Fear

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 The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  She was suddenly seized with a kind of horror, she felt physically sick at what she was doing. Her head swam and she caught the jamb of the door for support—at that moment she remembered her father. 2 Two days later as they sat alone in the garden at Morton, Stephen turned to Angela abruptly: ‘I can’t go on like this, it’s vile somehow—it’s beastly, it’s soiling us both—can’t you see that?’ Angela was startled. ‘What on earth do you mean?’ ‘You and me—and then Ralph. I tell you it’s beastly—I want you to leave him and come away with me.’ ‘Are you mad?’ ‘No, I’m sane. It’s the only decent thing, it’s the only clean thing; we’ll go anywhere you like, to Paris, to Egypt, or back to the States. For your sake I’m ready to give up my home. Do you hear? I’m ready to give up even Morton. But I can’t go on lying about you to Ralph, I want him to know how much I adore you—I want the whole world to know how I adore you. Ralph doesn’t understand the first rudiments of loving, he’s a nagging, mean-minded cur of a man, but there’s one thing that even he has a right to, and that’s the truth. I’m done with these lies—I shall tell him the truth and so will you, Angela; and after we’ve told him we’ll go away, and we’ll live quite openly together, you and I, which is what we owe to ourselves and our love.’ Angela stared at her, white and aghast: ‘You are mad,’ she said slowly, ‘you’re raving mad. Tell him what? Have I let you become my lover? You know that I’ve always been faithful to Ralph; you know perfectly well that there’s nothing to tell him beyond a few rather schoolgirlish kisses. Can I help it if you’re—what you obviously are? Oh, no, my dear, you’re not going to tell Ralph. You’re not going to let all hell loose around me just because you want to save your own pride by pretending to Ralph that you’ve been my lover. If you’re willing to give up your home I’m not willing to sacrifice mine, understand that, please. Ralph’s not much of a man but he’s better than nothing, and I’ve managed him so far without any trouble. The great thing with him is to blaze a false trail, that distracts his mind, it works like a charm. He’ll follow any trail that I want him to follow—you leave him to me, I know my own husband a darned sight better than you do, Stephen, and I won’t have you interfering in my home.’ She was terribly frightened, too frightened to choose her words, to consider their effect upon Stephen, to consider anyone but Angela Crossby who stood in such dire and imminent peril.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Although all the others were sleeping soundly, the one who had been with the Queen was still awake. And when he saw the King approaching, he realized what he was looking for and grew very frightened, with the result that the pounding of his heart, already considerable because of his recent labours, was magnified by his fear. He was convinced that the King would have him instantly put to death if he were to notice the way his heart was racing, and reflected on various possible courses of action. Eventually, however, on observing that the King was unarmed, he decided he would pretend to be asleep and wait for the King to make the first move. Having examined a large number of the sleepers without finding the man he was looking for, the King came eventually to the groom, and on discovering that his heart was beating strongly, he said to himself: ‘This is the one.’ Since, however, he had no wish to broadcast his intentions, all he did was to shear away a portion of the hair on one side of the man’s head, using a pair of scissors that he had brought along for the purpose. In those days, men wore their hair very long, and the King left this mark so that he could identify him by it next morning. He then departed from the scene, and returned to his own room. The groom had witnessed the whole episode, and being of a sharp disposition, he realized all too clearly why he had been marked in this particular fashion. He therefore leapt out of bed without a moment’s delay, and having laid his hands on one of several pairs of shears that happened to be kept in the stable for grooming the horses, he silently made the rounds of all the sleeping forms in the dormitory and cut everybody’s hair in precisely the same way as his own, just above the ear. Having completed his mission without being detected, he crept back to bed and went to sleep. When he arose the next morning, the King gave orders for the palace gates to remain closed until his whole household had appeared before him, and they duly assembled in his presence, all of them bare-headed. The King then began to inspect them with the intention of picking out the man whose hair he had shorn, only to discover, to his amazement, that the hair on most of their heads had been cut in exactly similar fashion. ‘This fellow I’m looking for may be low-born,’ he said to himself, ‘but he clearly has all his wits about him.’ Then, realizing that he could not achieve his aim without raising a clamour, and not wishing to bring enormous shame upon himself for the sake of a trifling act of revenge, he decided to deal with the culprit by issuing a stern word of warning and showing him that his deed had not passed undetected.

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  not involve human sacrifice, because they were essentially as conservative as her own; all underwrote hierarchical human structures. Christian heresy, on the other hand, was almost by definition antiauthoritarian and it linked in unholy communion men whose notions were otherwise merely tribal, or even criminal, by supplying them with transcendental and dangerous concepts. For all these reasons the imperial State found itself obliged – it was not unwilling – to become the enforcement agency of Christian orthodoxy. By the time of Theodosius, in the fifth century, there were over 100 active statutes against heresy and heretics. The first general statute, dating from the 380s, shows the essentially secular nature of the State’s concern: it is attacking heresy now as it once attacked Christianity as a whole because it provoked disorder. Thus sanctions are laid down against ‘those who contend about religion . . . to provoke any agitation against the regulation of Our Tranquility, as authors of sedition and as disturbers of the peace of the church. . . . There shall be no opportunity for any man to go out to the public and to argue about religion, or to discuss it or to give any counsel.’ This law was very severe indeed, as it appears to forbid religious debate of any sort outside, presumably, the authorized channels. But in some ways it was merely a logical culmination of a train of events set in motion by Constantine’s decision to seek alliance with orthodox Christianity. Indeed, to a great extent Constantine himself may have been aware of the logic at the time of his Milan Edict. His policy was, and remained, that of toleration as between Christianity and paganism; he stuck to this and he boasted of it – he had, he said, ‘left them their Temples’. But his attitude to divergency within Christianity was not the same; in fact, one of his main reasons for tolerating Christianity may have been that it gave himself and the State the opportunity to control the Church’s policy on orthodoxy and the treatment of heterodoxy. Of course Constantine was not concerned with doctrinal truth. So far as was possible he wanted the Church to be universalist and inclusive. He wrote threateningly to Bishop Athanasius in c . 328; ‘As you know my wishes, pray admit freely any who wish to enter the church. If I hear you have stopped anyone claiming membership I will immediately send an official to depose you and send you into exile.’ He knew that Athanasius, though orthodox, was a violent man, who regularly flogged his junior clergy and imprisoned or expelled bishops. That was not the sort of Church Constantine wanted: his Church must reflect the empire at its best – harmony, serenity, multiplicity in unity. Equally, he disliked doctrinal argument, for

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Jamie’s studio was large, bare, and swept by draughts. The stove was too small and at times it smelt vilely. The distempered grey walls were a mass of stains, for whenever it hailed or rained or snowed the windows and skylight would always start dripping. The furniture consisted of a few shaky chairs, a table, a divan and a hired grand piano. Nearly every one seated themselves on the floor, robbing the divan of its moth- eaten cushions. From the studio there led off a tiny room with an eye-shaped window that would not open. In this room had been placed a narrow camp-bed to which Jamie retired when she felt extra sleepless. For the rest, there was a sink with a leaky tap; a cupboard in which they kept crème-de-menthe, what remnants of food they possessed at the moment, Jamie’s carpet slippers and blue jean jacket—minus which she could never compose a note—and the pail, cloths and brushes with which Barbara endeavoured to keep down the accumulating dirt and confusion. For Jamie with her tow-coloured head in the clouds, was not only short-sighted but intensely untidy. Dust meant little to her since she seldom saw it, while neatness was completely left out of her make-up; considering how limited were her possessions, the chaos they produced was truly amazing. Barbara would sigh and would quite often scold—when she scolded she reminded one of a wren who was struggling to discipline a large cuckoo. ‘Jamie, your dirty shirt, give it to me—leaving it there on the piano, whatever!’ Or, ‘Jamie, come here and look at your hair-brush; if you haven’t gone and put it next-door to the butter!’ Then Jamie would peer with her strained, red-rimmed eyes and would grumble: ‘Oh, leave me in peace, do, lassie!’ But when Barbara laughed, as she must do quite often at the outrageous habits of the great loose-limbed creature, why then these days she would usually cough, and when Barbara started to cough she coughed badly. They had seen a doctor who had spoken about lungs and had shaken his head; not strong, he had told them. But neither of them had quite understood, for their French had remained very embryonic, and they could not afford the smart English doctor. All the same when Barbara coughed Jamie sweated, and her fear would produce an acute irritation. ‘Here, drink this water! Don’t sit there doing nothing but rack yourself to bits, it gets on my nerves. Go and order another bottle of that mixture. God, how can I work if you will go on coughing!’

• From Anxious: Using the Brain to Understand and Treat Fear and Anxiety (2015)

  Studies performed by Chris Cain in my laboratory with this task support the idea that escape from the CS, rather than just avoidance of the US, contributes to avoidance learning ( Figure 3.11 ). 61 Figure 3.11: Escape from Threat. Escape from threat is an active avoidance task in which the Pavlovian and instrumental phases are separated. First, Pavlovian conditioning occurs with a tone conditioned stimulus (CS) and a shock unconditioned stimulus (US). Then the subject is placed in a novel chamber and learns to shuttle to the other side when the CS comes on. This allows escape from the CS. Then, over time, the subject learns to shuttle back and forth continuously to avoid the CS altogether. This task is thus motivated and reinforced by CS termination rather than by the US, since the latter never occurs in this chamber. In avoidance and escape from threat, termination or prevention of the CS is the reinforcement that strengthens the response. Because it involves the removal or prevention of a stimulus, it is called negative reinforcement; an example of positive reinforcement would be the use of food to reinforce a response in an animal that has not eaten for a while. Thus, positive and negative in this context do not imply valence (goodness or badness) but instead presence or absence. And because the stimulus is reinforcing because of prior Pavlovian conditioning (association of the CS with a US), it is a conditioned reinforcer . Avoidance and escape from threat are thus dependent on conditioned negative reinforcement . 62 The most common view of the nature of the negative reinforcement signal resulting from CS escape/avoidance is that it results from the relief of fear. 63 This idea is central to the theory of avoidance proposed in the 1940s by O. Hobart Mowrer and his colleague Neal Miller. 64 They argued that avoidance is a two-factor learning process. First, the warning sound, which predicts shock, becomes a Pavlovian CS. Then actions that enable escape from the shock, and eventually from the CS, are learned instrumentally by their outcome. Mowrer and Miller proposed that the Pavlovian CS elicits a state of fear, and during the instrumental phase, responses that allow escape from the shock reduce the fear. These responses are learned because fear is an unpleasant experience, and its reduction is reinforcing. The idea that the CS elicits “fear” and that escape from the CS results in “relief” builds on hedonistic theories that assume reinforcement depends on the subjective experience of the pleasure of reward or the displeasure of punishment or pain. 65 Therefore, when the CS is terminated, the reinforcement comes from the dissipation of fear. I question the value of viewing brain states elicited by threats as subjective feelings.

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  I followed the bailiff and saw him whisper something to the deputy outside the courtroom. McMillian’s supporters would be let into the courtroom—now that half the courtroom was already filled. I walked over to where two ministers had assembled all of Walter’s supporters and tried to explain the situation. “I’m sorry, everyone,” I said. “They’ve done something really inappropriate today. They’ll let you in now, but the courtroom is already half filled with people here to support the State. There won’t be enough seats for everyone.” One of the ministers, a heavyset African American man dressed in a dark suit with a large cross around his neck, walked over to me. “Mr. Stevenson, it’s okay. Please don’t worry about us. We’ll have a few people be our representatives today and we will be here even earlier tomorrow. We won’t let nobody turn us around, sir.” The ministers began selecting people to be representatives in the courtroom. They told Minnie, Armelia, Walter’s children, and several others to go on in. When the ministers called out Mrs. Williams, everyone seemed to smile. Mrs. Williams, an older black woman, stood up and prepared herself to enter the courtroom. She took great care in fixing her hair just right. On top of her gray hair she wore a small hat whose placement she precisely adjusted. She then pulled out a long blue scarf that she delicately wrapped around her neck. Only then did she slowly begin to make her way to the courtroom door where the line of McMillian supporters had formed. I found her dignified ritual riveting, but when the spell was broken I realized that I needed to get going myself. I hadn’t spent the morning preparing for witnesses as I had intended but had instead been drawn into this foolish mistreatment of McMillian’s supporters. I walked past the line of patient people and went inside to begin preparing for the hearing. I was standing at counsel’s table when out of the corner of my eye I saw that Mrs. Williams had made it to the courtroom door. She was quite elegant in her hat and scarf. She wasn’t a large woman, but there was something commanding about her presence—I couldn’t help but watch her as she moved carefully through the doorway toward the metal detector. She walked more slowly than everyone else, but she held her head high with an undeniable grace and dignity. She reminded me of older women I’d been around all my life—women whose lives were hard but who remained kind and dedicated themselves to building and sustaining their communities. Mrs. Williams glanced at the available rows to see where she would sit, and then turned to walk through the metal detector—and that’s when she saw the dog. I watched all her composure fall away, replaced by a look of absolute fear.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Oh, but it was strong, this thing that stood between them, strong with the strength of their united bodies. It had drawn its own life from their youth, their passion, from the splendid and purposeful meaning of their passion—that was how it had leapt full of power into life, and now it had thrust in between them. They were ageing, they had little left but their loving—that gentler loving, perhaps the more perfect—and their faith in each other, which was part of that loving, and their peace, which was part of the peace of Morton. Backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards! Those incessant and desolate sounding footsteps. Peace? There was surely no peace in that study, but rather some affliction, menacing, prophetic! Yet prophetic of what? She dared not ask him, she dared not so much as turn the door-handle, a haunting premonition of disaster would make her creep away with her question unasked . Then something would draw her, not back to her bedroom, but on up the stairs to the room of their daughter. She would open that door very gently—by inches. She would hold her hand so that it shaded the candle, and would stand looking down at the sleeping Stephen as she and her husband had done long ago. But now there would be no little child to look down on, no small helplessness to arouse mother-pity. Stephen would be lying very straight, very large, very long, underneath the neatly drawn covers. Quite often an arm would be outside the bedspread, the sleeve having fallen away as it lay there, and that arm would look firm and strong and possessive, and so would the face by the light of the candle. She slept deeply. Her breathing would be even and placid. Her body would be drinking in its fill of refreshment. It would rise up clean and refreshed in the morning; it would eat, speak, move—it would move about Morton. In the stables, in the gardens, in the neighbouring paddocks, in the study—it would move about Morton. Intolerable dispensation of nature, Anna would stare at that splendid young body, and would feel, as she did so, that she looked on a stranger. She would scourge her heart and her anxious spirit with memories drawn from this stranger’s beginnings: ‘Little—you were so very little!’ she would whisper, ‘and you sucked from my breast because you were hungry—little and always so terribly hungry—a good baby though, a contented little baby—’ And Stephen would sometimes stir in her sleep as though she were vaguely conscious of Anna. It would pass and she would lie quiet again, breathing in those deep, placid draughts of refreshment. Then Anna, still ruthlessly scourging her heart and her anxious spirit, would stoop and kiss Stephen, but lightly and very quickly on the forehead, so that the girl should not be awakened.

• From Anxious: Using the Brain to Understand and Treat Fear and Anxiety (2015)

  The logic of the Mowrer-Miller theory still contributes to the rationale for the use of exposure as a treatment for problems of fear and anxiety. 29 Figure 10.2: If Freud Did Exposure. Thus, the basic idea underlying exposure therapy is that facing your fears will condition you, via extinction, to be less responsive to the trigger stimuli. If you are afraid of elevators, for example, a therapist can show you pictures of elevators and weaken your responses that way. Or the therapist might ask you to imagine being in an elevator and encourage you to not lose your concentration on that thought, because thinking about something else will allow you to mentally escape from your fears and worries and reduce the effects of the mental exposure. To add a more realistic element, the therapist might take you on elevator rides; by forcing you to stay on the elevator, avoidance is prevented and extinction can do its work. Once some success is achieved through initial exposures, the client is then given instructions on how to conduct the exposure alone, especially in daily life situations, in order to strengthen and maintain the beneficial effects of the exposure. The first form of psychotherapy explicitly based on exposure was systematic desensitization, introduced by Joseph Wolpe in the late 1950s. 30 This approach used repeated gradual exposures to imagined threats accompanied by the use of relaxation exercises. A number of variants of exposure therapy emerged in the years that followed. 31 Graded retraining also involves gradual exposure, but to real-life, anxiety-provoking situations rather than imagined stimuli. 32 In contrast to gradual exposure approaches, flooding 33 (also called implosive therapy ) induces and maintains a high level of fear during imagined exposures, preventing escape and avoidance until fear levels dissipate. In some forms of implosive therapy, the therapist guides the imagined exposures in such a way as to ensure that a high level of fear is maintained. Prolonged exposure therapy, a variant of flooding, attempts to maintain a high level of fear arousal, but its key premise is that all aspects of fear, as defined by Lang’s three response systems (behavioral avoidance, physiological responses, and verbal behavior), have to be reduced in order for exposure to be effective. 34 A different approach focuses on low levels of exposure to real-life threats in a highly structured situation and uses verbal reinforcement to motivate the individual to stay with the procedure even if it becomes somewhat stressful. 35 Still other approaches use vicarious exposure through observation of social situations to reduce fear and anxiety.

• From Anxious: Using the Brain to Understand and Treat Fear and Anxiety (2015)

  The effects on feelings can come about in two ways. First, feelings may change secondary to the control of the defensive circuits. If the CS-US association in the amygdala is suppressed by extinction, threat-elicited responses in the brain and body will be reduced. To the extent that they contribute to nonconscious defensive motivational states, components of which feed the construction of a feeling of fear via cortical areas, extinction can reduce feelings of fear or anxiety. Second, stimulus repetition without consequence can also change the cognitive representation of the CS-US association in explicit memory. One of the advantages of human cognition is that it can make decisions on the fly rather than having to rely on new learning. When explicit cognition is in control, if you observe that something that was previously a danger is no longer so, you can quickly reappraise it and start to think about it differently and act differently toward it. This is why overcoming avoidance helps change conscious beliefs. With conscious expectations changed, previously threatening stimuli can be viewed in a new light: They no longer trigger top-down activation of fear schemas that normally lead to the conclusion, “I am in danger and feel afraid,” and also normally activate defense circuits and their physiological consequences that then support the cognitive construction of the feeling. The greatest benefit is likely to be obtained if both the defensive circuit and the explicit representations are changed. Although my conclusion is similar to that of prolonged exposure proponents, I reach it from a different perspective. In sum, if only the explicit or only the implicit system is treated, the untreated system can reinvigorate the fear. The implicit system can seize attention, and attention can retrieve past memories about the danger of the stimulus, triggering new feelings of fear and reestablishing the belief that the stimulus is dangerous. For its part, the explicit system can lead to worry and avoidance and create feelings of fear in an abstract cognitive sense that can then release stress hormones that revitalize the CS-US association, reestablishing threat sensitivity, hyperarousal, behavioral avoidance, and other consequences of amygdala-based threat conditioning. Indeed, stress has long been recognized to be a potent trigger that reestablishes extinguished defensive reactions in animals and phobic fears in people. 81 It is well known to anxiety researchers that people’s fear and anxieties are often irrational and not particularly modifiable by relying upon logical reasoning alone.

• From Anxious: Using the Brain to Understand and Treat Fear and Anxiety (2015)

  54 Unlike freezing, escape and avoidance are not species-specific defense responses. Animals can use many different kinds of behaviors to escape and avoid (e.g., running away, jumping, rearing, climbing, swimming, pulling a chain, pressing a lever, and on and on), depending on what sorts of conditions they are in. These are not inherently or exclusively escape or avoidance responses; they are just motor actions that can, through learning, be used to escape or avoid, as instructed by past learning. Figure 3.9: Observational and Instructed Conditioning in Humans. Humans are especially adept at learning by observation and instruction. In observational threat conditioning, the participant watches someone else receive an unconditioned stimulus (US) in relation to a conditioned stimulus (CS). When the participant is then exposed to the CS, conditioned responses are expressed, even though the US was never directly experienced with the CS. Similarly, people can be instructed that when a certain CS appears they are likely to receive a US. Even though the US never occurs, the CS acquires the ability to elicit conditioned responses. (Image provided by Elizabeth Phelps.) As we’ve seen, behaviors that are learned as a result of the success of their outcome are said to be instrumental responses (responses that are instrumental in obtaining a goal or outcome). The ability to acquire new instrumental behaviors provides the organism with a wider range of options in dealing with danger. Instrumental, goal-directed learning is often described as response-outcome (R-O) learning . 55 In the laboratory, instrumental learning of actions to cope with danger is studied by using active avoidance conditioning tasks ( Figure 3.10 ). In a typical experiment, a rat is placed in a box with two compartments. 56 A sound is played, and at the end of it a shock is delivered. The rat, of course, freezes the next time it hears the sound. So far, this is standard Pavlovian threat conditioning with a sound CS and a shock US. But if the CS and US are repeated, the shock US will begin to elicit random movements, and at some point the animal will end up in the other compartment, where there is no shock. It then learns that it can escape from the shock by running to the other compartment. It eventually also learns that escaping to the other compartment when the tone comes on will avoid the shock altogether.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  The butcher ran out to swell the confusion by shouting commands that no one obeyed; he was trying to grasp his dog by the tail which was short and not at all handy for grasping. And then, as it seemed from nowhere at all, there suddenly appeared a very desperate young woman; she was carrying her parasol as though it were a lance with which she intended to enter the battle. Her wails of despair rose above the dog’s yells: ‘Tony! My Tony! Won’t anyone stop them? My dog’s being killed, won’t any of you stop them?’ And she actually tried to stop them herself, though the parasol broke at the first encounter. But Tony, while yelling, was as game as a ferret, and, moreover, the Airedale had him by the back, so Stephen got hastily out of the car—it seemed only a matter of moments for Tony. She grabbed the old rip by the scruff of his neck, while the butcher dashed off for a bucket of water. The desperate young woman seized her dog by a leg; she pulled, Stephen pulled, they both pulled together. Then Stephen gave a punishing twist which distracted the Airedale, he wanted to bite her; having only one mouth he must let go of Tony, who was instantly clasped to his owner’s bosom. The butcher arrived on the scene with his bucket while Stephen was still clinging to the Airedale’s collar. ‘I’m so sorry, Miss Gordon, I do hope you’re not hurt?’ ‘I’m all right. Here, take this grey devil and thrash him; he’s no business to eat up a dog half his size.’ Meanwhile, Tony was dripping all over with gore, and his mistress, it seemed, had got herself bitten. She alternately struggled to staunch Tony’s wounds and to suck her own hand which was bleeding freely . ‘Better give me your dog and come across to the chemist, your hand will want dressing,’ remarked Stephen. Tony was instantly put into her arms, with a rather pale smile that suggested a breakdown. ‘It’s quite all right now,’ said Stephen quickly, very much afraid the young woman meant to cry. ‘Will he live, do you think?’ inquired a weak voice. ‘Yes, of course; but your hand—come along to the chemist.’ ‘Oh, never mind that, I’m thinking of Tony!’ ‘He’s all right. We’ll take him straight off to the vet when your hand’s been seen to; there’s quite a good one.’ The chemist applied fairly strong carbolic; the hand had been bitten on two of the fingers, and Stephen was impressed by the pluck of this stranger, who set her small teeth and endured in silence. The hand bandaged they drove along to the vet, who was fortunately in and could sew up poor Tony. Stephen held his front paws, while his mistress held his head as best she could in her own maimed condition.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  They drove to a couple more bars, but at these they remained for only a very few minutes. Dickie said they were dull and Jeanne Maurel agreed—she suggested that they should go on to Alec’s. Valérie lifted an eyebrow and groaned. She was terribly bored, she was terribly hungry. ‘I do wish I could get some cold chicken,’ she murmured. 4 As long as she lived Stephen never forgot her first impressions of the bar known as Alec’s—that meeting-place of the most miserable of all those who comprised the miserable army. That merciless, drug-dealing, death-dealing haunt to which flocked the battered remnants of men whom their fellow men had at last stamped under; who, despised of the world, must despise themselves beyond all hope, it seemed, of salvation. There they sat, closely herded together at the tables, creatures shabby yet tawdry, timid yet defiant—and their eyes, Stephen never forgot their eyes, those haunted, tormented eyes of the invert. Of all ages, all degrees of despondency, all grades of mental and physical ill-being, they must yet laugh shrilly from time to time, must yet tap their feet to the rhythm of music, must yet dance together in response to the band—and that dance seemed the Dance of Death to Stephen. On more than one hand was a large, ornate ring, on more than one wrist a conspicuous bracelet; they wore jewelry that might only be worn by these men when they were thus gathered together. At Alec’s they could dare to give way to such tastes—what was left of themselves they became at Alec’s. Bereft of all social dignity, of all social charts contrived for man’s guidance, of the fellowship that by right divine should belong to each breathing, living creature; abhorred, spat upon, from their earliest days the prey to a ceaseless persecution, they were now even lower than their enemies knew, and more hopeless than the veriest dregs of creation. For since all that to many of them had seemed fine, a fine, selfless and at times even noble emotion, had been covered with shame, called unholy and vile, so gradually they themselves had sunk down to the level upon which the world placed their emotions. And looking with abhorrence upon these men, drink-sodden, doped as were only too many, Stephen yet felt that some terrifying thing stalked abroad in that unhappy room at Alec’s; terrifying because if there were a God His anger must rise at such vast injustice. More pitiful even than her lot was theirs, and because of them mighty should be the world’s reckoning. Alec the tempter, the vendor of dreams, the dispenser of illusions whiter than snow; Alec, who sold little packets of cocaine for large bundles of notes, was now opening wine, with a smile and a flourish, at the next-door table. He set down the bottle: ‘Et voilà, mes filles!’

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  wives who protested against compulsory divorces; in each case Hitler gave way, at any rate in public, which indicates that he was less intransigent in such matters than either the Pope or the German Christian clergy supposed. But it is notable that when the same gas-chambers intended for the euthanasia victims were in fact employed on Jews of all ages, and in vast numbers, no Christian protest was heard. What the papacy failed to realize was that the Nazis were more serious enemies of Christianity than even the Communists. They exposed the ambivalence and weakness of Christians, and their cowardice, whereas Communism brought out their strength. And, in the last resort, the Nazis were much more implacably determined to stamp out Christianity. When the Christian aristocrats who had taken part in the July 1944 plot were brought to trial, the president of the court, Roland Freisler, told their leader: ‘Count Moltke, Christianity and we Nazis have one thing in common and one only: we claim the whole man.’ The real threat of Nazism to Christianity was proclaimed far more loudly by the Nazis themselves than by the official Catholic leaders, who largely ignored it – at any rate in Germany, Austria and Italy. Hitler’s plans for Christianity were more draconian than anything envisaged by the Russians. He told his entourage on 13 December 1941: ‘The war will be over one day. I shall then consider that my life’s final task will be to solve the religious problem.... The final state must be: in the pulpit, a senile officiant; facing him, a few sinister old women, as gaga and poor in spirit as anyone could wish.’ Anti-Christian activities undertaken in Poland and elsewhere were more ferocious than anything contrived by the Russians, and applied equally to Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox churches. Himmler said: ‘We shall not rest until we have rooted out Christianity.’ The Nazi image of the future was adumbrated in the experimental area of the Warthegau, carved out of former Polish territories and handed over completely to party control as a tabula rasa. The plan involved not merely the separation of Church and State but the progressive and systematic destruction of religion. Did Pius XII know of this? He was usually well-briefed on what was going on. Eventually, Pius made a speech to the College of Cardinals. Nazism he said was a satanic spectre ... the arrogant apostasy from Jesus Christ, the denial of his doctrine and of his work of redemption, the cult of violence, the idolatry of race and blood, the overthrow of human liberty and dignity’. But it was then June 1945, the Germans had surrendered and Hitler was safely dead. Thus the Second World War inflicted even more grievous blows on the moral

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

  The emergency medical technician pulled me aside to tell me that although he was now lucid and could state his name, Hudson did not know what year it was or who the President was. She gave me a choice between the local ER or the trauma center an hour away. Opting for the trauma center, I was given directions so that I could meet the ambulance there. I didn’t want to leave Hudson alone in the ambulance, but couldn’t leave Georgia behind either. The ambulance driver caught my hand as she saw me hesitate, promising that she would take care of him until he got to the hospital. When I still could not seem to make a move to leave without him, she upped her promise, saying that she would treat him like he was her own son. Oh, the kindness of strangers, and all I could do was whisper an insufficient thank-you to her. Georgia and I headed north on the highway. Snow started falling and cars slowed down as I cursed and wove my way around them. Pulling up to the hospital entrance, I saw an ambulance near the side door and assumed it was Hudson’s, but when I went tearing inside, the receptionist told me he hadn’t arrived yet. I insisted that she was mistaken and not looking for the right child, explaining that I had just driven through a snowstorm and hit traffic and there was no way I beat the ambulance. With a withering look, she instructed me to sit down until he arrived. I paced the waiting room with Georgia at my side until my name was finally called ten minutes later. We burst through the doors to the room they directed me to and the sight inside stopped me in my tracks: a team of six doctors and nurses were lifting Hudson onto a table and there was a flurry of activity around him, oxygen masks and IV lines. I put my hands on Georgia’s shoulders and turned her to face me so that she would not see her beloved big brother in a scary state like this. I stood frozen by the door until they had settled Hudson onto the examining table, and then cautiously approached the doctor who seemed to be in charge, asking her to please check his legs right away, that I hadn’t seen him move them yet. I held my breath waiting, and when his toes started moving, I collapsed in the chair next to Georgia. Hours later, after a series of X-rays and MRIs, a brain bleed was ruled out and we were reassured it was just a concussion. Shakily but gratefully, we left the hospital. It was 9pm and I wanted to start the drive back home.

• From Anxious: Using the Brain to Understand and Treat Fear and Anxiety (2015)

  81 Because similar functions are also present even in single-cell organisms lacking nervous systems, these functions predate, evolutionarily speaking, neurons, synapses, and circuits 82 and as such are primitive precursors of survival functions in more complex organisms with nervous systems. 83 Survival circuits do not exist to make emotions (feelings). They instead manage interactions with the environment as part of the daily quest to survive. Survival circuits are activated in situations in which well-being is potentially challenged or enhanced. The overall response of the brain and body that results is a global organismic state . 84 For example, activation of a defensive survival circuit results in a defensive motivational state . 85 Such states involve the whole organism (that is, body as well as brain) as part of the task of managing resources and maximizing chances of survival in situations where challenges or opportunities exist. 86 Global organismic states in mammals and other vertebrates, 87 like the survival circuits that initiate them, are elaborations of similar states in invertebrates. 88 When a defensive survival circuit detects a threat, as I pointed out in Chapter 1 , it not only triggers defensive reactions; it also activates brain areas that control the widespread release of chemical signals, including neuromodulators and hormones. 89 As a result, the organism becomes highly aroused and vigilant—attuned to the sensory environment, focusing on the clear and present danger, but also being on the alert for other potential sources of harm. The threshold for the expression of additional defensive responses is lowered, whereas other motivated behaviors, such as eating, drinking, sex, or sleep, are suppressed. This global defensive motivational state reflects the wholesale mobilization of brain and body resources for the purpose of staying alive and helps ensure that the subsequent actions that are performed in an effort to cope with danger in more complex ways guided by past instrumental learning are suited to the external circumstances—escape or avoidance when in danger. In other motivational circumstances, global organismic states function similarly: for example, helping to guide the approach to food or drink when energy supplies or fluids are low, etc. Figure 2.7: The Survival Circuit View of Fear and Defensive Motivation. Because my traditional view of the fear system ( Figure 2.6 ) was often misconstrued as implying that the amygdala is the seat of fear in the brain, I have revised my terminology. In the current model the term fear is no longer used to describe functions of the amygdala. I now describe the amygdala circuit that detects and responds to threats as a defensive survival circuit . One consequence of survival circuit activation is the establishment of a defensive motivational state throughout the brain. This state is not the neural instantiation of a feeling of fear. The state (or neural components of it) provides neural ingredients that when cognitively interpreted give rise to a feeling of fear.

• From Anxious: Using the Brain to Understand and Treat Fear and Anxiety (2015)

  13 Another line of research that is relevant here involves contingency awareness during threat conditioning. The question under consideration is whether conscious awareness of the relation (contingency) between the CS and US is necessary for threat conditioning to occur. Although studies in the past suggested that conscious awareness of this relation is required for conditioning, 14 recent work shows that conditioning can indeed occur when awareness of the relation is prevented by making the conditioned stimulus information difficult to detect. 15 Moreover, amygdala activation occurs both when subjects are aware and not aware of the contingency, but hippocampal activity occurs only when the subjects are aware of the contingency. 16 Thus, we see here implicit and explicit forms of memory in action: Implicit memory underlies conditioning itself, but explicit memory (which involves the medial temporal lobe memory system and, presumably, the prefrontal/parietal areas) is required for conscious knowledge of the contingency between the CS and US (semantic memory) 17 and for conscious awareness of having been conditioned (episodic memory). 18 Beyond interfering with the expression of implicit (nonconscious) responses to threats, damage to the amygdala has another important effect. Recall that threats boost sensory processing in the visual cortex of humans. Amygdala damage eliminates this effect, with the result being that threats and neutral stimuli produce similar degrees of cortical activation. 19 One could criticize this emphasis on the amygdala as being too narrow, as it is not the only region of the brain that contributes to threat processing (see Chapter 4 ). 20 But because its role is fairly well understood, it is an excellent focal point for examining how threats affect cortical processing and thus influence how threats are consciously experienced. At the same time, an emphasis on the role of the amygdala in threat processing should not detract from the many other functions to which the amygdala contributes. 21 The main difference, then, between what happens when the brain processes threats versus neutral stimuli is that a defensive survival circuit involving the amydgala is activated. This then has consquences for how the cortical areas process the threat. Table 8.1 summarizes the differences in brain activation for consciously seen versus masked visual threats. Table 8.1: Brain Activation by Seen and Masked Emotional and Neutral Stimuli NEUTRAL STIMULUS THREATENING STIMULUS SEEN MASKED SEEN MASKED Visual Cortex active active active active Frontal/Parietal Cortex active not active active not active Amygdala not active not active active active HOW DO THREAT STIMULI REACH THE AMYGDALA? A key part of my argument here is that threat stimuli activate amygdala-based defensive survival circuits, which then initiate a number of responses in the brain and body that change the way the threat is further processed by the brain.

• From Anxious: Using the Brain to Understand and Treat Fear and Anxiety (2015)

  For example, the sight of an agitated person near you waving a gun compels the feeling of fear, but worry (or anxiety) quickly takes over as you fret over what the person will do. As Montaigne notes in one of the epigraphs to this chapter: “He who fears he shall suffer already suffers what he fears.” Likewise, when you are anxious, the perceived threat potential of stimuli related to your anxiety can rise such that things you typically encounter that might not usually trigger fear now do so. For example, if you encounter a snake in the course of a hike, even if no harm comes anxiety is likely aroused, putting you on alert. If farther along the trail you notice a dark, slender, curved twig on the ground, an object you would normally ignore, you might now momentarily be prone to view it as a snake, triggering a feeling of fear. Similarly, if you live in a place where terror alerts are common, benign stimuli can become potential threats. In New York City, when the alert level rises, a parcel or paper bag left under an empty subway seat can trigger much concern. Ultimately, the question we have to ask is: Can we really make a distinction between fear and anxiety given that both are anticipatory responses to danger and thus closely entwined? I think we can, and must. As I will describe in later chapters, somewhat different brain mechanisms are engaged when the state is triggered by an objective and present threat as opposed to an uncertain event that may or may not occur in the future. An immediately present stimulus that is itself dangerous, or that is a reliable indicator that danger is likely to soon follow, results in fear. Anxiety may well also be present, but if the initial state is triggered by a specific stimulus, it is a state of fear. However, when the state in question involves worry about something that is not present and may never occur, then the state is anxiety. Fear can, like anxiety, involve anticipation, but the nature of the anticipation in each is different: In fear the anticipation concerns if and when a present threat will cause harm, whereas in anxiety the anticipation involves uncertainty about the consequences of a threat that is not present and may not occur. Fear and anxiety, as I will argue later, both involve the self. To experience fear is to know that YOU are in a dangerous situation, and to experience anxiety is to worry about whether future threats may harm YOU.

• From Anxious: Using the Brain to Understand and Treat Fear and Anxiety (2015)

  FEELING IT It’s useful to think about how emotional feelings emerge in consciousness by way of analogy with the way the flavor of a soup is the product of its ingredients. 92 For example, salt, pepper, garlic, and water are common ingredients that go into a chicken soup. The amount of salt and pepper added can intensify the taste of the soup without radically changing its nature. You can add other ingredients, like celery, green peppers, and parsley, and have a variant of a chicken soup. Add roux and it becomes gumbo, whereas curry paste pushes it in a different direction. Substitute shrimp for chicken, and the character again changes. None of these individual items are soup ingredients per se: They are things that exist independent of soup and that would exist if a soup had never been made. The idea that emotions are psychologically constructed states is related to Claude Levi-Strauss’s notion of “bricolage.” 93 This is the French word referring to something put together (constructed) from items that happen to be available. Levi-Strauss emphasized the importance of the individual, the “bricoleur,” and his social context, in the construction process. Building on this idea, Shirley Prendergast and Simon Forrest note that “maybe persons, objects, contexts, the sequence and fabric of everyday life are the medium through which emotions come into being, day to day, a kind of emotional bricolage.” 94 In the brain, working memory can be thought of as the “bricoleur,” and the content of emotional consciousness resulting from the construction process as the bricolage. Similarly, fear, anxiety, and other emotions arise from intrinsically nonemotional ingredients, things that exist in the brain for other reasons but that create feelings when they coalesce in consciousness. The pot in which the ingredients of conscious feelings are cooked is working memory ( Figure 8.9 ). Different ingredients, or varying amounts of the same ingredients, account for differences between fear and anxiety, and for variations within each category. Although my soup analogy is new, I’ve been promoting the basic idea that conscious feelings are assembled from nonemotional ingredients for quite some time. 95 FEELING FEARFUL Typically, you are afraid of something that is present. It is the awareness of this thing that ultimately, with the aid of other ingredients, gives rise to the feeling of fear. So the first ingredient of a fearful experience is a representation of a particular sensory object or event in the brain. The second ingredient is defensive survival circuit activation, by way of thalamic and cortical inputs. This initiates the expression of defense responses and supporting physiological changes. The third ingredient is attention/working memory. In order to consciously know that a stimulus is present, you have to attend to it. Attention delivers the stimulus to working memory.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  If she asked, could He answer? What if she were suddenly to cry out loudly: ‘Look at us, we are two yet we stand for many. Our name is legion and we also are waiting, we also are tired, oh, but terribly tired . . . Will You give us some hope of ultimate release? Will You tell us the secret of our salvation? Wanda would rise from her prayers rather stiffly to purchase a couple of votive candles, and when she had stuck them into the sconce she would touch the foot of the silver Christ as she bade Him farewell—a time-honoured custom. Then she and Stephen might turn again to the lake of fire that flowed round the monstrance. But one morning when they arrived at the church, the monstrance was not above the high altar. The altar had just been garnished and swept, so the Host was still in the Lady Chapel. And while they stood there and gazed at the Host, came a priest and with him a grey-haired server; they would bear their God back again to His home, to the costly shrine of His endless vigil. The server must first light his little lantern suspended from a pole, and must then grasp his bell. The priest must lift his Lord from the monstrance and lay Him upon a silken cover, and carry Him as a man carries a child—protectively, gently, yet strongly withal, as though some frustrated paternal instinct were finding in this a divine expression. The lantern swung rhythmically to and fro, the bell rang out its imperative warning; then the careful priest followed after the server who cleared his path to the great high altar. And even as once very long ago, such a bell had been the herald of death in the putrefying hand of the leper: ‘Unclean! Unclean!’ death and putrefaction—the warning bell in the dreadful hand that might never again know the clasp of the healthful—so now the bell rang out the approach of supreme purity, of the Healer of lepers, earth-bound through compassion; but compassion so vast, so urgent, that the small, white disc of the Host must contain the whole suffering universe. Thus the Prisoner of love Who could never break free while one spiritual leper remained to be healed, passed by on His patient way, heavy-laden. Wanda suddenly fell to her knees, striking her lean and unfruitful breast, for as always she very shamefully feared, and her fear was a bitter and most deadly insult. With downcast eyes and trembling hands she cowered at the sight of her own salvation. But Stephen stood upright and curiously still, staring into the empty Lady Chapel. CHAPTER 48 1 T hat spring they made their first real acquaintance with the garish and tragic night life of Paris that lies open to such people as Stephen Gordon.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Perhaps he was dead, smitten down where he stood, for many had perished where they stood, like the orchards. It was strange to think that he might have been here in France, have been fighting and have died quite near her. But perhaps he had not been killed after all—she had never told Mary about Martin Hallam. All roads of thought seemed to lead back to Mary; and these days, in addition to fears for her safety, came a growing distress at what she must see—far more terrible sights than the patient wounded. For everywhere now lay the wreckage of war, sea-wrack spued up by a poisonous ocean—putrefying, festering in the sun; breeding corruption to man’s seed of folly. Twice lately, while they had been driving together, they had come upon sights that Stephen would have spared her. There had been that shattered German gun-carriage with its stiff, dead horses and its three dead gunners—horrible death, the men’s faces had been black like the faces of negroes, black and swollen from gas, or was it from putrefaction? There had been the deserted and wounded charger with its fore-leg hanging as though by a rag. Near by had been lying a dead young Uhlan, and Stephen had shot the beast with his revolver, but Mary had suddenly started sobbing: ‘Oh, God! Oh, God! It was dumb—it couldn’t speak. It’s so awful somehow to see a thing suffer when it can’t ask you why!’ She had sobbed a long time, and Stephen had not known how to console her. And now the Unit was creeping forward in the wake of the steadily advancing Allies. Billets would be changed as the base was moved on slowly from devastated village to village. There seldom seemed to be a house left with a roof, or with anything much beyond its four walls, and quite often they must lie staring up at the stars, which would stare back again, aloof and untroubled. At about this time they grew very short of water, for most of the wells were said to have been poisoned; and this shortage of water was a very real torment, since it strictly curtailed the luxury of washing. Then what must Bless do but get herself hit while locating the position of a Poste de Secours which had most inconsiderately vanished. Like the Allied ambulance driver she was shot at, but in her case she happened to stop a bullet—it was only a flesh wound high up in the arm, yet enough to render her useless for the moment. She had had to be sent back to hospital, so once again the Unit was short-handed.