“Anxiety is fear of one's self.”
As quoted in Beyond the Blues: Treating Depression One Day at a Time (2000) by Edward F. Haas, p. 119
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Wilhelm Stekel 17
Austrian physician and psychologist 1868–1940Related quotes
“Anxiety grew, the fear that always comes when an established pattern falters.”
Book Two, Part IV “War March”, Chapter 7 (p. 268)
The Birthgrave (1975)
“The prospect of more freedom stirs anxiety. We want it, but we fear it”
"Ghosts, Fantasies, and Hope" http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/?article=190 Dissent (Fall 2005)
Context: It’s not only corruption that distorts the utopian impulse when it begins to take some specific social shape. The prospect of more freedom stirs anxiety. We want it, but we fear it; it goes against our most deeply ingrained Judeo-Christian definitions of morality and order. At bottom, utopia equals death is a statement about the wages of sin.
Source: The Courage to Be (1952), p. 120
“There is nothing to fear except fear it's self.”
Source: The Function of the Orgasm (1927), Ch. V : The Development of the Character-Analytic Technique
Context: Sexual anxiety is caused by the external frustration of instinctual gratification and is internally anchored by the fear of the dammed-up sexual excitation. This leads to orgasm anxiety, which is the ego's fear of the over-powering excitation of the genital system due to its estrangement from the experience of pleasure. Orgasm anxiety constitutes the core of the universal, biologically anchored pleasure anxiety. It is usually expressed as a general anxiety about every form of vegetative sensation and excitation, or the perception of such excitation and sensations. The pleasure of living and the pleasure of the orgasm are identical. Extreme orgasm anxiety forms the basis of the general fear of life.
Source: The Causation and Treatment of Psychopathic Diseases (1916), p. 33
Review of Terror and Liberalism by Paul Berman http://dir.salon.com/story/books/feature/2003/03/25/willis/index.html, Salon (25 March 2003)