the shelf. I don’t look at it as he hands it to me. I hold the weight of it in my hands and stare blankly at his face. I feel as if I’m about to see my mother face to face. “You’re the writer, the one who—” “Yes,” I say. “I’d like some privacy.” He nods, and leaves me. I have a feeling he’s going to wherever managers go to tell everyone he knows that the kidnapped writer is here. I take one of those breaths that make you burn on the inside, then I drop my head.

• From The Erotic Mind (1995)

  Now that we’re turning our attention to troublesome turn-ons, you’ll be meeting many more of the individuals and couples who have come to me for therapy. Most of what I’ve discovered about erotic problems and their solutions has been with the help of my clients.2 In this chapter and the next, you’ll see how a variety of people have used therapy to understand and unravel their erotic dilemmas. As the evolution and meaning of these difficulties becomes clear, you might feel a bit frustrated when solutions aren’t immediately forthcoming. Rest assured that in Chapter 8, “Winds of Change,” I will describe a seven-step program that anyone can use to help with erotic problems. There you’ll revisit the same clients whose quandaries you’ve encountered in the preceding chapters. And you’ll see how they used their insights to forge new pathways to sexual healing and growth. FEELING SIDE EFFECTSAs you know, emotions play a crucial role in virtually all memorable encounters and fantasies. The unexpected aphrodisiacs—anxiety, guilt, and anger—often have a particularly strong association with the risks and conflicts that animate so many popular erotic scenarios. Normally, these emotions cause us few if any problems because our erotic minds use them sparingly and subtly. We also employ safety factors—such as the knowledge that there is no real danger or that we are capable of handling it—to increase our comfort level. Imagine yourself beginning a passionate encounter with your lover on the living room sofa when you notice that you forgot to close the draperies, and a nosy neighbor could be spying on you from a darkened window across the street—probably not, but how can you be sure? The idea of an unseen observer being titillated or scandalized triggers in you an exciting undercurrent of nervous uncertainty or naughty guilt. This slight nervousness enhances your arousal because you know you’re actually secure. After all, the lights are low and you’re not exactly parading in from of the window. No one can accuse you of being an exhibitionist. Besides, you’re feeling especially proud of your sexuality tonight, and you like the concept of turning on or shocking a prying prude. Keep in mind, however, that all emotional aphrodisiacs are dual edged; they have the capacity either to boost or to disrupt arousal—depending on the situation and the individual. So while you might be stimulated by thoughts of being watched, your lover might feel self-conscious until absolute privacy is restored. What for you is an excitement-boosting hint of risk is for your partner a source of genuine worry about what the unseen neighbor might think—or worse yet what he might say to others. This episode has an easy solution; you can close the drapes or lower the lights even further and continue enjoying each other. Privately, however, you may retain the image of the voyeuristic neighbor in the back of your mind as an aphrodisiac.

• From Going Clear (2013)

  There was one church that was especially designed to resolve this dilemma. Cruise’s first wife, the actress Mimi Rogers, introduced him to Scientology in 1986. He had just finished filming Top Gun, which had made him the world’s biggest movie star. He had little incentive to publicly declare himself a Scientologist after the widespread opprobrium directed at Scientology following the FBI raids on Operation Snow White and the exposure of the church’s esoteric beliefs. Rumors of his involvement began to mount, however. For several years he managed to keep his affiliation quiet, even from church management. Using his birth name, Thomas Mapother IV, he received auditing at a small Scientology mission called the Enhancement Center in Sherman Oaks, which Rogers had started with her former husband. Rogers’s close friend, and former roommate, Kirstie Alley, did her auditing there, along with singer—and later, congressman—Sonny Bono, who had also been brought into the church by Rogers. Cruise would later credit Scientology’s study methods for helping him overcome his dyslexia. The triumph of adding Cruise to the Scientology stable was fraught with problems. Mimi Rogers was at the top of that list. Her parents had been involved with Dianetics since the early days of the movement. In 1957, when Mimi was a year old, they had moved to Washington, DC, to work for Hubbard, and her father, Philip Spickler, had briefly joined the Sea Org. But Mimi’s parents had become disaffected by the end of the seventies. They were considered “squirrels,” because they continued to practice Scientology outside the guidance of the church. It would be one thing to have Tom Cruise as a trophy for Scientology, but it would be a disaster if he became a walking advertisement for the squirrels. When Miscavige learned of Cruise’s involvement in Scientology, he arranged to have the star brought to Gold Base, alone, at its secret desert location near Hemet, in August 1989. He assigned his top people to audit and supervise the young star during his first weekend stay. Cruise arrived wearing a baseball cap and dark glasses, trying to keep a low profile, although everyone on the base knew he was there. Cruise was preparing to make Days of Thunder that fall. He had just seen a twenty-one-year-old Australian actress, Nicole Kidman, in the thriller Dead Calm, and he was so enchanted that he cast her in a part she was far too young to play: a brain surgeon who brings Cruise’s character back to life after he crashes his race car. They had an immediate, intense connection, one that quickly became a subject of tabloid speculation. According to Rathbun, Cruise and Miscavige now had a common interest: getting rid of Mimi. She demanded and received a church mediation of their relationship, which involves each partner being put on E-Meters and confessing their “crimes” in front of the other.

• From Going Clear (2013)

  That process went on for two years. During that time, Rathbun and Miscavige commuted to Washington nearly every week, toting banker’s boxes stuffed with responses to the government’s queries. Two hundred Scientologists in Los Angeles and New York were mobilized to go through the books of the church’s tangled bureaucracy. The odds against success were high; the courts had repeatedly sided with the IRS’s assertion that the Church of Scientology was a commercial enterprise. Miscavige and Rathbun were very much aware that the future of Scientology, if there was one, awaited the result of the IRS probe. Either the panel would rule against them, in which case the church’s tax liability for the previous two decades would destroy it, or they would fall under the gracious protection of the freedom of religion clause of the First Amendment, in which case the Church of Scientology, and all its practices, would be sheltered by the US Constitution. Overshadowing this debate was an incident that renewed the public concern about the dangerousness of totalistic movements. In February 1993, agents for the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms tried to execute a search warrant on a religious commune a few miles east of Waco, Texas, that was run by a Christian apocalyptic group calling themselves the Branch Davidians. The leader, David Koresh, was stockpiling weapons, practicing polygamy, committing statutory rape, and was said to be physically abusing children, although that last charge was never proved. Following a shoot-out that caused the deaths of four government agents and six Branch Davidians, the FBI began a siege lasting nearly two months and culminating in a catastrophic blaze— broadcast all over the world—that consumed the entire compound. Seventy-five members of the sect died in the final assault, including twenty-five children. The Waco siege threatened to create a backlash against all new religious movements. On the other hand, the government’s handling of the siege, and the disastrous finale, provoked an international uproar. The hazards of unorthodox belief were clearly displayed, as were the limitations of police forces to understand and deal with fanatical movements. On October 8, around ten thousand Scientologists stood and cheered in the Los Angeles Sports Arena as Miscavige announced, “The war is over!” The IRS had settled with the church. Although the terms were secret, they were later leaked to the Wall Street Journal. Instead of the $1 billion bill for back taxes and penalties that the church owed, Scientology agreed to pay just $12.5 million to resolve outstanding disputes; the church also agreed to stop the cascade of lawsuits against the agency. In return, the IRS dropped its investigations. “The magnitude of this is greater than you can imagine,” Miscavige said that night at the Sports Arena. He held up a thick folder of the letters of exemption for every one of the church’s 150 American entities.

• From Going Clear (2013)

  The church was building up a strong defense in its case by hiring some of the most prestigious medical examiners and forensic scientists in the country—experts who questioned Joan Wood’s conclusion that the likely cause of death was a blood clot caused by dehydration. One of the local lawyers retained by the church arranged a personal meeting between Miscavige and Wood’s attorney, Jeffrey Goodis. Miscavige and Rathbun made a number of presentations to Goodis, trying to persuade him that his client was in legal jeopardy because of her ruling in the McPherson case. Wood was known as an unflappable witness and a formidable opponent to defense attorneys; her testimony would be crucial if the case went to trial. Rathbun says that Miscavige repeatedly warned Goodis that the church was going to discredit his client and sue her “into the Stone Age.” Four months before the McPherson case was set to go to trial, Joan Wood changed her ruling to say that McPherson’s death was “accidental.” The State’s case collapsed, charges against the church were dropped, and Wood avoided a lawsuit. Wood retired and became a recluse. She told the St. Petersburg Times that she suffered panic attacks and insomnia. (She died of a stroke in 2011.) The civil case against the church on the part of McPherson’s family continued, however, along with the negative publicity. Tom De Vocht, who was head of the Flag Land Base in Clearwater, says he arranged a meeting with Mary Repper, an influential political consultant who had led the campaigns of many of the state and local officials in the area, including the state attorney who had filed the criminal charges against the church. Repper had the reputation of being anti-Scientology, but she agreed to have lunch with Rinder, Rathbun, and Miscavige at the Fort Harrison Hotel. It turned out that she was a fan of the soap-opera star Michelle Stafford, who was a Scientologist. Repper was invited to Los Angeles to meet her at a Celebrity Centre gala. When she returned, Repper began hosting a series of dinners and lunches for local officials to meet other Scientology celebrities. Tom Cruise dropped by Repper’s house on several occasions to enjoy her famous coconut cake and schmooze with local officials including the mayor of Tampa and influential lawyers and judges. He showed clips of his movies and testified about how Scientology had changed his life. Fox News host Greta Van Susteren provided sunset cruises on her yacht. Repper held a brunch for Michelle Stafford; the guests were mainly women who were fans of The Young and the Restless, including the secretaries of local judges.