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 In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  The indigenous peoples throughout South America and Mesoamerica have long understood both the nature of fear and the essence of trauma. What’s more, they seemed to know how to transform it through their shamanic healing rituals. After colonization by the Spanish and Portuguese, the indigenous peoples borrowed their word susto to describe what happens in trauma. Susto translates graphically as “fright paralysis” and as “soul loss.”10 Anyone who has suffered a trauma knows, first, paralyzing fright, followed by the bereft feeling of losing your way in the world, of being severed from your very soul. When we hear the term fright paralysis, we may think of a startled deer, stunned motionless by oncoming headlights. Humans react similarly to trauma: thus Nancy, her startled face wide-eyed and frozen in fear. The ancient Greeks also identified trauma as being paralyzing and corporeal. Zeus and Pan were invoked to instill terror and paralysis in the enemy during times of war. Both had the capacity to “freeze” the body and induce “pan-ic.” And in the great Homeric epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey, trauma was portrayed as ruthlessly destructive to self and families. By the time of the American Civil War—when young men were suddenly exposed to their comrades being blown into pieces by cannon fire; to the noise and terror of chaos; and to stinking, rotting corpses far beyond anything they were prepared for—the term used to describe traumatic post-combat breakdown was soldier’s heart.* This name conveyed both the anxious, arrhythmic heart, pounding in sleepless terror, as well as the heartbreak of war, the killing of brothers by brothers. Another term from the Civil War era was nostalgia, perhaps a reference to the unending weeping and inability to remain oriented to the present and go on with life. Shortly before World War I, Emil Kraepelin, in an early diagnostic system published around 1909, called such stress breakdown “fright neurosis.”11 After Freud, he recognized trauma as a condition arising from an overwhelming stress. Freud had defined trauma as “a breach in the protective barrier against stimulation [(over)stimulation—my addition], leading to feelings of overwhelming helplessness.” Kraepelin’s definition was largely lost in the nomenclature of trauma, yet it recognized the central aspect of fright—although the word “neurosis” has pejorative associations. In the wake of World War I, combat trauma was reincarnated as shell shock, simple, honest and direct. This bluntly descriptive phrase almost resounds like the maddening explosions of shells, shattering the stunned and trapped men into shaking, urinating and defecating uncontrollably in the cold, wet trenches. Like susto, this raw descriptive term had nothing distancing, dispassionate or disinfected about it.

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  Rather than pretense, though, it is a deadly serious innate biological tactic. With a slow, small animal like the opossum, flight or fight is unlikely to be successful. By passively resisting, in the grand tradition of Gandhi, the animal’s inertness tends to inhibit the predator’s aggression and reduce its urge to kill and to eat. In addition, a motionless animal is frequently abandoned (especially when it also emits a putrid odor like rotting meat) and not eaten by such predators as the coyote—unless, of course, this animal is very hungry. a With such “death feigning,” the opossum may live to escape, plodding along into another day. Similarly, the cheetah may drag its motionless prey to a safe place, removed from potential competitors, and return to her lair to fetch her cubs (so as to share the kill with them). While she is gone, the gazelle may awaken from its paralysis and, in an unguarded moment, make a hasty escape. Second, immobility affords a certain degree of invisibility: an inert body is much less likely to be seen by a predator. Third, immobility may promote group survival: when hunted by a predator pack, the collapse of one individual may distract the pack long enough for the rest of the herd to escape. Last, but by no means least, a fourth biological function of immobility is that it triggers a profoundly altered state of numbing. In this state, extreme pain and terror are dulled: so if the animal does survive an attack it will be, even though injured, less encumbered by debilitating pain and thus possibly able to escape if the opportunity arises. This “humane” analgesic effect is mediated by the flooding of endorphins, the body’s own profound morphine pain-relief system. 21 For the gazelle, this means that it will not have to suffer the full agony of being torn apart by the cheetah’s sharp teeth and claws. The same is most likely true for a rape or accident victim. 22 In this state of analgesia, the victim may witness the event as though from outside his or her body, as if it were happening to someone else (as I observed in my accident). Such distancing, called dissociation , helps to make the unbearable bearable. The African explorer David Livingstone graphically recorded such an experience in his encounter with a lion on the plains of Africa: I heard a shout. Startled, in looking half round, I saw the lion just in the act of springing upon me. I was upon a little height; he caught my shoulder as he sprang, and we both came to the ground below together. Growling horribly close to my ear, he shook me as a terrier does a rat. The shock produced a stupor similar to that which seems to be felt by a mouse after the first shake of the cat.

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  Similarly, in deep sleep, we surrender ourselves profoundly to the interoceptive world. Automatic visceral activities regulate and sustain life far outside our realm of awareness. Respiration, heartbeat, temperature and blood chemistry are all maintained within the narrow range that supports life. This internal world usually resides at or beyond the outer reaches of conscious awareness. While awake we may not be aware of this inner world, but it is possible to entice it from far background to near background and then gently seduce it, if only fleetingly, into the foreground of our awareness. Let us proceed. Going Inside: Adventures in Interoception Preface It takes one to stand in the dark alone. It takes two to let the light shine through. —Motown song The following few exercises can be done alone, but as mammals the very stability of our nervous systems depends on the support from a safe other. This was the case of the pediatrician attending to my desperate need right after my grave misfortune described in Chapter 1 . By myself, I could have possibly done some of what I did to recover my equilibrium after the accident, but it made an enormous difference to have her sitting quietly by my side. Her stable presence made it more possible for me to stay focused and not swallowed in fear, bereft in sorrow and utterly alone. The following exercises can be practiced alone but are more fruitfully practiced in the presence of another person. Exercise 1: Wandering Inward Awareness on the body as a whole is the object of this initial exercise. Let your attention leisurely wander through every part of your body. Without judgment of good/bad or right/wrong, simply note what parts you are able to feel. To what degree does your body exist for you? Initially, you may be surprised that you do not actually feel a part of your body, even an area as large as your pelvis or legs. Of the parts of the body that you do feel, you will, at first, probably be mostly aware of uncomfortable, tight and painful areas. You may also feel twinges and twitches; these uncomfortable feelings may turn out to be an entry to the deeper sensing of your body. Next bring your attention to muscular tensions. Attend to them without trying to do something with them. You may want to try and relax them prematurely. It is important, rather, to just let the tensions remain and follow them as they change spontaneously. Notice , now, your skin sensations: can you feel your body as a whole? Can you feel where your head is in relation to your neck and shoulders? Can you feel your chest—from front to back, how does your breathing feel? Can you sense whether it feels full and easy or whether it may get “stuck” in your chest, throat or belly? Do you sense your ribs expanding and contracting with your breath?

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  Taking the PlungeWhen the first plane hit the building, only ten stories above her office, the explosion sent a shock wave of terror through her body. People’s immediate reaction to such terrifying events is to arrest, orient and then escape. This usually entails an intense urge to run. However, trapped eighty stories above ground with thousands of other people, Sharon needed to inhibit this primal reaction. Against the intense impulses to flee, she compelled herself to stay “calm” and walk in an orderly line down the stairs along with dozens of other terrified individuals; this was the case even though her body was “adrenaline-charged” to run at full throttle. Surely Sharon also felt the potential for any one of the other trapped office workers to suddenly panic and start a stampede that would further imperil them all. They, like her, also had to restrain their powerful primal urge to run. As Sharon slowly recounts the details of the escape, while feeling her bodily response, step-by-step, she recalls encountering yet another moment of stark terror when she found the door at the seventieth floor locked and impassable. Because of the physical comfort she found in contacting the spontaneous, expansive gestures and the images of the Hudson River, I now trust that Sharon can more safely face some of this highly charged material without becoming overwhelmed and consequently retraumatized.f In following her “body story,” islands of safety (Steps 1 through 3 in Chapter 5) are beginning to form in Sharon’s stormy trauma sea. The safety experienced from these internal islands allows her to deal with increasing levels of arousal and to move through them without undue distress. From this assessment, I guide her back to the moment of the explosion and then have her locate where and how that violent imprint feels in her body. As she attends to this “felt sense,” she becomes aware of an overall feeling of agitation in her legs and arms and tight “lumps” in her gut and throat. She says that she feels stuck. Here I introduce her to using the “voo” sound as a way to help her dissolve and transform the stuck sensations (see Chapter 6). As she focuses on those uncomfortable physical sensations (with the help of the vibratory sounds), the inclination to try to understand or explain them is reduced. With keenly focused attention, I guide her away from interpreting what she is feeling because I do not want the meaning to come from a mental place. The body needs to tell what’s on its “mind” first in order for new perceptions to arise in present time. (This warning about “premature cognition” was displayed on a bumper sticker I recently saw: “Reality: It’s not what you think!”)

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  I feel alternating waves of fear and sorrow. (20. This discharge in waves allows for the natural experience of pendulation—expansions/contraction as discussed in Step 3 in Chapter 5 —and softens the feelings of sorrow and fear.) It comes to me as a stark possibility that I may be seriously injured. (21. It is part of a mammalian response to injury to scan the body and to assess the nature and level of the injury.) Perhaps I will end up in a wheelchair, crippled and dependent. Again, deep waves of sorrow flood me. I’m afraid of being swallowed up by the sorrow and hold onto the woman’s eyes. (22. I am now actively engaging the woman as a resource.) A slower breath brings me the scent of her perfume. Her continued presence sustains me. As I feel less overwhelmed, my fear softens and begins to subside. I feel a flicker of hope, then a rolling wave of rage. (23. Rage is a strong defensive response—it is about the impulse to kill! Hence people become terrified by this impulse and try to suppress it. The pediatrician is helping me to contain this rage and not be overwhelmed by it.) My body continues to shake and tremble. It is alternately icy cold and feverishly hot. (24. This is indicative of a continued strong discharge.) A burning red fury erupts from deep within my belly: How could that stupid kid hit me in a crosswalk? Wasn’t she paying attention? Damn her! (25. More rage—accompanied with the human neocortical tendency to blame.) A blast of shrill sirens and flashing red lights block out everything. My belly tightens, and my eyes again reach to find the woman’s kind gaze. We squeeze hands, and the knot in my gut loosens. I hear my shirt ripping. I am startled and again jump to the vantage of an observer hovering above my sprawling body. (26. The abruptness with which the shirt is removed restimulates the dissociation.) I watch uniformed strangers methodically attach electrodes to my chest. The Good Samaritan paramedic reports to someone that my pulse was 170. I hear my shirt ripping even more. (27. As I notice that I’m dissociating, I am able to bring myself back to my body.) I see the emergency team slip a collar onto my neck and then cautiously slide me onto a board. While they strap me down, I hear some garbled radio communication. The paramedics are requesting a full trauma team. Alarm jolts me. I ask to be taken to the nearest hospital only a mile away, but they tell me that my injuries may require the major trauma center in La Jolla, some thirty miles farther. My heart sinks. Surprisingly, though, the fear quickly subsides. (28.

• From Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (2006)

  Ironically, even the closeness generated by good sex can have a boomerang effect. Like John and Beatrice, many couples experience their relationship as a dance in which great sex brings them close, but then this very closeness can make sex difficult again. The initial rapture facilitates a swift bonding and establishes an immediate connection. But while many of us relish the idea of losing ourselves in sex, the very oneness that we experience through the merging of our bodies can evoke a sense of obliteration. The intensity of sexual passion triggers a fear of engulfment. Of course, few of us are aware of these undercurrents as they’re happening. What we feel instead is the urge to pull out right after orgasm, or the sudden desire to make a sandwich, to light a cigarette. We welcome the intrusion of any random thought: I meant to send an e-mail to…These windows need cleaning…. I wonder how my friend Jack is doing? We appreciate being left alone to meander leisurely in our own mind because this reestablishes a psychological distance, a delineation of the boundaries between me and you. From “inter-” we go back to “intra-.” Having been all over each other, we retreat back into our own skin. Nowhere is the passage from connection to separateness represented more clearly than at the end of a sexual act. In his book Arousal, the psychoanalyst Michael Bader offers another explanation for John and Beatrice’s erotic impasse. In his view, intimacy comes with a growing concern for the well-being of the other person, which includes a fear of hurting her. But sexual excitement requires the capacity not to worry, and the pursuit of pleasure demands a degree of selfishness. Some people can’t allow themselves this selfishness, because they’re too absorbed with the well-being of the beloved. This emotional configuration is reminiscent of how John felt toward his mother—his awareness of her unhappiness overwhelmed him with worry and a sense of burden. The very caring he experiences makes it harder for him to focus on his own needs, to feel spontaneous, sexually alive, and carefree. John has faced this vexing problem of loss of desire in every intimate relationship he’s been in. In the past, every time the block set in he interpreted it as meaning that he no longer loved the woman. In fact, the contrary is true. It is because he loves her so much that he carries this sense of responsibility for her and can’t enjoy the blithe quest for erotic rapture. Patterns Are Equal Employment Opportunities

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  You are the leader of a group. Something dangerous is about to happen—I’m not sure what, but you are leading the group into the woods to some safer spot. Or you are supposed to be. But the trail you take us on gets rockier, narrower, darker. Then it disappears entirely. You vanish, and we are lost and very scared. The second: We—the same group—are all in a hotel room, and again there is some danger. Maybe intruders, maybe a tornado. Again, you are leading us out of danger. You take us up afire escape that has black metal steps. We climb and climb, but it goes nowhere. It just ends at the ceiling, and we all have to back down. Other dreams followed. In one she and I take an exam together, and neither of us knows the answers. In another she looks at herself in the mirror and sees red spots of decay on her cheeks. In another she dances with a wiry young man who suddenly leaves her on the dance floor. She turns to a mirror and recoils to see her face covered with sagging red skin pockmarked with hideous boils and blood blisters. The message of these dreams was crystal-clear: danger and decay are inescapable. And I am no savior—on the contrary, I am unreliable and impotent. Soon a particularly powerful dream added a further component. You are my travel guide in an isolated site in a foreign country—maybe Greece or Turkey. You are driving an open Jeep, and we are quarreling about what to visit. I want to see some beautiful old classical ruins, and you keep wanting to take me to the modern, tacky, flimsy city. You begin to drive so fast that I get scared. Then the Jeep gets stuck, and we are tottering, swaying back and forth, over some huge pit. I look down and can’t see the bottom. This dream, involving the dichotomy between beautiful ancient ruins and a modern tacky city, reflects, of course, our ongoing “treason versus reason” debate. Which route to take? The old, beautiful ruins (the first text) of her old life? Or the deplorably ugly new life she saw stretching ahead of her? But it also suggested a new aspect of our work together. In the earlier dreams I am inept: I lose the path in the forest; I take Irene up a fire escape that leads to a ceiling with no escape; I do not know the answers to the examination. In this dream, however, not only am I inept and fail to protect her, I am also dangerous—I lead Irene to the brink of death. A couple of nights later she dreamed that she and I embrace and gently kiss. But what starts off sweetly turns to terror when my mouth opens wider and wider and I begin to devour her. “I struggle and struggle,” she reported, “but cannot wrench free.”

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  At the same time, we also greatly increase the likelihood of their exposure to secondary or vicarious traumatization and burnout. Therapists must learn, from their own successful encounters with their own traumas, to stay present with their clients. This is the reason healing trauma must necessarily engage the awareness of the living, sensing, “knowing” body in both client and therapist. “Perhaps the most striking evidence of successful empathy,” says the analyst Leston Havens, “is the occurrence in our bodies of sensations that the patient has described in his or hers.” 14 Through the Eyes of a Neuroscientist The ability to detect danger in the posture of others has been studied by the neuroscientist Beatrice Gelder. 15 Her research has demonstrated that the brain of an observer reacts more powerfully to the body language of a person in a posture denoting fear than it does even to a fearful facial expression. Like the Gorgon Medusa, looks of fear can paralyze or, at least, evoke our own potent fear-based reactions. Yet, as powerful as facial expressions are in conveying danger, a person’s uptight posture and furtive movements make us even more uncomfortable. † Wouldn’t you, too, startle to the sudden recoiling of the hiker in front of you a split second before you heard the hissing and rattle of a coiled snake? This type of imitative behavior occurs throughout the animal world. If, for example, one bird in a flock on the ground suddenly takes off, all the other birds will follow immediately after; they do not need to know why. The hypothetical contrarian bird that stays behind may not live to pass its genes to the next generation. In combination, a fearful face, hypervigilance and a tight constricted posture are powerfully compelling. They trigger us to prepare our bodies for action, to locate the source of threat and then to respond immediately. Perhaps a perceived threat comes from an “uptight” person readying to strike out in aggravated fear. In our day-to-day life, most of us deal with chronically fearful or angry people by simply avoiding them whenever we can. On the other hand, when you meet people whose posture expresses grace and acceptance, you are calmed by their ease. Thus, we are particularly affected by the serenity, compassion and profound quiet of people like Nelson Mandela, Thich Nhat Hanh, the Dalai Lama or a loving mother peacefully nursing her infant.

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  The episode is resolved. However, if the pecking pigeon is first frightened by the approaching person, it will try to fly away. When it is caught after a frantic pursuit, and then forcibly held upside down, it will again succumb to immobility. This time, however, the terrified animal will not only remain frozen much longer, but when it comes out of its trance, it will likely be in a state of “frantic agitation.” It may thrash about wildly, pecking, biting or clawing randomly, or it may scurry away in a frenzy of undirected movement. 40 When all else fails, this last-ditch (and disorganized) form of defense may yet save its life. Similarly, when a well-fed household cat catches a mouse, the latter, restrained by the cat’s paws, stops moving and becomes limp. Without resistance from the mouse, the cat becomes bored and will sometimes gently bat the inert animal, seemingly trying to revive it and restart the game anew (not unlike Jimmy Stewart slapping his swooning heroine to bring her out of her faint). With each reawakening, chasing and reactivated terror, the mouse goes deeper and longer into immobility. When it does eventually revive, it frequently darts away so quickly (and unpredictably) that it may even startle the cat. This sudden, non-directed burst of energy could just as easily cause it to run at the cat, as well as away from it. I have even seen a mouse ferociously attack the nose of an astounded cat. Such is the nature of exit from immobility, where induction has been repetitive and accompanied by fear and rage. Humans, in addition, reterrorize themselves out of their (misplaced) fear of their own intense sensations and emotions . This is similar to what may happen when catatonic psychiatric patients come out of their immobility. They are often extremely agitated and may attack the staff. I once had the opportunity to work with a patient who had been in a catatonic state for two or three years. After carefully sitting by his side (getting closer, over the period of several days), I spoke to him softly about the shaking and trembling that I observed with people and animals when they come out of shock. I had also talked with the chief psychiatrist, and he agreed that they would not give him an injection of thorazine (or straitjacket him) if he came to in an agitated state, unless he was clearly dangerous to himself or others. Two weeks later I got a call from the psychiatrist.

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  The inability to rebound from such events, or to be helped adequately to recover by professionals, can subject us to PTSD—along with a myriad of physical and emotional symptoms. I dread to think how my accident might have turned out had I lacked my knowledge or not had the good fortune to be helped by that woman pediatrician and her scent of holding kindness. Finding Method Over the past forty years, I have developed an approach to help people move through the many types of trauma, including what I went through that February day when I was struck by a car. This method is equally applicable directly after the trauma or many years later—my first serendipitous client, described in Chapter 2 , was able to recover from a trauma that occurred about twenty years prior to our sessions together. Somatic Experiencing ® , as I call the method, helps to create physiological, sensate and affective states that transform those of fear and helplessness. It does this by accessing various instinctual reactions through one’s awareness of physical body sensations . Since time immemorial, people have attempted to cope with powerful and terrifying feelings by doing things that contradict perceptions of fear and helplessness: religious rituals, theater, dance, music, meditation and ingesting psychoactive substances, to name a few. Of these various methods for altering one’s way of being, modern medicine has accepted only the use of (limited, i.e., psychiatric) chemical substances. The other “coping” methods continue to find expression in alternative and so-called holistic approaches such as yoga, tai chi, exercise, drumming, music, shamanism and body-oriented techniques. While many people find help and solace from these valuable approaches, they are relatively nonspecific and do not sufficiently address certain core physiological mechanisms and processes that allow human beings to transform terrifying and overwhelming experiences. In the particular methodology I describe in these pages, the client is helped to develop an awareness and mastery of his or her physical sensations and feelings. My observations, in visiting a few indigenous cultures, suggest that this approach has a certain kinship with various traditional shamanic healing rituals. I am proposing that a collective, cross-cultural approach to healing trauma not only suggests new directions for treatment, but may ultimately inform a fundamentally deeper understanding of the dynamic two-way communication between mind and body. Over my lifetime, as well as in writing this book, I have attempted to bridge the vast chasm between the day-to-day work of the clinician and the findings of various scientific disciplines, particularly ethology, the study of animals in their natural environments. This vital field reached a pinnacle of recognition in 1973 when three ethologists—Nikolaas Tinbergen, Konrad Lorenz and Karl von Frisch—shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. * All three of these scientists utilized patient and precise observation to study how animals express and communicate through their bodies. Direct body communication is something that we reasoning, language-based human animals do as well.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  My Uncle Abe reaches out to pinch my cheek, clucking, “Darling Sonny,” as he used to do. Then others reach out for my cheeks. At first affectionate, the pinching grows fierce and painful. I awake in terror, cheeks throbbing, at three A.M. The dream depicted a duel with death. First, I am called by my dead mother and see all the dead of my family sitting in eerie stillness on the stairs. Then I try to negate deathly quiescence by infusing the dead with the movement of life. I especially note my Aunt Minny, who had died the year before after a cataclysmic stroke had left her completely paralyzed for several months, unable to move a muscle in her body aside from her eyes. In the dream Minny begins to move but quickly veers out of control and into frenzy. Next I try to alleviate my dread of the dead by imagining them affectionately pinching my cheeks. But that dread breaks through once again, the pinching grows fierce and malignant, and I am overwhelmed with death anxiety. The image of my aunt vibrating like a bumblebee haunted me for days. I couldn’t shake it loose. Perhaps, I thought, it is a message telling me that my own frenzied life pace is but a clumsy attempt to quell death anxiety. Is the dream not telling me to slow down and attend to the things I really value? The idea of value brought Paula back to my mind. Why hadn’t I called her? She was one who had faced death and stared it down. I remembered the way she had guided the meditation at the end of our meetings: her eyes fixed on the candle flame, her sonorous voice leading all of us into deeper, quieter regions. Had I ever told her how much those moments meant to me? So many things I had never said to her. I would say them now. On the flight home from my mother’s funeral, I resolved to renew my friendship with her. But I never did. Too much to do: wife, children, patients, students, writing. I wrote my page a day and ignored all else—friends, mail, phone calls, invitations to lecture. Everything, all the other parts of my life, would wait until the book was finished. And Paula too would have to wait. Paula, of course, did not wait. A few months later I received a note from her son—the boy I had envied for having Paula as a mother, the son to whom years before she had so wonderfully written of her approaching death. He wrote simply, “My mother died, and I am certain she would have wanted me to let you know.” 3 Southern Comfort I put in my time.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  You’ve got to let it go!” I insisted. “It’s bad luck, and it has no implications for the future. The dice have no memory.” “Coincidence, coincidence—your favorite term!” she scoffed. “The proper term is karma, and it’s clearly telling me that I must love no other man.” Her jinxed self-image reminded me of Joe Bfstplk, the character in the Lil’ Abner comic strip over whose head an ominous black cloud eternally hovers. How was I to undermine Irene’s belief in a cursed karma? I ultimately approached it much as I did her rage. More than words were needed: I had to offer a therapeutic act, and that consisted of disregarding her warnings, of repeatedly coming close to her, of moving into the jinxed, toxic space and remaining alive and healthy. Still another meaning of the black ooze was connected in Irene’s mind with a dream she had once had of a beautiful dark-eyed woman who wore a red rose in her hair and reclined on a sofa. As I approach closer, I realize that the woman is not as she seemed: her sofa is a bier, her eyes are dark not with beauty but with death, and the crimson rose is no flower but a bloody mortal wound . “I know I am this woman, and anyone approaching me will, ipso facto, be introduced to death—another reason not to get too close.” The image of the woman with the crimson rose in her hair recalled to my mind the plot of The Man in the Maze, an extraordinary futuristic novel by Robert Silverberg in which a man is sent to a newly discovered world to make contact with an advanced race of beings. Though he employs every imaginable communicational device—geometrical symbols, mathematical invariants, musical themes, hailing, yelling, arm waving—he is sublimely ignored. But his efforts disturbed the tranquillity of the beings, who do not allow his hubris to go unpunished. Just before he departs to return to Earth, they perform a mysterious neurosurgical procedure upon him. Only much later does he understand the nature of his punishment: the surgery makes it impossible for him to contain his existential angst. Not only is he continually buffeted by the dread of sheer contingency and his own inevitable death but he is doomed to isolation, since anyone approaching within hundreds of feet is exposed to the same withering blasts of existential dread. However much I insisted to Irene that the black ooze was a fiction, the truth is that I was often trapped in it.

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  The Greek root for angst is descriptive, meaning to “press tight” or to strangle. As conveyed in Edward Munch’s iconic painting, The Scream, our entire physiology and psyche become precipitously constricted in anxious terror. While it may afford a last-ditch survival function, fear is the killer of life. Pi (in the book The Life of Pi) tells us about this Achilles heal: It is life’s only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life. It is a clever, treacherous adversary, how well I know. It has no decency, respects no law or convention, shows no mercy. It goes for your weakest spot, which it finds with unerring ease … Reason comes to do battle for you. You are reassured. Reason is fully equipped with the latest weapons of technology. But, to your amazement, despite superior tactics and a number of undeniable victories, reason is laid low. You feel yourself weakening, wavering. Your anxiety becomes dread. Fear turns fully to your body, which is already aware that something terribly wrong is going on. Already your lungs have flown away like a bird and your guts have slithered away like a snake. Now your tongue drops dead like an opossum, while your jaw begins to gallop on the spot. Your ears go deaf. Your muscles begin to shiver as if they had malaria and your knees to shake as though they were dancing. Your heart strains too hard, while your sphincter relaxes too much. And so with the rest of your body. Every part of you, in the manner most suited to it, falls apart. Only your eyes work well. They always pay proper attention to fear. [They are constantly on the prowl for more objects of fear.] Recall the case story of Sharon (in Chapter 8). She was the woman who had the horrific experience of working on the eightieth floor of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. During her session I guided her to the experience of being led down the staircase by a Port Authority employee and encountering a locked door on the seventieth floor. Suddenly trapped and unable to complete the escape, her body became paralyzed with fear. In working through this experience, which reestablished her running reflexes, she opened her eyes (toward the end of our session), looked at me and said, “I thought it was fear that gets you through … but it’s not … It’s something more powerful, something much bigger than fear … It’s something that transcends fear.” And what a deep biological truth she reveals here.

• From Story of O (1954)

  Lying on her left side, alone in the darkness and silence, hot beneath her two layers of fur, of necessity motionless, O tried to figure out why there was so much sweetness mingled with the terror in her, or why her terror seemed itself so sweet. She realized that one of the things that most distressed her was the fact that she had been deprived of the use of her hands; not that her hands could have defended her (and did she really want to defend herself?), but had they been free they would at least have made the gesture, have made an attempt to repel the hands which seized her, the flesh which pierced her, to protect her loins from the whip. O’s hands had been taken away from her; her body beneath the fur was inaccessible to her. How strange it was not to be able to touch one’s own knees, or the hollow of one’s own belly. The lips between her legs, her burning lips were forbidden her, and perhaps they were burning because she knew they were open to the first comer: to the valet Pierre, if he cared to enter. She was surprised that the whipping she had received had left her so untroubled, so calm, whereas the thought that she would probably never know which of the four men had twice taken her from behind, and whether it was the same man both times, and whether it had been her lover, quite distressed her. She turned over slightly on her stomach, recalling that her lover loved the furrow between her buttocks which, except for this evening (if it had been he), he had never penetrated. She hoped it had been he; would she ask him? Ah, never! Again she saw the hand which in the car had taken her garter belt and panties, and had stretched the garters so that she could roll her stockings down to above her knees. The memory was so vivid that she forgot her hands were bound and made the chain grate. And why, if she took the memory of the torture she had gone through so lightly, why did the very idea, the very word or sight of a whip make her heart beat wildly and her eyes close with terror? She did not stop to consider whether it was only terror; she was overwhelmed with panic: they would pull on her chain and haul her to her feet on the bed, and they would whip her, with her belly glued to the wall they would whip her, whip her, the word kept turning in her head. Pierre would whip her, Jeanne had said he would. You’re lucky, Jeanne had repeated, they’ll be a lot harder on you. What had she meant by that? She no longer felt anything but the collar, the bracelets, and the chain; her body was drifting away. She fell asleep.

• From Story of O (1954)

  “That’s the enclosure,” Jeanne murmured. But the valet who was walking in front of them heard her and turned around. O was amazed to see Jeanne turn deathly pale and let go of her hand, let go of her dress which she was holding lightly with her other hand, and sink to her knees on the black tile floor—for the antechamber was tiled in black marble. The two valets near the gate burst out laughing. One of them came over to O and politely invited her to follow him, opened a door opposite the one she had just entered, and stood aside. She heard laughter and the sound of footsteps, then the door closed behind her. She never—no, never—learned what had happened, whether Jeanne had been punished for having spoken, and if so what the punishment had been, or whether she had simply yielded to a caprice on the part of the valet, or whether in throwing herself on her knees she had been obeying some rule or trying to move the valet to pity, and whether she had succeeded. During her initial stay in the château, which lasted two weeks, she only noted that, although the rule of silence was absolute, it was rare that they did not try and break it while they were alone with the valets, either being taken to or from some place in the château, or during meals, especially during the day. It was as though clothing gave them a feeling of assurance which nakedness and nocturnal chains, and the masters’ presence, destroyed. She also noticed that, whereas the slightest gesture which might have been construed as an advance toward one of the masters seemed quite naturally inconceivable, the same was not true for the valets. They never gave orders, although the courtesy of their requests was as implacable as an order. They had apparently been enjoined to punish to the letter infractions of the rules which occurred in their presence, and to punish them on the spot. Thus on three occasions O saw girls who were caught talking thrown to the floor and whipped—once in the hallway leading to the red wing, and twice again in the refectory they had just entered. So it was possible to be whipped in broad daylight, despite what they had told her the first evening, as though what happened with the valets did not count and was left to their discretion.

• From Story of O (1954)

  Jacqueline lived in one of those lugubrious Passy lodging houses into which hordes of White Russians had piled immediately following the Revolution, and from which they had never moved. The entrance hall was painted in imitation oak, and on the stairway the spaces between the banisters were covered with dust, and the green carpeting had been worn down till it was threadbare in many places. Each time René wanted to come in—and to date he had never got beyond the front door—Jacqueline would jump out of the car, cry “not tonight” or “thanks so much,” and slam the car door behind her as though she had suddenly been burned by some tongue of flame. And it was true, O would say to herself, that she was being pursued by fire. It was admirable that Jacqueline had sensed it, even though she had no concrete evidence of it as yet. At least she realized that she had to be on her guard with René, whose detachment did not seem to affect her in the slightest (or did it? and as far as seeming unaffected, two could play at that game, and René was a worthy opponent for her).

• From Story of O (1954)

  “Turn her around for me, girls, so I can see her back,” Anne-Marie said. She was turned around and bent over, and the hands of both girls vented her. “Of course,” Anne-Marie went on, “there was no need for you to tell me. You’ll have to be marked on the rear. Stand up. We’re going to put on your bracelets. Colette, go get the box, we’ll draw lots to see who will whip you. Bring the tokens, Colette, then we’ll go to the music room.” Colette was the taller of the two dark-haired girls, the other’s name was Claire; the short redhead was named Yvonne. O had not noticed till now that they were all wearing, as at Roissy, a leather collar and leather bracelets on their wrists. They were also wearing similar bracelets around their ankles. When Yvonne had chosen some bracelets that fit O and put them on her, Anne-Marie handed O four tokens and asked her to give one to each of the girls, without looking at the numbers on them. O handed out the tokens. The three girls each looked at theirs but said nothing, waiting for Anne-Marie to speak. “I have number two,” Anne-Marie said. “Who has number one?” Colette had number one. “All right, take O away, she’s all yours.” Colette seized O’s arms and joined her hands behind her back; she fastened the bracelets together and pushed O ahead of her. On the threshold of a French door that opened into a small wing which formed an L with the front of the house, Yvonne, who was leading the way, removed her sandals. The light entering through the French door revealed a room the far end of which formed a kind of raised rotunda; the ceiling, in the shape of a shallow cupola, was supported by two narrow columns set about six feet apart. This dais was about four steps high and, in the area between the columns, projected further into the room in a gentle arc. The floor of the rotunda, like that of the rest of the room, was covered with a red felt carpet. The walls were white, the curtains on the windows red, and the sofas set in a semicircle facing the rotunda were upholstered in the same red felt material as the carpet on the floor. In the rectangular portion of the room there was a fireplace which was wider than it was deep, and opposite the fireplace a large console-type combination record player and radio, with shelves of records on both sides. This was why it was called the music room, which communicated directly with Anne-Marie’s bedroom via a door near the fireplace. The identical door on the other side of the fireplace opened into a closet. Aside from the record player and the sofas, the room had no furniture.

• From Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (2006)

  So we set up rules and hope our partners will comply, and in this way we preemptively secure faithfulness by keeping a tight leash. Desire is insubordinate; actions are susceptible to reason and so are easier to control. You’re not allowed to have close personal friends of the opposite sex. You can’t go to a movie with so-and-so unless other people are there. No videos we can’t watch together. No strip clubs, except for bachelor parties. No male dancers. That dress is too revealing. You can’t reminisce fondly about exes, and you certainly can’t see them alone when they pass through town. When our anxiety is too much for us, we fall back on more primitive means of control: we spy. We check credit card statements, the browser’s “back” button, the gas tank, the cell phone, scavenging for information. But these strategies invariably fall short. The interrogations, the injunctions, and even the forensic evidence fail to assuage our fundamental fear of our partner’s freedom. Our beloved might desire someone else. Trouble looms when monogamy is no longer a free expression of loyalty but a form of enforced compliance. Excessive monitoring can set the stage for what Stephen Mitchell calls “acts of exuberant defiance.” When the third is denied, some people decide to negotiate it privately. Affairs, online encounters, strip clubs, and sex on business trips are common transgressions that establish psychological distance from an overbearing relationship. When the third is exiled to somewhere, only permitted outside the marriage, that is where he is sought. The Invincible We In principle we understand that we each deserve privacy, though in practice this matter is a bit trickier. The psychologist Janet Reibstein notes that our companionate, romantic model of marriage, which stresses togetherness and honesty, “is much better at spelling out the criteria for intimacy than those for autonomy.” The emphasis is on building closeness, not on sustaining individuality. My patients who adhere closely to this ethos of intimacy wind up feeling that their individual aspirations, or those of their partner, are no longer legitimate. The invincible we supersedes the puny I. Niv was frustrated by his girlfriend’s early bedtime. “She’s a dancer and she goes to sleep at nine o’clock at night. I can’t fall asleep that early, so I just lie there.” When I ask him if he ever goes out with his friends after she’s gone to bed, he’s astonished. “I can do that?” The idea of doing that—or even of asking—had never occurred to him. Leila and Mario have been steady dance partners since raves were hip. But when she starts dating Angela, who has two left feet and can’t stand loud music, she becomes uncomfortable about her weekly date with Mario. She doesn’t want to hurt Angela.

• From Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence (2006)

  Modern marriage promises us that there is one person out there with whom all this is possible if we can just find her. So tenaciously do we hold to the idea that marriage is for everything that the disenchanted opt for divorce or affairs not because they question the institution, but because they think they chose the wrong person with whom to reach this nirvana. Next time they’ll choose better. The focus is always on the object of our love, not on our capacity to love. Hence the psychologist Erich Fromm makes the point that we think it’s easy to love, but hard to find the right person. Once we’ve found “the one,” we will need no one else. The exclusiveness we seek in monogamy has roots in our earliest experience of intimacy with our primary caretakers. The feminist psychoanalyst Nancy Chodorow writes, “This primary tendency, I shall be loved always, everywhere, in every way, my whole body, my whole being—without any criticism, without the slightest effort on my part—is the final aim of all erotic striving.” In our adult love we seek to recapture the primordial oneness we felt with Mom. The baby knows no separateness. Once upon a time, there was one person whose only role was to be there for us. In the ecstatic communion between mother and child, there is no gap. To the newborn the mother is everything, all at once, inseparable, unbounded: her skin, her breast, her voice, her smile, it is all for him. As a pink-bottomed baby, we were full and fulfilled, and somewhere deep inside we’ve never forgotten that Eden. Those of us who didn’t know this idyllic state—those with mothers who were unavailable, inconsistent, absent, or selfish—are often even more determined to find the perfect partner. The question remains: isn’t the oneness we strive to restore itself a fantasy? For the child, Mom is the be-all and end-all, but the mother has always known other people. She even has a jealous lover, the father. As it turns out, Mom was never totally faithful—not even once upon a time. So the specter of betrayal is there from the beginning. We grow up with it. The isolating conditions of modern life only amplify the rumbling insecurity that hides in the background of our romantic possessiveness. Fear of loss and fear of abandonment tighten our grip on fidelity. In a culture where everything is disposable and downsizing confirms just how replaceable we really are, our need to feel secure in our primary relationship is all the greater. The smaller we feel in the world, the more we need to shine in the eyes of our partner. We want to know that we matter, and that, for at least one person, we are irreplaceable. We long to feel whole, to rise above the prison of our solitude. Perhaps this is why our insistence on sexual exclusivity is absolute.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  You said that each time your life ended, there was a brief interval before the next life began.” “Yes, that’s right.” “What do you remember of those brief moments?” “Absolutely nothing.” “But isn’t that the point, Merges? Much of what you fear about death is how you imagine it might feel to be dead and yet to know that you can no longer be among the living. But when you’re dead, you have no consciousness. Death is the extinguishing of consciousness.” “Is that supposed to be reassuring?” Merges growled. “You asked me how I can stand it? That’s one of my answers. I’ve also always gotten comfort from the maxim of another philosopher, who lived a long, long time ago: ‘Where death is, I am not; where I am, death is not.’” “Is that any different from ‘When you’re dead, you’re dead’?” “A big difference. In death there is no ‘you.’ ‘You’ and ‘dead’ cannot coexist.” “Heavy, heavy stuff,” Merges said, his voice barely audible, his head almost touching the floor. “Let me tell you about another perspective that helps me, Merges, something I learned from a Russian writer—” “Those Russians—this isn’t going to be cheery.” “Listen. Years, centuries, millennia passed before I was born. Right?” “No denying that.” Merges nodded wearily. “And millennia will pass after I’m dead. Right?” Merges nodded again. “Thus, I picture my life as a brilliant spark between two vast and identical pools of darkness: the darkness existing before my birth and the darkness following my death.” That seemed to strike home. Merges was listening hard, his ears pricked up. “And doesn’t it astound you, Merges, how much we dread the latter darkness and how indifferent we are to the first?” Suddenly Merges stood and opened his mouth in an enormous yawn, his fangs gleaming faintly in the moonlight streaming through the window. “Guess I’ve got to be shuffling along,” he said and trudged toward the window with a heavy, uncatlike gait. “Wait, Merges, there’s more!” “Enough for today. A lot to ponder, even for a cat. Next time, Ernest, the roast crab. And more of that green-grass chicken.” “Next time? What do you mean, Merges, next time? Haven’t I redressed the wrong?” “Maybe yes, maybe no. I told you, too much to think about all at once. I’m out of here!” Ernest plopped back into his chair. He was spent, his patience exhausted. Never before had he had a more nerve-wracking and fatiguing session. And now to see it all go for naught! Watching Merges trudge off, Ernest muttered to himself, “Go! Go!” And then added, “Geh Gesunter Heit”—that mocking Yiddish phrase of his mother’s. At the words, Merges stopped dead in his tracks and turned back. “I heard that. I can read minds.” Uh-oh, thought Ernest. But he held his head high and faced the oncoming Merges. “Yes, I heard you. I heard your, ‘Geh Gesunter Heit.’ And I know what that means—didn’t you know that I speak good German?