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 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 Story of O (1954)

  The mules banged on the red tiles of the hallway, where doors succeeded doors, discreet and clean, with tiny locks, like the doors of the rooms in big hotels. O was working up the courage to ask whether each of these rooms was occupied, and by whom, when one of her companions, whose voice she had not yet heard, said to her: “You’re in the red wing, and your valet’s name is Pierre.” “What valet?” said O, struck by the gentleness of the voice. “And what’s your name?” “Andrée.” “Mine is Jeanne,” said the second. “The valet is the one who has the keys,” the first one went on, “the one who will chain and unchain you, who will whip you when you are to be punished and when the others have no time for you.” “I was in the red wing last year,” Jeanne said. “Pierre was there already. He often came in at night. The valets have the keys and the right to use any of us in the rooms of their section.” O was about to ask what kind of a person this Pierre was, but she did not have time to. As they turned a corner of the hallway, they made her halt before a door similar in all respects to the others: on a bench between this and the following door she noticed a sort of thick-set, ruddy peasant, whose head was practically clean shaved, with small black eyes set deep in his skull and rolls of flesh on his neck. He was dressed like the valet in some operetta: a shirt whose lace frills peeked out from beneath his black vest, which itself was covered by a red jacket of the kind called a spencer. He had black breeches, white stockings, and patent-leather pumps. He too was carrying a leather-thonged whip in his belt. His hands were covered with red hair. He took a master key from his vest pocket, opened the door, ushered the three women in, and said: “I’m locking the door. Ring when you’ve finished.”

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  Many times it is a combination of several or, even, all of the above sense impressions simultaneously. For example, a woman molested by an alcoholic uncle may panic on seeing a man who looks vaguely like him or whose breath smells of alcohol and who walks with a loud, lumbering gait. These fragmentary snapshots come to represent the trauma. They become, in other words, the intrusive image or I mprint. For me, the image of the shattered glass and the eyes of the teenage driver kept intruding on my consciousness and flooding me with fear and dread. When reworking such embedded sensory images, a process of diffusing the adrenalin charge of the compressed “trauma snapshot” is necessary in order to uncouple associations that are symptomatic. An important therapeutic technique “expands and neutralizes” this fixation and helps the person recover the multisensory experience he or she may have had prior to the threat that caused the fragmentation. The following vignette illustrates this principle of expanding the “visual aperture.” Imagine that early one summer morning, you are walking along a beautiful hillside. There is a babbling brook meandering beside the pathway. A gentle breeze makes the multicolored flowers look as if they are dancing on the meadow. You are touched by the sight of drops of morning dew sitting on a blade of grass. The sunshine warms your skin, and the scent of the flowers is nothing less than intoxicating. You are taking this all in. Then, unexpectedly, a large snake appears on the trail. You stop and hold your breath. All that you had perceived a moment ago is gone … or is it? Not really. What happens is that your perception has constricted to focus narrowly on the source of the threat. Most everything else retreats into the background, into the hidden crevices of your mind, so as not to distract you from what you must identify and do: to keep your attention solely focused on the snake and to slowly back away. After feeling safe again, you may return to the full sensory experience of the morning. When a traumatized individual is able to expand his or her sensorial impressions, associated hyperarousal begins to ease, allowing that widened perceptual field to return to its prethreat status, and thus enhances the capacity of self-regulation. Before my accident, as detailed in Chapter 1 , I was taking in the scene: the colors, sounds, scents and warmth of that perfect day. In the instant that I was struck, these pleasant images paled.

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  In a recent study of children undergoing even “minor” orthopedic procedures, to quote the authors, “High levels of posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms (in over 33% of all children studied) are common in the recovery period after pediatric orthopedic trauma, even among patients with relatively minor injury. Children admitted to the hospital after injury are at high risk for such symptoms.” 45 Although hospitals have become more humane (particularly for children—though from the above study not nearly enough), there is still inadequate attention to preventing undue fear in people who must undergo painful procedures or general anesthesia. Indeed, some of those ill-fated individuals partially “awaken” during anesthesia and many develop some of the most horrific and complex PTSD symptoms. 46 In the words of one survivor (a surgical nurse herself), “I feel a cosmic hollowness, as if my soul has left my body and can’t return … horrifying nightmares are my companion … often shocking me wide awake. When my eyes pop open, there is still no respite because the walls and ceiling turn blood red.” 47 This riveting description illustrates the horror of enduring the combination of terror, extreme pain, and being unable to move or to communicate one’s situation. Biologically, the orthopedic patients, soldiers, rape victims and hospitalized children are reacting like wild animals fighting for their life after being frightened and captured. Their impulse to attack in an “aggravated rage” or to flee in frantic desperation is not only biologically appropriate; in fact, it is a frequent biological outcome. As a captured and terrified animal comes out of immobility, its survival may depend on its violent aggression toward the still-present predator. In humans, such violence, however, has produced tragic consequences to the individual and society. I had the opportunity to speak with the mother of Ted Kaczynski (the “Unabomber,” whose vendetta was waged against the impersonality of technology) and with the father of Jeffrey Dahmer (a serial killer who dismembered his victims). They both told me horrific stories of how their young children were “broken” by terrifying hospital experiences. Both parents described how, after terrifying hospitalizations, each of these children retreated into his own world. While such experiences of rage leading to perverted violence are (fortunately) rare, the terror and anger evoked by medical procedures is (unfortunately) not. Rage Turned Against the Self With humans, the impulse toward violent aggression may become terrifying in itself and is then turned against the self, as Kahlbaum so presciently observed in his seminal work on catatonia.

• From Story of O (1954)

  None of the women had the keys to any locks, neither the locks to the doors nor the chains, the collars or bracelets, but every man carried a ring of three sets of keys, each of which, in the various categories, opened all the doors or all the padlocks, or all the collars. The valets had them too. But in the morning the valets who had been on the night shift were sleeping, and it was one of the masters or another valet who came to open the locks. The man who came into O’s cell was dressed in a leather jacket and was wearing riding breeches and boots. She did not recognize him. First he unlocked the chain on the wall, and O was able to lie down on the bed. Before he unlocked her wrists, he ran his hand between her thighs, the way the first man with mask and gloves, whom she had seen in the small red drawing room, had done. It may have been the same one. His face was bony and fleshless, with that piercing look one associates with the portraits of old Huguenots, and his hair was gray. O met his gaze for what seemed to be an endless time and, suddenly freezing, she remembered it was forbidden to look at the masters above the belt. She closed her eyes, but it was too late, and she heard him laugh and say, as he finally freed her hands: “There will be a punishment for that after dinner.” He said something to Jeanne and Andrée, who had come in with him and were standing waiting on either side of the bed, after which he left. Andrée picked up the pillow which was on the floor, and the blanket that Pierre had turned down toward the foot of the bed when he had come to whip O, while Jeanne wheeled, toward the head of the bed, a serving table which had been brought into the hallway and on which were coffee, milk, sugar, bread, croissants, and butter. “Hurry up and eat,” said Andrée. “It’s nine o’clock. Afterward you can sleep till noon, and when you hear the bell it will be time to get ready for lunch. You’ll bathe and fix your hair. I’ll come to make you up and lace up your bodice.” “You won’t be on duty till afternoon,” Jeanne said. “In the library: you’ll serve the coffee and liqueur and tend the fire.” “And what about you?” O said. “We’re only supposed to take care of you during the first twenty-four hours of your stay. After that you’re on your own, and will have dealings only with the men. We won’t be able to talk to you, and you won’t be able to talk to us either.”

• From Story of O (1954)

  I seem to be saying frightful things. Perhaps I am, but in that case terror is our daily bread—and perhaps dangerous books are those which restore us to our natural state of danger. What lover would not be terrified if he were to weigh for one moment the full implication of his declaration, which is not made lightly, to commit himself for life? And what mistress, if she were to measure for a moment the meaning of her words: “Before I met you I have never loved anyone else.… I have never experienced real emotion before I knew you?” would not be equally terror-stricken at the words slipping past her lips? Or these, more sagacious—sagacious?—: “I should like to punish myself for having been happy before I met you!” There she is, trapped by her own words. There she is, so to speak, getting what she asked for. Thus, in the story of O, there is no lack of torture. There is no lack of flogging, with a riding crop, or even of branding with a red-hot iron, not to mention the leather collar and the spectacle on the terrace. Almost as many tortures as there are prayers in the life of ascetics in the desert. No less carefully distinguished, and as though numbered—separated one from the other by little stones. They are not always joyous tortures—I mean inflicted joyfully. René refuses to inflict any, and although Sir Stephen consents to them, it is as though he is performing a duty. So far as we can tell, they do not enjoy themselves. There is nothing sadistic about them. It all happens as though it were O alone who, from the outset, demanded to be chastised, to be forced in her retreats. At this point some fool is going to mention masochism. I don’t mind, but all it will do is to add a false mystery to the real one, a mystery of semantics pure and simple. What does masochism mean? That pain is at the same time pleasure, that suffering is also joy? That may well be. These are the kind of affirmations widely used by metaphysicians—who are also prone to proclaim that all absence is presence, all speech silence—and let me be the last one to deny that these declarations may indeed have their meaning (though one I do not understand), or at least their usefulness. But it is a usefulness that does not, in any event, derive from simple observation—and is therefore not the concern of doctors or mere psychologists and, all the more so, of simpletons or fools. “No,” I can hear someone saying to me, “while we are dealing here with pain, it is a pain the masochist is capable of transforming into pleasure; a suffering which he, by some secret alchemy he alone possesses, can turn into pure joy.”

• 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?

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  In the previous chapter we explored just how experimental animals and humans become trapped in fear-dominated paralysis; and, thus, how they become traumatized. In this chapter, I introduce the “antidote” for trauma: the core biological mechanisms that therapists must be aware of and able to elicit in their clients in order to assist in resolving their traumatic reactions. The engaging of these biological processes is equally essential whether treating the acute phase immediately following threatening and overwhelming incidents, such as rape, accidents and disasters, or in transforming chronic PTSD. Until the core physical experience of trauma—feeling scared stiff, frozen in fear or collapsing and going numb—unwinds and transforms, one remains stuck, a captive of one’s own entwined fear and helplessness. The sensations of paralysis or collapse seem intolerable, utterly unacceptable; they terrify and threaten to entrap and defeat us. This perception of seemingly unbearable experiences leads us to avoid and deny them, to tighten up against them and then split off from them. Resorting to these “defenses” is, however, like drinking salt water to quench extreme thirst: while they may give temporary relief, they only make the problem drastically worse and are, over the long haul, counterproductive. In order to unravel this tangle of fear and paralysis, we must be able to voluntarily contact and experience those frightening physical sensations; we must be able to confront them long enough for them to shift and change. To resist the immediate defensive ploy of avoidance, the most potent strategy is to move toward the fear, to contact the immobility itself and to consciously explore the various sensations, textures, images and thoughts associated with any discomfort that may arise. When working with traumatic reactions, such as states of intense fear, Somatic Experiencing®* provides therapists with nine building blocks. These basic tools for “renegotiating” and transforming trauma are not linear, rigid or unidirectional. Instead, in therapy sessions, these steps are intertwined and dependent upon one another and may be accessed repeatedly and in any order. However, if this psychobiological process is to be built on firm ground, Steps 1, 2 and 3 must occur first and must follow sequentially. Thus, the therapist needs to: 1. Establish an environment of relative safety. 2. Support initial exploration and acceptance of sensation. 3. Establish “pendulation” and containment: the innate power of rhythm. 4. Use titration to create increasing stability, resilience and organization. Titration is about carefully touching into the smallest “drop” of survival-based arousal, and other difficult sensations, to prevent retraumatization. 5. Provide a corrective experience by supplanting the passive responses of collapse and helplessness with active, empowered, defensive responses. 6. Separate or “uncouple” the conditioned association of fear and helplessness from the (normally time-limited but now maladaptive) biological immobility response. 7. Resolve hyperarousal states by gently guiding the “discharge” and redistribution of the vast survival energy mobilized for life-preserving action while freeing that energy to support higher-level brain functioning. 8. Engage self-regulation to restore “dynamic equilibrium” and relaxed alertness.

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  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. However, by World War II, any real reference to soldiers’ suffering was stripped of dignity and neutered to battle fatigue or war neurosis . The first term suggested that if a soldier heeded Grandma’s advice and took a good long rest, all would be just fine. This dismissive minimizing was especially insulting, and even ironic, given a suffering soldier’s profoundly disturbed capacity for restorative sleep. Even more demeaning was the pejorative use of the word neurosis , implying that a soldier’s “shell shock” was somehow due to a “character defect” or a nagging personal weakness—perhaps an “Oedipal complex”—rather than to one’s entirely appropriate terror of exploding shells or stark grief for fallen comrades and the horror of men killing men.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  Further, in marriage there is a contract. Now the will can be compelled in the matter of contracts; for which reason the law adjudges that restitution should be made of the whole, for it does not ratify “that which was done under compulsion or fear” (Sent. iv, D[29]). Therefore in marriage also it is possible for the consent to be compulsory. I answer that, Compulsion or violence is twofold. One is the cause of absolute necessity, and violence of this kind the Philosopher calls (Ethic. iii, 1) “violent simply,” as when by bodily strength one forces a person to move; the other causes conditional necessity, and the Philosopher calls this a “mixed violence,” as when a person throws his merchandise overboard in order to save himself. In the latter kind of violence, although the thing done is not voluntary in itself, yet taking into consideration the circumstances of place and time it is voluntary. And since actions are about particulars, it follows that it is voluntary simply, and involuntary in a certain respect (Cf. [4945]FS, Q[6], A[6]). Wherefore this latter violence or compulsion is consistent with consent, but not the former. And since this compulsion results from one’s fear of a threatening danger, it follows that this violence coincides with fear which, in a manner, compels the will, whereas the former violence has to do with bodily actions. Moreover, since the law considers not merely internal actions, but rather external actions, consequently it takes violence to mean absolute compulsion, for which reason it draws a distinction between violence and fear. Here, however, it is a question of internal consent which cannot be influenced by compulsion or violence as distinct from fear. Therefore as to the question at issue compulsion and fear are the same. Now, according to lawyers fear is “the agitation of the mind occasioned by danger imminent or future” (Ethic. iii, 1). This suffices for the Replies to the Objections; for the first set of arguments consider the first kind of compulsion, and the second set of arguments consider the second. Whether a constant man can be compelled by fear?Objection 1: It would seem that “a constant man” [*Cap. Ad audientiam, De his quae vi.] cannot be compelled by fear. Because the nature of a constant man is not to be agitated in the midst of dangers. Since then fear is “agitation of the mind occasioned by imminent danger,” it would seem that he is not compelled by fear. Objection 2: Further, “Of all fearsome things death is the limit,” according to the Philosopher (Ethic. iii, 6), as though it were the most perfect of all things that inspire fear. But the constant man is not compelled by death, since the brave face even mortal dangers. Therefore no fear influences a constant man.

• From Cleanness (2020)

  The mood was changing as the chant broke down and became something less choate and more animalistic, hisses and boos, and then I felt the pressure to move again, not in the same direction as before but toward the building and the line of police guarding it. The police felt it too, that pressure, they came to attention, lifting their shields an inch or two and locking them in place. I said something then, This could be bad or something to that effect, and I felt M.’s hand on my arm, though she couldn’t have heard what I said, there was too much noise and anyway I had whispered it, I was saying it mostly to myself. Points of red light were tracing patterns on the building’s concrete façade, people had brought laser pointers, which were harmless of course and also sinister, they aimed them like the laser sights of rifles. The sound of the crowd grew louder, that inchoate sound, formless and primal, inhuman, hardly animal now but primordial, chthonic, like a sound the earth would make. It wasn’t an animal sound but it elicited an animal response, or did for me, anyway, a fear that would have made me run had there been anywhere to run to, that instead made me grow very still. At the front of the crowd now, facing the police, six or seven men in Guy Fawkes masks had suddenly appeared. The masks seemed like an invitation to violence, to commit it or be subjected to it, and I thought I could see the police they were facing lean forward as if to meet them. There was the sound of glass breaking, a bottle thrown over the heads of the police, and almost at the same time a weird crackling and sudden fluorescence of flat red light. Someone behind us had lit a flare, and in response the noise died down, as if everyone had taken a breath. But the pressure I had felt didn’t dissipate, in the suspension of our breath it mounted and became unbearable, demanding release, and though we didn’t quite move it was as if everyone leaned very slightly forward, a wave on the brink of cresting. We hung fire, that’s what it felt like, that phrase from nineteenth-century novels I had never quite understood, I understood it now.

• From Story of O (1954)

  Her lover had helped her to her feet, still wrapped in her red cape, made her sit down on the arm of an easy chair near the fire, so that she could hear what they had to tell her and see what they wanted to show her. Her hands were still behind her back. They showed her the riding crop, which was long, black, and delicate, made of thin bamboo encased in leather, the kind one sees in the windows of better riding equipment shops; the leather whip, which the first man she had seen had been carrying in his belt, was long and consisted of six lashes knotted at the end. There was a third whip of fairly thin cords, each with several knots at the end: the cords were quite stiff, as though they had been soaked in water, which in fact they had, as O discovered, for they caressed her belly with them and nudged open her thighs, so that she could feel how stiff and damp the cords were against the tender, inner skin. Then there were the keys and the steel chains on the console table. Along one entire wall of the library, halfway between floor and ceiling, ran a gallery which was supported by two columns. A hook was imbedded in one of them, just high enough for a man standing on tiptoe, with his arms stretched above his head, to reach. They told O, whose lover had taken her in his arms, with one hand supporting her shoulders, and the other in the furrow of her loins, which burned so she could hardly bear it, they told her that her hands would be untied, but merely so that they could be fastened anew, a short while later, to the pole, using these same bracelets and one of the steel chains. They said that, with the exception of her hands, which would be held just above her head, she would thus be able to move and see the blows coming: that in principle she would be whipped only on the thighs and buttocks, in other words between her waist and knees, in the same region which had been prepared in the car that had brought her here, when she had been made to sit naked on the seat; but that in all likelihood one of the four men present would want to mark her thighs with the riding crop, which makes lovely long deep welts which last a long time. She would not have to endure all this at once; there would be ample time for her to scream, to struggle, and to cry. They would grant her some respite, but as soon as she had caught her breath they would start in again, judging the results not from her screams or tears but from the size and color of the welts they had raised. They remarked to her that this method of judging the effectiveness of the whip—besides being equitable—also made it pointless for the victims to exaggerate their suffering in an effort to arouse pity, and thus enabled them to resort to the same measures beyond the château walls, outdoors in the park—as was often done—or in any ordinary apartment or hotel room, assuming a gag was used (such as the one they produced and showed her there on the spot), for the gag stifles all screams and eliminates all but the most violent moans, while allowing tears to flow without restraint.

• From This Boy's Life: A Memoir (1989)

  “I already did,” the vice-principal said. BY THE TIME my mother arrived, I’d spent almost an hour with the vice-principal and had become completely convinced of my own innocence. The more I insisted on it the angrier he got, and the angrier he got the more impossible it was for me to believe that I had done anything to deserve such anger. He was, I knew, very close to hitting me; this made me feel a contempt for him that he could see, which in turn brought him closer to violence, inflating even further my sense of injury and innocence. And as his rage grew so did my contempt, because I saw that it was not self-restraint that kept him from hitting me but some kind of institutional restraint. But he still had me scared. It was like being lunged at by a dog on the end of its leash. Things stood thus when my mother came in. She’d spoken with the school nurse and immediately asked the vice-principal what he thought he was doing, hauling me around by the ears. He said that was beside the point, Mrs. Wolff, let’s not muddy the water here, but she said, No, to her it wasn’t beside the point at all. She faced him across his desk. She was erect, pale, and unfriendly. The point, he told her, was that I had violated school property and the law. Not to mention decency. My mother looked over at me. I saw how tired she was, and she must have seen the pain I was in. I shook my head. “You’re mistaken,” she told him. He laughed disagreeably. Then he set out his case, which consisted of eyewitness testimony by two boys who had been in the lavatory at the time the obscene words in question were inscribed on the wall. “What obscene words?” she asked. He hesitated. Then, demurely, he said, “Fuck you.” “That’s one obscene word,” my mother said. He pondered this. He said that, given the particular context, he considered you to be an obscene word as well. I said I didn’t do it.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  However much I insisted to Irene that the black ooze was a fiction, the truth is that I was often trapped in it. In my work with Irene, I suffered the fate of those who approached Robert Silverberg’s protagonist too closely: I was buffeted by my own existential verities. Again and again our sessions confronted me with my own death. Though I have always known that death is there waiting, whirring faintly just beneath the membrane of my life, I have generally managed to put it out of mind. Of course, there are salutary effects of dwelling upon death; I understand that though the fact (the physicality) of death destroys us, the idea of death may save us. This is old wisdom: it is why, for centuries, monks kept skulls in their cells and why Montaigne advised living in a room with a view of a cemetery. My awareness of death had long served to vitalize my life, helping me to trivialize what is trivial and to value what is truly precious. Yes, I knew these things intellectually, but I knew also that I could not live constantly exposed to the white heat of death terror. So, in the past, I had generally put thoughts of death on the back burner of consciousness. But my work with Irene would no longer permit that. Again and again my hours with her heightened not only my sensitivity to death and my sense of life’s preciousness but also my death anxiety. More times than I can remember, I found myself brooding over the fact that her husband was stricken down at forty-five while I would never see sixty again. I know I am in the dying zone, the time of life when I could be extinguished at any moment. Whoever said that therapists are overpaid? Lesson 5: Reason Versus Treason As our work proceeded into the third year, I grew more and more discouraged. Therapy had hopelessly bogged down. So deeply mired in depression was Irene that I could not budge her. Nor approach her: when I inquired about how close or distant she felt in a session, she responded, “Miles and miles away —I can barely see you.” “Irene, I know you may be tired of hearing this, but we absolutely must consider beginning an antidepressant. We’ve got to understand and resolve why you’re so fixed in your opposition to medication.” “We both know what medication means.” “Oh?” “It means you’re quitting, giving up on our therapy work. I am not looking to be quickly fixed.” “Quickly fixed, Irene? Three years?” “I mean, making me feel better is no solution. It only postpones dealing with what I’ve lost.” No matter what arguments I used, I could not dissuade her from these beliefs, but eventually she humored me by allowing me to prescribe antidepressants. The result was the same as on our previous trial two years before.

• From Momma and the Meaning of Life (1999)

  I could easily fall out the window, and I woke up with a powerful thought in my mind: How could you have exposed me to such great danger? This general theme— her being in danger and my failing to protect her —soon gathered steam. A few nights later she had two companion dreams, one following immediately upon the heels of the other. (Companion dreams may convey the same message. Our friend the dream-writing homunculus often amuses himself by composing several variations on a particularly arresting theme.) The first: 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?