Sigmund Freud
Book Release: “Anxiety: A Philosophical Guide”
I’m pleased to make note here of the release, on March 19th, of my book Anxiety: A Philosophical Guide published by Princeton University Press. Here is the book’s description and cover:
- Today, anxiety is usually thought of as a pathology, the most diagnosed and medicated of all psychological disorders. But anxiety isn’t always or only a medical condition. Indeed, many philosophers argue that anxiety is a normal, even essential, part of being human, and that coming to terms with this fact is potentially transformative, allowing us to live more meaningful lives by giving us a richer understanding of ourselves. In Anxiety, Samir Chopra explores valuable insights about anxiety offered by ancient and modern philosophies—Buddhism, existentialism, psychoanalysis, and critical theory. Blending memoir and philosophy, he also tells how serious anxiety has affected his own life—and how philosophy has helped him cope with it.
- Chopra shows that many philosophers—including the Buddha, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Freud, and Heidegger—have viewed anxiety as an inevitable human response to existence: to be is to be anxious. Drawing on Karl Marx and Herbert Marcuse, Chopra examines how poverty and other material conditions can make anxiety worse, but he emphasizes that not even the rich can escape it. Nor can the medicated. Inseparable from the human condition, anxiety is indispensable for grasping it. Philosophy may not be able to cure anxiety but, by leading us to greater self-knowledge and self-acceptance, it may be able to make us less anxious about being anxious.
- Personal, poignant, and hopeful, Anxiety is a book for anyone who is curious about rethinking anxiety and learning why it might be a source not only of suffering but of insight.
America, Let’s Just Keep Our Flag At Half-Mast, OK?
Folks, we have a problem on our hands. Every few days, or weeks, we put the hard-working men and women who are in charge of lowering and raising our national flag–whether in parks, schools, public libraries, post offices, or anywhere else–to considerable hardship. To wit, we make them repeatedly perform the tedious task of lowering the Stars and Stripes down to half-mast, and then raising it again a few days later when the period of ‘national mourning’ –declared in response to our latest public massacre–is over. This tedious, time-consuming task is a nuisance, and it is unfair that these loyal compatriots of ours should be subjected to this endless repetition on a monotonous theme. Come wind, rain, snow, hail, or scorching summer, no matter what the season, time-zone, or locale, this task has to be performed again and again. Enough is enough.
Sigmund Freud talked (and talked) of endless therapy and neurotic repetition. Trust me, if the good doctor knew of what went on in the United States in this day and age, he might find himself forced to extensively revise his theories of neuroticism to accommodate the pathology on display. Or perhaps he might be gratified at finding here, that long-awaited confirmation of his postulated ‘death drive,’ the one that was marked by ‘aggression, repetition compulsion, and self-destructiveness.’ Our nation would then have fulfilled a salutary scientific role in providing empirical confirmation of this radical revision to Freud’s psychoanalytic framework.
But if we do not wish such an exalted role for our nation, then we have a simple alternative at hand, one that would accommodate our national predilection for things that go bang-bang and pop-pop and boom-boom, and for the periodic massacre of innocents. Because, soon enough, we’ll be offering more thoughts and prayers, standing around solemnly with heads bowed, and yes, sending out the trusted custodians of ‘Ol Glory to bring it shimmying down to a more appropriate position.
Let’s just keep the flag flying at half-mast. As a nation, we deserve no less.