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 Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  He had been asked, as secretary of his union, to write a little address for the day itself, and deliver it - in between the grander speeches - before the crowd. The title of the address was to be ‘Why Socialism?’, and the composing and rehearsing of this threw Ralph - who was no very keen public speaker - into a fever. He would sit at the supper-table for hours at a time, writing until his arm grew sore - or more often gazing bleakly at the empty page before him, then dashing to the bookcase to check a reference in some political tract, and cursing to find it lent out or lost: ‘What has happened to The White Slaves of England? Who has borrowed my Sidney Webb? And where the blazes is Towards Democracy?’Florence and I would gaze at him and shake our heads. ‘Give the thing up,’ we would say, ‘if you don’t want to do it, or feel you can’t. No one will mind,’ But Ralph would always stiffen and answer, ‘No, no. It is for the sake of the union. I almost have it.’ Then he would frown at his page again, and chew on his beard; and I would see him imagining himself standing before a crowd of staring faces, and he would sweat and start to tremble.But here, at least, I felt I could help. ‘Let me hear you read a bit of your speech,’ I said to him one night when Florence was out. ‘Don’t forget I was an actress of sorts, once. It’s all the same, you know, whether it’s a stage or a platform.’‘That’s true,’ he said, struck by the idea. Then he flapped his sheets. ‘But I am rather shy of reading it out before you.’‘Ralph! If you are shy with me, in our parlour, what will you be like before five hundred people, in Victoria Park?’ The thought set him biting at his beard again; but he held his speech before him as requested, stood before the curtained window, and cleared his throat.“‘Why Socialism?’” he began. I jumped to my feet.‘Well, that is hopeless, for a start. You can’t mumble into your hands like that, and expect the folk in the gallery - I mean, at the back of the tent - to be able to hear you.’‘You are rather harsh, Nancy,’ he said.‘You will thank me for it, in the end. Now, straighten your back and lift up your head, and start again.

• From Less (2017)

  In Paris: a problem. It has been the struggle of a lifetime for Arthur Less to break the value added tax system. As an American citizen, he is due a refund of taxes paid on some purchases abroad, and in the shops, when they hand you the special envelope, the forms all filled out, it seems so simple: find the customs kiosk at the airport for a stamp, collect your refund. But Less knows the con. Closed customs offices, kiosks under repair, stubborn officers who insist he produce goods that were packed in his already-checked baggage; it is easier getting a visa to Myanmar. How many years ago was it when the information lady at Charles de Gaulle would not tell him where the detax office was? Or when he got the stamp but posted it in a deceptively labeled recycling bin? Time and again, he has been outwitted. But not this time. Less makes it his mission to get his damned tax back. Having splurged recklessly after his prize in Turin (a light-blue chambray shirt with a wide white horizontal stripe, like the bottom edge of a Polaroid), he gave himself an extra hour at the Milan airport, found the office, shirt in hand, only to have the officer sadly inform him he must wait until leaving the EU—which will take place when he concludes his layover in Paris and heads for the African continent. Less was undaunted. In Berlin, he tried the same tactic, with the same result (lady with red spiked hair, in mean Berlinese). Less remains undaunted. But at his layover in Paris he meets his match: a surprise German, with red spiked hair and hourglass spectacles, either the twin of the Berliner, or this is her weekend shift. “We do not accept Ireland,” she informs him in icy English. His VAT envelope, through some switcheroo, is from Ireland; the receipts, however, are from Italy. “It’s Italian!” he tells her as she shakes her head. “Italian! Italian!” He is right, but by raising his voice he has lost; he feels the old anxiety bubbling inside him. Surely she feels it. “You must now post it from Europe,” she says. He tries to calm himself and asks where the post office is in the airport. Her magnified eyes barely look up, no smile on her face as she says her delicious words: “There is no post office in the airport.”

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  The banister was sticky, but I grasped it, and began to climb. Before I had reached the third or fourth step, a door at the top of the staircase had opened, a head had emerged in the gap, and a lady’s voice called pleasantly: ‘Hallo down there! It’s rather steep, but worth the effort. Do you need a light?’ I answered that I did not, and climbed faster. At the top, a little out of breath, I was led by the lady into a tiny chamber that held a desk, and a cabinet, and a set of mismatched chairs. When she gestured, I sat; she herself perched upon the edge of the desk, and folded her arms. From a room nearby came the fitful crack-crack-crack of a typewriting machine. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘what can we do for you? I say, what an eye you have!’ I had removed my hat, as if I were a man, and, as she studied my cheek - and then, more warily, my close-clipped head - I fiddled with the ribbon on the hatband, rather awkwardly. She said, ‘Have you an appointment with us?’ and I answered that I hadn’t come about a house, at all. I had come about a girl. ‘A girl?’ ‘A woman, I should say. Her name is Florence, and she works here, for the charity.’ She gave a frown. ‘Florence,’ she said; then ‘are you sure? There’s really only Miss Derby, myself, and another lady.’ ‘Miss Derby,’ I said quickly, ‘knows who I mean. She definitely used to work here; for the last time I saw her she said - she said -’ ‘She said ... ?’ prompted the lady, more warily than ever - for my mouth had fallen open, and my hand had flown to my swollen cheek; and now I cursed, in a hopeless kind of miserable fury. ‘She said that she was leaving this post,’ I said, ‘and moving to another. What a fool I’ve been! I had forgotten it till now. That means that Florence hasn’t worked here for a year and a half, or more!’ The lady nodded. ‘Ah, well, you see, that was before my time. But, as you say, Miss Derby is sure to remember her.’ That, at least, was still true. I lifted my head. ‘Then, may I see her?’ ‘You may - but not today; nor even tomorrow, I’m afraid. She won’t be in now until Friday -’ ‘Friday!’ That was terrible. ‘But I must see Florence today, I really must! Surely you have a list, or a book, or something, that says where she has gone to. Surely somebody here must know.’ The lady seemed surprised. ‘Well,’ she said slowly, ‘perhaps we do ...

• From Less (2017)

  “And a note arrived for you.” An envelope on the miniature desk, below the image of Judas. Less opens it and reads: Arthur, contact me once you arrive, I’ll be at the resort, I hope you arrived in one piece. It is on business stationery, signed: Your friend, Carlos. After Rupali leaves, Less takes out his famous rubber bands. “Have you noticed,” Rupali asks him a few mornings later, at breakfast, in the low brick main building, a kind of fortress above the ocean, “how the morning sounds so much sweeter than the evening?” She is talking about the birds, awakening in harmony and bedding down in discord. But Less can think only of that racket particular to India: the spiritual battle of the bands. It seems to begin before dawn with the Muslims, when a mosque at the edge of the mangrove forest softly announces, in a lullaby voice, the morning call to prayer. Not to be outdone, the local Christians soon crank up pop-sounding hymns that last anywhere from one to three hours. This is followed by a cheerful, though overamplified, kazoo-like refrain from the Hindu temple that reminds Less of the ice cream truck from his childhood. Then comes a later call to prayer. Then the Christians decide to ring some bronze bells. And so on. There are sermons and live singers and thunderous drum performances. In this way, the faiths alternate throughout the day, as at a music festival, growing louder and louder until, during the outright cacophony of sunset, the Muslims, who began the whole thing, declare victory by projecting not only the evening call to prayer but the prayer itself in its entirety. After that, the jungle falls to silence. Perhaps this is the Buddhists’ sole contribution. Every morning, it starts again. “You must let me know,” Rupali says, “what we can do to help with your writing. You are our first writer.” “I could use a freestanding desk,” Less suggests, hoping to liberate himself from writing in the heart of his nautilus. “And a tailor. I tore my suit in Morocco, and I seem to have lost my sewing needle.” “We will take care of these. The pastor will know a good tailor.” The pastor. “And peace and quiet. I need that above all.” “Of course of course of course,” she insists, shaking her head, and her gold earrings sway from side to side.

• From Sex with Kings: 500 Years of Adultery, Power, Rivalry, and Revenge (2004)

  The cabal knew the king would be more difficult. “A brisk and lively disposition could only captivate him,” wrote his biographer, “and this was the chief quality Madame Denhoff was deficient in, who with a dull, heavy air affected the modesty of a virgin, which was directly opposite to the character the King required of his mistresses.” The advisers “were sensible that she would not suit their monarch’s fancy, but knew no lady at Court more proper to propose to him.”39 Augustus expressed a hearty interest at seeing the beauty so lauded by his friends but was predictably disappointed at their first meeting. He “liked not her dancing” and “his heart could not yet be affected by her beauty.” By this time he had figured out that his ministers wanted him to take a new mistress. He told one, “I am to be forced to love but till they find me a better than Madame Denhoff, I doubt whether I shall be unfaithful to Madame Cosel.”40 Undaunted, the king’s advisers threw him so often into the company of Madame Denhoff—who cast him “tender and languishing looks”—that slowly his heart became “enslaved.”41 But back in Dresden, Madame Cosel’s spies informed her of her rival. No sooner had she dropped a son than she got in a carriage to Warsaw to confront her faithless lover. Madame Denhoff’s supporters, hearing that the imperious mistress was on her way to foil their carefully laid plans, decided her arrival in Warsaw must be prevented at all costs. They quickly advised Madame Denhoff to create a scene that evening, pretending to be afraid for her life if Madame Cosel arrived in Warsaw. Shedding a great many crocodile tears, Madame Denhoff told Augustus she would leave town rather than face her violent rival. Accordingly, the king gave orders to prevent Madame Cosel from entering the town. True to her reputation, when Madame Cosel was approaching Warsaw and given the message that she must turn back on the king’s orders, she took out a pistol and threatened to shoot the messenger if he tried to prevent her from going ahead. She was finally persuaded to go home rather than risk the royal displeasure, and instead seek to win back the king’s love upon his return to Dresden. But the political cabal made sure that reconciliation was impossible. The king allowed his former mistress to live in luxurious retirement, giving her Pillnitz Palace. But Madame Cosel was not one to live peacefully. After political intrigues against Augustus, she fled to Berlin, where the king of Prussia seized her and returned her to Saxony. Augustus, finally realizing she would always stir up trouble, locked her in a fortress despite her shrill cries for clemency. There she remained even after his death in 1733, until her own death in 1765, after forty-nine years of genteel imprisonment.

• From Less (2017)

  The instructions for getting to the restaurant are as mysterious as a love note or an exchange of spies— Meet at the Moon Crossing Bridge —but his faith is fast; he takes the wheel of what basically feels like an enameled toaster and follows the clear, perfect signs out of Kyoto, toward the hill country. Less is grateful the signs are clear because the GPS, after giving crisp, stern directions to the highway, becomes drunk on its own power outside the city limits, then gives out completely and places Arthur Less in the Sea of Japan. Also unnerving is a mysterious windshield box, which reveals its purpose when the Toaster approaches a tollbooth: it produces a high-pitched reproving female shriek not unlike his grandmother’s when she came upon a piece of broken china. He dutifully pays the toll man, thinking he has done what the machine wants, and passes into a green countryside where a river has magically appeared. But the pastoral scene does not last long—at the next tollbooth, the lady shrieks again. Surely she is berating him for not possessing an electronic pass. But could she also have discovered his other crimes and inadequacies? How he made up ceremonies for a fifth-grade report on the religions of Iceland? How he shoplifted acne cream in high school? How he cheated on Robert so terribly? How he is a “bad gay”? And a bad writer? How he let Freddy Pelu walk out of his life? Shriek, shriek, shriek; it is almost Greek in its fury. A harpy sent down to punish Less at last. “Take the next exit.” The GPS, that rum-drunk snoozing captain, has awakened and is back in command. Mist is rising as steam rises from damp clothing set beside a fire; here, it is from the pine-dark, folded wool of the mountains. A leaden river is coiling along a bank of reeds. The Toaster passes a sake factory, or so he assumes, because here is a cheerful white barrel sitting as advertisement on the road. Some farm or other has a sign out, in English: SUSTAINABLE HARVEST . Less rolls down the window, and there is the salt-green smell of grass and rain and dirt. He rounds a corner and sees white tourist buses parked all in a row along the river, their great side mirrors like the horns of caterpillars; before them, in a military line, stand elderly people in clear raincoats, taking photographs. Scattered below the steaming mountains are perhaps fifteen thatched-roof houses furred with moss. Across from them: a bridge over the river, a wood-stone trestlework, and Less steers the car to cross it, passing tourists huddled against the rain. He imagines a boat is meant to take him upriver to the restaurant, and as he reaches the other bank and parks the Toaster (from the dashboard comes the harpy’s shrill reminder), he sees a few people waiting on the dock, and among them—he recognizes her through her clear umbrella—is his mother.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  It had grown darker during my time in the office, and wet and foggy. The street-lamps had all been lit, and every carriage had a lantern swinging from it; City Road was not, however, like Soho, where light streamed upon the pavements from a thousand flares and windows. For every ten paces of my journey that were illuminated by a pool of gas-light, there were a further twenty that were cast in gloom.The gloom lifted a little at Old Street itself, for here there were offices, and crowded bus stops and shops. As I walked towards the Hackney Road, however, it seemed only to deepen, and my surroundings to grow shabbier. The crossings at the Angel had been decent enough; here the roads were so clogged with manure that, every time a vehicle rumbled by, I was showered with filth. My fellow pedestrians, too - who, so far, had all been honest working-people, men and women in coats and hats as faded as my own - grew poorer. Their suits were not just dingy, but ragged. They had boots, but no stockings. The men wore scarves instead of collars, and caps rather than bowlers; the women wore shawls; the girls wore dirty aprons, or no apron at all. Everyone seemed to have some kind of burden - a basket, or a bundle, or a child upon their hip. The rain fell harder.I had been told by the tea-girl at the Angel to head for Columbia Market; now, a little way along the Hackney Road, I found myself suddenly on the edge of its great, shadowy courtyard. I shivered. The huge granite hall, its towers and tracery as elaborate as those on a gothic cathedral, was quite dark and still. A few rough-looking fellows with cigarettes and bottles slouched in its arches, blowing on their hands to keep the cold off.A sudden clamour in the clock tower made me start. Some complicated pealing of bells - as fussy and useless as the great abandoned market hall itself - was chiming out the hour: it was a quarter-past four. This was far too early to visit Florence’s house, if Florence herself was at work all day: so I stood for another hour in one of the arches of the market where the wind was not so cutting and the rain was not so hard.

• From Emotional Inheritance (2022)

  He sounds anxious. “You are worried,” I say, and Guy doesn’t answer. We both sit down. I notice that he doesn’t carry his usual backpack. He hasn’t gone to work, I assume. “Your doorman doesn’t seem so effective; he is sort of sleepy,” Guy says, and I hear him sigh. “Today I had jury duty and it was such a long day.” “And what made you think about my safety today?” I ask. “I’m not sure. I walked here from the subway and I saw a man downstairs. He looked strange. He seemed violent, something about the look in his eyes.” Guy points at the window. “He was here, on the street right at the entrance of your building,” he says. “I suddenly thought that this man could get into the building and ring your doorbell, and you could buzz him in, as if he were me. How would you know?” Guy is hypervigilant, constantly detecting activities around him and anticipating threats and danger. That sensory sensitivity is usually the result of early trauma. High alertness aims to predict and prevent danger, and the more I know Guy, the more I recognize the scared little boy hidden underneath. That boy is frightened; what if I open the door, assuming it’s him, and another guy shows up and hurts me? The threat is from both outside and inside—the man outside is dangerous and Guy is afraid he, too, might bring the danger with him into my office. He is threatened by the violent other, and I know that it is also his own unconscious aggression that he is worried might sneak into the room. The aggression from the outside and the aggression from inside him are intermixed, confused, as it always is when a child is exposed to violence early in life. Guy seems overwhelmed. I wonder about his childhood, why he is especially susceptible today to what seems like an activation of an early trauma. “Was there anything in jury duty that made you feel unsafe?” I ask. “Not at all,” he answers. “It is a case of a father who broke his daughter’s arm. The police have been involved, and the girl and her mother, the man’s ex-wife, got an order of protection against him. I mean, I’m not sure why he is in court. What else do they need from him? The man can’t hurt her anymore.” Guy looks at me and then continues. “The daughter is sixteen years old and she posted her story all over social media, saying awful things about her father. It feels wrong. It’s messy,” he concludes. “I have such bad luck. Can you believe that this is the case I have to deal with?” “Traumatic,” I say.

• From Sex with Kings: 500 Years of Adultery, Power, Rivalry, and Revenge (2004)

  Madame de Pompadour—who had moved into the grand Versailles apartments used by Madame de Montespan eighty years earlier—studied the lives of Louis XIV’s mistresses, seeking to learn lessons from their triumphs and failures. “Madame de La Vallière allowed herself to be duped by Madame de Montespan,” she told her lady’s maid, “but it was her own fault, or rather, the product of her good nature. Initially, she had no inkling because she could not believe in her friend’s treachery. Madame de Montespan was dislodged by Madame de Fontanges and supplanted by Madame de Maintenon; but her haughtiness and capriciousness had alienated the King.”32 Despite Madame de Pompadour’s knowledge that Louise de La Vallière had been duped into losing Louis XIV by her best friend, her closest call to losing Louis XV was orchestrated by her own cousin. Madame d’Estrades was a witty but ungainly woman who owed her position at court to Madame de Pompadour’s friendship and generosity. Madame d’Estrades was appointed lady-in-waiting to the king’s daughter and wormed her way into Louis’s affection as an amusing friend. She tried to seduce him, but as Louis could only be seduced by beauty, her attempt fell flat. Her cousin’s success continued to eat away at her, and she devised a new plan to unseat Madame de Pompadour. Madame d’Estrades brought her beautiful nineteen-year-old niece Charlotte-Rosalie de Choiseul-Romanet to court. Madame de Pompadour arranged the girl’s brilliant marriage and obtained a plum position for her as supernumerary lady-in-waiting to the king’s daughters. The girl’s aunt pumped up her aspirations of replacing the rather worn Madame de Pompadour and winning for herself riches, power, and glory. Madame d’Estrades would invite her niece to play cards in Madame de Pompadour’s apartments during her intimate evenings with the king and a few friends. Madame de Pompadour’s friends pointed out uneasily that the young woman seemed hell-bent on seducing Louis, but in this case she naively refused to suspect that sweet, pretty Charlotte-Rosalie could be so under-handed. As the months passed, Madame de Pompadour continued inviting the girl to events where the king would be present. Gradually Louis became more interested in the flirtatious bride and made several secret appointments with her, during which she steadfastly refused to have sex with him. Madame d’Estrades and her lover the comte d’Argenson had coached Charlotte-Rosalie to refuse the king’s advances until she was assured of becoming his maîtresse-en titre—and ousting Madame de Pompadour. One day as Madame d’Estrades and d’Argenson sat together, Charlotte-Rosalie rushed in quite disheveled, having evidently just been ravished by the king. She cried, “It has happened. He loves me, he is happy, and she is to be dismissed. He gave me his word.”33 She had even obtained a letter from the king promising to get rid of Madame de Pompadour.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  You won’t hate me for it, will you?’She took her hand away at once. ‘On the streets! My God! Of course I won’t hate you, but - oh, Nance! To think of you as one of them sad girls...’‘I wasn’t sad,’ I said, and looked away. ‘And to tell the truth I - well, I wasn’t quite a girl, either.’‘Not a girl?’ she said. ‘What can you mean?’I scraped at the silken edge of the blanket with my nail. Should I tell my story - the story I had kept so close, so long? I saw her hand upon the sheet and, as my stomach gave another slide, I remembered again her fingers, easing me open, and her fist inside me, slowly turning...I took a breath. ‘Have you ever,’ I said, ‘been to Whitstable ... ?’Once I began it, I found I could not stop. I told her everything - about my life as an oyster-girl; about Kitty Butler, whom I had left my family for, and who had left me, in her turn, for Walter Bliss. I told her about my madness; my masquerade; my life with Mrs Milne and Grace, in Green Street, where she had seen me first. And finally I told her about Diana, and Felicity Place, and Zena.When I stopped talking it was almost light; the parlour seemed chillier than ever. Through all my long narrative Florence had been silent; she had begun to frown when I had reached the part about the renting, and after that the frown had deepened. Now it was very deep indeed.‘You wanted to know,’ I said, ‘what secrets I had...’She looked away. ‘I didn’t think there would be quite so many.’‘You said you wouldn’t hate me, over the renting.’‘It’s so hard to think you did those things - for fun. And — oh, Nance, for such a cruel kind of fun!’‘It was very long ago.’‘To think of all the people you have known - and yet you have no friends.’‘I left them all behind me.’‘Your family. You said when you came here that your family had thrown you over. But it was you threw them over! How they must wonder over you! Do you never think of them?’‘Sometimes, sometimes.’‘And the lady who was so fond of you, in Green Street. Do you never think to call on her, and her daughter?’‘They have moved away; and I tried to find them. And anyway, I was ashamed, because I had neglected them...’‘Neglected them, for that - what was her name?’‘Diana.’‘Diana. Did you care for her, then, so very much?’‘Care for her?’ I propped myself upon my elbow. ‘I hated her!

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  So, with some trepidation, I did both.The passageway behind the door was very long and very gloomy. It led to a window, which looked out at a view of bricks and oozing drain-pipes; and from here there was only one way to proceed, and that was upwards, via a set of naked stairs. The banister was sticky, but I grasped it, and began to climb. Before I had reached the third or fourth step, a door at the top of the staircase had opened, a head had emerged in the gap, and a lady’s voice called pleasantly: ‘Hallo down there! It’s rather steep, but worth the effort. Do you need a light?’I answered that I did not, and climbed faster. At the top, a little out of breath, I was led by the lady into a tiny chamber that held a desk, and a cabinet, and a set of mismatched chairs. When she gestured, I sat; she herself perched upon the edge of the desk, and folded her arms. From a room nearby came the fitful crack-crack-crack of a typewriting machine.‘Well,’ she said, ‘what can we do for you? I say, what an eye you have!’ I had removed my hat, as if I were a man, and, as she studied my cheek - and then, more warily, my close-clipped head - I fiddled with the ribbon on the hatband, rather awkwardly. She said, ‘Have you an appointment with us?’ and I answered that I hadn’t come about a house, at all. I had come about a girl.‘A girl?’‘A woman, I should say. Her name is Florence, and she works here, for the charity.’She gave a frown. ‘Florence,’ she said; then ‘are you sure? There’s really only Miss Derby, myself, and another lady.’‘Miss Derby,’ I said quickly, ‘knows who I mean. She definitely used to work here; for the last time I saw her she said - she said -’‘She said ... ?’ prompted the lady, more warily than ever - for my mouth had fallen open, and my hand had flown to my swollen cheek; and now I cursed, in a hopeless kind of miserable fury.‘She said that she was leaving this post,’ I said, ‘and moving to another. What a fool I’ve been! I had forgotten it till now. That means that Florence hasn’t worked here for a year and a half, or more!’The lady nodded. ‘Ah, well, you see, that was before my time. But, as you say, Miss Derby is sure to remember her.’That, at least, was still true. I lifted my head. ‘Then, may I see her?’‘You may - but not today; nor even tomorrow, I’m afraid. She won’t be in now until Friday -’‘Friday!’ That was terrible. ‘But I must see Florence today, I really must! Surely you have a list, or a book, or something, that says where she has gone to.

• From Take Back Your Life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Relationships (2000)

  It is quite threatening to a person's sense of self to contemplate having been controlled or taken over. The terms themselves-brainwashing, mind control, thought reform-sound harsh and unreal. Yet only by confronting the reality of social-psychological manipulation and control can former members overcome its effects. In his classic work Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism, Lifton outlines the social-psychological processes used to create what he calls "ideological totalism." This is the coming together of the individual and certain ideas, or the melding of the individual with a particular set of beliefs. Through his research, Lifton found that each person has a tendency toward "all-or-nothing emotional alignment." Combining that tendency with an all-or-nothing ideology results in totalism. It is a rather surefire formula: immoderate individual character traits plus an immoderate ideology equals totalism-an extreme worldview. And, writes Lifton, "Where totalism exists, a religion, a political movement, or even a scientific organization becomes little more than [a] cult."4 Lifton identifies eight "psychological themes" that he uses as criteria for evaluating if a particular situation meets the standard of a totalist cult or a "thoughtreform environment." The more these psychological themes are present, the more restrictive the cult and the more effective the thought-reform program. Each of Lifton's themes sets off a predictable cycle: (1) the theme sets the stage, (2) the rationale for the theme is based on an absolute belief or philosophy, and (3) because of the extreme belief system, a person in such a setting has a conflicting and polarized reaction, and is forced to make a choice. Enveloped in a totalistic environment, most individuals will make totalistic choices. The outcome of this social-psychological interplay is "thought reform"-that is, the person is changed.' Though we urge you to read Lifton's work in its entirety, these are summaries of his eight themes. 1. Milieu control is the control of all communication and information, which includes each follower's internal self-communication. This sets up what Lifton calls "personal closure," meaning that people no longer have to struggle or think about what is true or real. Ultimately this prevents doubting and self-questioning. 2. Mystical manipulation is the claim of authority (divine, supernatural, or otherwise) that asserts that the ends justify the means, because the "end" is directed by a higher purpose. Certain experiences are orchestrated to appear as though they are occurring spontaneously. The follower is required to subordinate himself to the group or cause and stop all questioning, for who can question "higher purpose"? Self-expression and independent action wither away. 3. The demand for purity is essentially a black-and-white worldview with the leader as the ultimate moral arbiter. This creates an atmosphere of guilt and shame, where punishment and humiliation are expected. It also sets up an environment wherein members spy and report on one another. Through submission to the guilt-inducing and impossible demand for purity, members lose their moral bearing. 4. The cult of confession involves an act of surrender and total exposure. The follower is now "owned" by the group.

• From Less (2017)

  Look at him: seated primly on the hotel lobby’s plush round sofa, blue suit and white shirt, legs knee-crossed so that one polished loafer hangs free of its heel. The pose of a young man. His slim shadow is, in fact, still that of his younger self, but at nearly fifty he is like those bronze statues in public parks that, despite one lucky knee rubbed raw by schoolchildren, discolor beautifully until they match the trees. So has Arthur Less, once pink and gold with youth, faded like the sofa he sits on, tapping one finger on his knee and staring at the grandfather clock. The long patrician nose perennially burned by the sun (even in cloudy New York October). The washed-out blond hair too long on the top, too short on the sides—portrait of his grandfather. Those same watery blue eyes. Listen: you might hear anxiety ticking, ticking, ticking away as he stares at that clock, which unfortunately is not ticking itself. It stopped fifteen years ago. Arthur Less is not aware of this; he still believes, at his ripe age, that escorts for literary events arrive on time and bellboys reliably wind the lobby clocks. He wears no watch; his faith is fast. It is mere coincidence that the clock stopped at half past six, almost exactly the hour when he is to be taken to tonight’s event. The poor man does not know it, but the time is already quarter to seven. As he waits, around and around the room circles a young woman in a brown wool dress, a species of tweed hummingbird, pollinating first this group of tourists and then that one. She dips her face into a cluster of chairs, asking a particular question, and then, dissatisfied with the answer, darts away to find another. Less does not notice her as she makes her rounds. He is too focused on the broken clock. The young woman goes up to the lobby clerk, then to the elevator, startling a group of ladies overdressed for the theater. Up and down Less’s loose shoe goes. If he paid attention, perhaps he would have heard the woman’s eager question, which explains why, though she asks everyone else in the lobby, she never asks it of him: “Excuse me, but are you Miss Arthur?” The problem—which will not be solved in this lobby—is that the escort believes Arthur Less to be a woman. In her defense, she has read only one novel of his, in an electronic form that lacked a photo, and found the female narrator so compelling, so persuasive, that she was certain only a woman could have written it; she assumed the name to be one of those American gender curiosities (she is Japanese). This is, for Arthur Less, a rare rave review. Little good this does him at the moment, sitting on the round sofa, from whose conical center emerges an oiled palm. For it is now ten minutes to seven.

• From Less (2017)

  Then, a few months later, the wedding invitation in the mail: Request your presence at the marriage of Federico Pelu and Thomas Dennis. How awkward. He could under no circumstances accept, when everyone knew he was Freddy’s old paramour; there would be chuckles and raised eyebrows, and, while normally Less wouldn’t have cared, it was just too much to imagine the smile on Carlos’s face. The smile of pity. Less had already run into Carlos at a Christmas benefit (a firetrap of pine branches), and he had pulled Less aside and thanked him for being so gracious in letting Freddy go: “Arthur, you know my son was never right for you.” Yet Less could not simply decline the invitation. To sit at home while all the old gang gathered up in Sonoma to drink Carlos’s money—well, they would cackle about him all the same. Sad young Arthur Less had become sad old Arthur Less. Stories would be brought out of mothballs for ridicule; new ones would be tested, as well. The thought was unbearable; he could under no circumstances decline. Tricky, tricky, this life. Along with the wedding invitation came a letter politely reminding him of an offer to teach at an obscure university in Berlin, along with the meager remittance and the meager time remaining for an answer. Less sat at his desk, staring at the offer; the rearing stallion on the letterhead seemed to be erect. From the open window came the song of roofers hammering and the smell of molten tar. Then he opened a drawer and pulled out a pile of other letters, other invitations, unanswered; more were hidden deep within his computer; still more lay buried beneath a pile of phone messages. Less sat there, with the window rattling from the workers’ din, and considered them. A teaching post, a conference, a writing retreat, a travel article, and so on. And, like those Sicilian nuns who, once a year, appear behind a lifted curtain, singing, so that their families can gaze upon them, in his little study, in his little house, for Arthur Less a curtain lifted upon a singular idea. My apologies, he wrote on the RSVP, but I will be out of the country. My love to Freddy and Tom. He would accept them all. What a ramshackle itinerary he has nailed together! First: this interview with H. H. H. Mandern. This gets him plane fare to New York City, with two days before the event to enjoy the city, aflame with autumn. And there is at least one free dinner (the writer’s delight): with his agent, who surely has word from his publisher. Less’s latest novel has been living with his publisher for over a month, as any modern couple lives together before a marriage, but surely his publisher will pop the question any day now. There will be champagne; there will be money.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  She was a kind of devil! I have told you — ’‘And yet, you stayed with her, so long...’I felt suffocated, all at once, by my own story, and by the meanings she was teasing from it. ‘I can’t explain,’ I said. ‘She had a power over me. She was rich. She had - things.’‘First you told me it was a gent that threw you out. Then you said it was a lady. I thought, that you had lost some girl... ’‘I had lost a girl; but it was Kitty, and it was years before.’‘And Diana was rich; and blacked your eye and cut you, and you let her. And then she chucked you out because you - kissed her maid.’ Her voice had grown steadily harder. ‘What happened to her?’‘I don’t know. I don’t know!’We lay a while in silence, and the bed seemed suddenly terribly slim. Florence gazed at the lightening square of curtain at the window, and I watched her, miserably. When she put a finger to her mouth to chew at a nail I lifted my hand to stop her; but she pushed my arm away, and made to rise.‘Where are you going?’ I asked.‘Upstairs. I want to sit a little while and think.’‘No!’ I cried; and as I cried it, Cyril, in his crib upstairs, woke up, and began to call out for his mother. I reached for Florence and seized her wrist and, all heedless of the baby’s cries, pulled her back and pressed her to the bed. ‘I know what you mean to do,’ I said. ‘You mean to go and think of Lilian!’‘I cannot help but think of Lilian!’ she answered, stricken. ‘I cannot help it. And you - you’re just the same, only I never knew it. Don’t say - don’t say you weren’t thinking of her, of Kitty, last night, as you kissed me!’I took a breath - but then I hesitated. For it was true, I couldn’t say it. It was Kitty I had kissed first and hardest; and it was as if I had had the shape or the colour or the taste of her kisses upon my lips, ever after. Not the spendings and the tears of all the weeping sods of Soho, nor the wine and the damp caresses of Felicity Place, had quite washed those kisses away.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  Or would she - and this thought was a dreadful one - would she think her pretty, and like her more than me? Would she wish it had been Alice in the box for her to throw that rose to, and invite backstage, and call a mermaid ... ?Waiting for her that afternoon I was by turns anxious, gay and sullen - now fussing over the setting of the tea-table, now snapping at Davy and grumbling at Rhoda, now earning scolds from everyone for fretting and complaining, and generally turning what should have been a glad day for myself into a gloomy one, for us all. I had washed my hair and it had dried peculiarly; I had added a new frill to my best dress, but had sewn it crooked and it wouldn’t lie flat. I stood at the top of the stairs, sweating over the silk with a safety-pin, ready to weep because Kitty’s train was due and I must run to meet her, when Tony emerged from our little kitchen, carrying bottles of Bass for the tea-table. He stood and watched me fumbling. I said, ‘Go away’, but he only looked smug.‘You won’t want to hear my bit of news, then.’‘What news?’ The frill was flat at last. I reached for my hat on the peg on the wall. Tony smirked and said nothing. I stamped my foot. ‘Tony, what is it? I’m late and you’re making me later.’‘Well then, nothing at all, I expect. I dare say Miss Butler will tell you herself ...’‘Tell me what?’ Now I stood with my hat in one hand, a hat-pin in the other. ‘Tell me what, Tony?’He glanced over his shoulder and lowered his voice. ‘Now, don’t let on about it yet, for it ain’t been properly settled. But your pal - Kitty - she’s due to leave the Palace, ain’t she, in a week or so?’ I nodded. ‘Well, she won’t be going - not for a good while, anyway. Uncle has offered her a sparkling new contract, till the New Year - said she was too good to lose to Broadstairs.’The New Year!

• From Less (2017)

  As Less lies sleepless in bed, his novel appears in his mind. Swift. What a title. What a mess. Swift. Where is his editor when he needs her? His editrix, as he used to call her: Leona Flowers. Traded years ago in the card game of publishing to some other house, but Less recalls how she took his first novels, shaggy with magniloquent prose, and made them into books. So clever, so artful, so good at persuading him of what to cut. “This paragraph is so beautiful, so special,” she might say, pressing her French-manicured hands to her chest, “that I’m keeping it all to myself! ” Where is Leona now? High in some tower with some new favorite author, trying her same old lines: “I think the chapter’s absence will echo throughout the novel.” What would she tell him? More likable, make Swift more likable. That’s what everyone’s saying; nobody cares what this character suffers. But how do you do it? It’s like making oneself more likable. And at fifty, Less muses drowsily, you’re as likable as you’re going to get. The sandstorm. So many months of planning, so much travel, so much expense, and here they are: trapped inside as the wind whips their tents like a man with a mule. They are gathered, the three of them (Zohra, Lewis, Less) in the large dining tent, hot as a camel ride and just as smelly, with its heavy horsehair sand door that has not been washed and three visitors who have not been, either. Only Mohammed seems fresh and cheerful, though he tells Less he was awakened at dawn by the sandstorm and had to run for shelter (for he has, indeed, slept out of doors). “Well”—Lewis announcing over coffee and honeyed flatbreads—“we are being given an opportunity for a different experience than the one we were expecting.” Zohra greets this with a raised butter knife; tomorrow is her birthday. But they must submit to the sand. They spend the rest of the day drinking beer and playing cards, and Zohra fleeces them both.

• From How to Be Yourself: Quiet Your Inner Critic and Rise Above Social Anxiety (2018)

  All this social-media-induced social anxiety has less to do with the specific platform—indeed, the MySpace and chat rooms of yesteryear inspired the same anxiety as the apps du jour. But no matter the platform, social media is a performance. And performance pulls for perfectionistic self-presentation. To be sure, individuals have cultivated a public image since the dawn of time (Ponytailed or curly powdered wig? Fedora or derby?), but now, armed with smartphone cameras and filters, we can manage others’ impressions as never before. In addition, the depth and breadth of access social media allows into one’s life is unprecedented. Some choose to present their messy, imperfect lives with more honesty than others, but with a combination of scrutiny and an ability to control our impression management, the pull to present ourselves in just the right light is strong. Indeed, approval is quantitative—your Likes, friends, and followers are enumerated. How-to sites warn: “One photo that doesn’t fit with your Instagram feed is all it takes to lose followers forever.” It’s hard to resist the pull of perfectionism, which beats at the heart of social anxiety. Remember Rosie’s internal rules? Everyone has to like me has morphed into Everyone has to Like me. Or follow me. Or retweet me. Perfectionism also lies at the heart of another social-media phenomenon so pervasive it was added to The Oxford English Dictionary in 2013: fear of missing out, or FOMO. FOMO is “a pervasive apprehension that others might be having rewarding experiences from which one is absent,” which may not, at first glance, look particularly perfectionistic. But the result? We feel inadequate, rejected, or that something is wrong with us. And those black-or-white conclusions lie at the heart of perfectionism. For Vivian, scrolling through Instagram late at night, seeing pictures of gatherings she missed—yesterday’s homebrew-tasting party, a night out at the hot new bistro downtown—any merry-making felt like an indictment of social failure. As the concept of FOMO has evolved over the years, it’s become apparent that it comes in different flavors. To find yours, ask yourself, “If I did miss out, what would that mean about me?” The first is I made the wrong decision. This links right back to perfectionism. The decision in question might be as small as the last restaurant you tried or as big as what career you’ve chosen, but whatever the decision, it undermines confidence in your judgment. It wasn’t the right choice. It wasn’t good enough. This type of FOMO feeds the unanswerable, anxiety-provoking phrases of “if only” and “what if?” Indeed, a 2013 study showed that those who experience higher levels of FOMO also reported lower levels of overall life satisfaction.

• From How to Be Yourself: Quiet Your Inner Critic and Rise Above Social Anxiety (2018)

  Like Jia, what I learned is this: you get to set the tone. The guy at my door made his request with an air of confidence, and I followed suit. Now, you may ask, what if he was faking it? What if he psyched himself up beforehand with an internal chant of, Act casual. Act casual? Quite honestly, it doesn’t matter. Either way, my roll-with-it response underscored that if you approach something as if it’s totally reasonable, it will be. Or you can just pretend you’re Beyoncé. Or, in this guy’s case, Trojan Man. To this day, I’m indebted to that guy, who inadvertently taught me one of my earliest lessons about social anxiety. For everyone’s sake, I really hope he found a condom. * * * Despite the lesson of Trojan Man, I hung on to some of my own safety behaviors for years. Whenever my words went out to an audience of strangers—as a guest on a podcast or during a radio interview—the old anxiety would come rolling back. So for a long time, safety equaled having scripted responses in front of me—sometimes, I admit, word for word. I knew I’d be more natural and give a better interview if I wasn’t clinging to my life preserver of pre-prepared answers, but with lots of people watching and listening, letting go and loosening up didn’t feel like an option. Unfortunately, that meant that’s exactly what I had to do. If I wanted to graduate from social anxiety school, I had to do interviews with no notes. I’d still give the interview the respect and preparation it deserved, but I needed to trust myself to remember the points I wanted to make. So when the opportunity to do a live radio interview came along, I let myself cringe for a minute (or an hour), then said to myself, “Do it before you feel confident and the confidence will catch up.” (Thanks, chapter 7!) This was the next phase of my Challenge List, sans safety behaviors: 5. Smile and start conversation with people I think don’t like me (several grumpy moms, one grumpy teacher, several grumpy co-workers). Do this repeatedly. 6. Be a guest on a pre-recorded podcast where mistakes can be edited out, but without my usual notes. Do this as often as is offered. 7. Do a live radio interview (ack, no do-overs!) without my usual notes (but whew, no camera!). Over time, I did all of these and they turned out just fine. I was anxious for each of them, but I went over the mountain. That’s important: I was anxious. You will be, too. You won’t stop feeling anxious. You’ll feel anxious, square your shoulders, and do it anyway.

• From Less (2017)

  A baffling series of glass chambers, sealing and unsealing automatically like air locks, where he is met by his tall serious teaching assistant and escort: Hans. Though about to sit for his doctorate exam on Derrida and therefore, in Less’s mind, his intellectual superior, curly-headed Hans willingly takes all of Less’s luggage and brings him, via his beat-up Twingo, to the university apartment he will call home for the next five weeks. It is on a high floor of an eighties building whose open staircases, and open walkways, are exposed to the chill Berlin air; in its goldenrod-and-glass severity, it resembles the airport. Additionally, there is no apartment key but instead a circular fob with a button—like a mating bird, the door chirps in response, then opens. Hans demonstrates this quickly; the door chirps; it seems simple. “You take the stairs to the walkway, you use the fob. You understand?” Less nods, and Hans leaves Less with his luggage, explaining that he will be back at nineteen hours to take him to dinner, and then at thirteen hours the next day to take him to the university. His curly head bobs good-bye, and he disappears down the open staircase. It occurs to Less that the graduate student never met his gaze. And that he should learn military time. He cannot imagine that the next morning before class, he will find himself hanging from the ledge outside his apartment building, forty feet above the courtyard, inching his way toward the only open window. Hans arrives precisely at nineteen hours (Less keeps repeating to himself: seven p.m., seven p.m., seven p.m. ). Unable to find an iron in the apartment, Less has hung up his shirts in the bathroom and run a hot shower to steam out the wrinkles, but the billowing steam somehow sets off the fire alarm, which of course brings a burly, cheerful, English-free man from the lower depths to tease him (“Sie wollen das Gebäude mit Wasser niederbrennen!”) and return with a sturdy German iron. Windows are opened. Less is in the process of ironing when he hears the Bach chimes of the doorbell. Hans bobs his head again. He has changed from a hoodie into a denim blazer. In the Twingo (evidence of cigarettes but no actual cigarettes), the young man drives him into another mysterious district, parking beneath a concrete railway where a sad Turkish man sits in a kiosk, selling curried hot dogs. The restaurant is called Austria and is decorated everywhere with beer steins and antlers. As is true everywhere else: they are not kidding.