Existential Anxiety Research Articles

Finding Freedom within Existential Anxiety with Beauvoir

Finding Freedom within Existential Anxiety with Beauvoir

Toward an Integrative Theory of Self-Identity and Identity Stressors and Traumas and Their Mental Health Dynamics

Self-identity is a flexible and linear/non-linear dynamic system that consists of various identities and hierarchical sub-modules and operating processes and develops (grows or declines) through dealing with stressors and traumas (IST). ISTs may threaten the existence, the maintenance or development of one of the persons’ identities. Different IST types include personal identity, physical identity, role identity, and social identity stressors/traumas and constitute a multi-level hierarchy. A value processing system, related self-evaluation, and core developmental assets are identity-impeded operational processes in each identity. The salience of one identity may be activated by IST and became the situational (or the default) lens that biases the person’s appraisal and coping response. The most traumatizing ISTs are those that threaten identities’ existence, triggering existential anxieties. The macro dynamics of accumulation, proliferation and the interaction between pre-identity, identity, and post-identity traumas determine their mental health impact, rather than a triggering trauma.

Is Jung Existential or Not? Reflections on Temporality and Everydayness

This article contrasts Jung’s theoretical position with existential philosophy, mainly Martin Heidegger’s ideas. The intent of Heidegger’s magnum opus, Being and Time, was to discover the primal ground, the arché, of ideas. In his eyes, that quest failed, resulting in a turn toward a more hermeneutic approach, aimed toward disclosing the Being of beings. This endeavor, for Heidegger, is never final. A basic precept of existential thought is that “existence precedes essence.” An ultimate lack of substantive structure entails a sense of contingency and openness, providing the ground of human freedom. This diverges sharply from Jung’s theoretical writings, because he generally held to a belief in archetypes: inherent, underlying structures or ideal forms related to Platonic ideas. Moreover, temporality and awareness of death are at the core of most existential thought. This involves an openness to the vicissitudes of time, with a consequent existential anxiety. In contrast, throughout most of his life, Jung privileged an “eternal” or “timeless” aspect of existence, presumably manifested in preexisting archetypal structures, while devaluing the “personal unconscious.” For Jung, the personal unconscious is the realm of the everyday time of our existence, mainly serving to set the stage for the emergence of a timeless archetypal realm. The author, a Jungian analyst, proposes that Jung’s view of temporality seems diametrically opposed to existential theory and practice, which focus on the “time of our lives,” as beings who inevitably must die.

실존적 불안, 사이존재로서 실존의 사이기분에 대한 철학적 분석 : 키에르케고어를 중심으로

이 글에서 논자는 오늘날 불안의 실존적 현상들을 살펴봄으로써 불안의 진단과 치료에 있어서 철학적 근거를 드러내보고자 한다. 특히 불안의 근원을 심리적 차원과 더불어 윤리적 차원을 통해 살펴봄으로써 심리적 현상으로서 불안의 철학적 근거를 강조하고자 한다. 이를 위해 가능성과 현실성 ‘사이존재(Zwischesein)’로서 실존 그리고 존재의 분열과 봉합 사이의 순간이 수반하는 ‘사이기분(Zwischenstmmung)’으로서 불안을 드러낸다. 불안의 근거로서 실존이 지닌 ‘사이성(Zwischeheit)’에 대한 주목은 키에르케고어(Soren Kierkegaard)에 의해 ‘종합’ 개념 속에서 나타지만 ‘두 개 사이의 관계’로서 그의 종합 개념은 오히려 종합이라는 용어로 인하여 충분히 주목되지 못했다. 논자는 사이성에 대한 조명을 통하여 실존 개념이 지니는 보다 심층적 조건을 포착해본다. 그리하여 논자는 분열된 양자 사이의 종합이라는 결과보다는 그 양자 사이의 긴장이라는 과정에 주목해본다. 이를 위해 실존철학의 선구자인 키에르케고어의 『불안의 개념』을 분석한다.

Prosocial Attitudes toward Money from Terror Management Perspective: Death Transcendence through Spirituality

ABSTRACTBased on Terror Management Theory (TMT), we suggest that spirituality and prosocial attitudes toward money have a similar defensive function in resisting existential anxiety. In mortality salient (MS) situations, both spirituality and prosocial money attitudes afford symbolic immortality by self-transcendent connections. In four studies, we found that activating death awareness weakened people’s subjective love of money (Study 1) and predicted increased spending willingness on prosocial rather than proself goals (Studies 2, 3, and 4). More importantly, MS effects on money attitudes were smaller when people’s trait spirituality was high (vs. low; Studies 1, 2, 3) and when people were primed to experience spirituality (vs. happiness control condition; Study 4). For low spirituality people, the association between MS and prosocial spending also depended on the capacity of money spending to contribute positively to one’s feelings of self-worth (Study 3). Theoretical implications and future directions are discussed.

Greek host community acculturation expectations towards immigrants from Albania and Pakistan: The role of existential parameters

The idea of personal death causes a sense of uncertainty and threat against our ontological security. Terror management theory proposes that, when confronted with existential anxiety, we tend to seek safety through explicit (post-mortem expectations) and implicit/symbolic immortality (cultural worldviews). This study aims to explore the role of existential parameters in the Greek host community acculturation expectations towards immigrants from Albania and Pakistan. Participants were 208 Greek university students. Exposure to mortality salience was introduced in the experimental group by administering the Mortality Attitudes Personality Survey, while participants of the control group responded to a questionnaire about TV watching. Measures for both groups included the Host Community Acculturation Scale and the Connection of the Soul Scale. It was found that host community acculturation expectations were not affected by experimental exposure to mortality salience but they were related to post-mortem expectations. Specifically, post-mortem expectations for connection with God were associated with acculturation expectations for individualism (positively), segregation and marginalization (negatively) of immigrants from Albania, while post-mortem expectations for connection with the universe were linked to expectations for integration of this immigrant group. With regards to immigrants from Pakistan, segregation was positively related to the connection with God. The findings suggest that host community acculturation expectations of Greeks are related to existential anxiety as a trait rather than as a state.

Rituals, Repetitiveness and Cognitive Load : A Competitive Test of Ritual Benefits for Stress.

A central hypothesis to account for the ubiquity of rituals across cultures is their supposed anxiolytic effects: rituals being maintained because they reduce existential anxiety and uncertainty. We aimed to test the anxiolytic effects of rituals by investigating two possible underlying mechanisms for it: cognitive load and repetitive movement. In our pre-registered experiment (osf.io/rsu9x), 180 undergraduates took part in either a stress or a control condition and were subsequently assigned to either control, cognitive load, undirected movement, a combination of undirected movement and cognitive load, or a ritualistic intervention. Using both repeated self-report measures and continuous physiological indicators of anxiety, we failed to find direct support for a cognitive suppression effect of anxiety through ritualistic behavior. Nevertheless, we found that induced stress increased participants' subsequent repetitive behavior, which in turn reduced physiological arousal. This study provides novel evidence for plausible underlying effects of the proposed anxiolytic effect of rituals: repetitive behavior but not cognitive load may decrease physiological stress responses during ritual.

Money as an existential anxiety buffer: Exposure to money prevents mortality reminders from leading to increased death thoughts

Money as an existential anxiety buffer: Exposure to money prevents mortality reminders from leading to increased death thoughts

Brexit, existential anxiety and ontological (in)security

ABSTRACTThis article explores how the Brexit Referendum on the UK's membership of the European Union has been a source of destabilisation, dread and ontological anxiety. Focusing mainly on British citizens who voted or self-identified as “Remainers”, and on EU foreign nationals resident in the UK, it shows how existential anxieties have had different points of focus for different groups of people. Confronted with such destabilising anxieties, the article shows how people have adopted different mechanisms designed to reassert a sense of order and certitude often viewed as central to preserving ontological security. The ways in which this has been done, however, can themselves raise important questions.

The market for ontological security

ABSTRACTLife in the European Union (EU) has never been as safe as it is today. Nevertheless, EU citizens express widespread anxiety about new risks, such as internal and external migration, transnational crime and terrorism, economic and fiscal uncertainty. One actor which has profited from this development is the security industry. Across Europe there are now nearly as many private security guards employed as public police forces. This article draws on the concept of ontological security to understand the discrepancy between safety and anxiety which underpins the expansion of private security services in Europe. It argues that Private Security Companies (PSCs) are involved in the construction and provision of ontological security through three mechanisms: risk identification, risk profiling and risk management. These mechanisms not only offer physical security, they also reduce existential anxieties by contributing to stable self-identities through personalised risk profiles, commodified lifestyle choices and security routines. Nevertheless, the effects are not only positive. In addition to individualisation and the responsibilization of European citizens for their own physical and ontological security these mechanisms increase societal reliance on commercial expert systems, while reinforcing the perceived failure of the EU as a political and collective security community.

Anxious community: EU as (in)security community

ABSTRACTFrom the Eurocrisis to the migration crisis, and from Brexit to a strengthening far right, the European Union (EU) faces multiple stressors. But while crises unleash anxiety, they do not necessarily portend the worst: because they disrupt old routines, crises can open space for new political possibilities. As a self-consciously hybrid, ‘post-national’ political form, the EU would seem poised to take advantage. Instead it is stuck. In this paper, taking an ontological security approach and focusing on EU migration governance, I propose that one cause of paralysis could lie – ironically – in an aspect of the EU that is crucial to its normative power: Europe’s long peace. An ontological security perspective highlights the management of existential anxiety as crucial to identity, suggesting how different modes of anxiety management have different political effects. Applied here, EU narratives and routines preserving ‘no war’ might suppress relations of structural power; they might mimic primitive defense mechanisms; or they might be symptoms pointing to unconscious processes keeping difficult knowledge – including colonial pasts – undealt with. I suggest how migration governance might manifest these mechanisms, contributing to the difficulties of desecuritising migration and linking its governance to EU values and institutions.

Existentialist Echoes in Harold Pinter’s Early Poetry

This paper has attempted to investigate the absurdist voices in Harold Pinter’s selected poems written from 1951to1953. These poems belonging to his early phase of writing as the poet deals with the major obsessions of post-Modern man depicting his anxiety of identity aggravated by his existential condition. Pinter’s early poetry characterizes him as an absurdist poet and expresses his world view through distinctive images and tones. The selected poems appear to be a blending of his absurdist insights with his poetic art. His early poems predominantly portray existential anxiety, absurdity and pessimism. The study seeks to reflect on Pinter as a practitioner of the ‘Literature of the Absurd’ who tries to depict how different people act and react when they confront different aspects of absurdity and existential dilemma.

Evaluating the APAC (Mindfulness for Giftedness) Program in a Spanish Sample of Gifted Children: a Pilot Study

Previous studies have found that gifted children experience symptoms such as existential anguish, anxiety, depression, experiential avoidance, and cognitive fusion. The inherent intensity and sensitivity of these young people may make them more susceptible to significant emotional distress and existential concerns. Endeavoring to address such issues, we designed a second-generation mindfulness-based intervention, called the “Atencion plena para altas capacidades” (APAC; Mindfulness for Giftedness). This paper presents the pretreatment, posttreatment, and 12-month follow-up findings on the implementation of the program in a sample of 22 gifted children in Spain. The program comprised eight weekly 90-min group sessions covering mindfulness, emotional intelligence, emotional regulation, acceptance, values, compassion, and self-compassion. The program’s efficacy was measured using standardized, validated tools (the Child and Adolescent Mindfulness Measure, the Avoidance and Fusion Questionnaire for Youth, the Children’s Depression Inventory, the State Trait Anxiety Inventory for Children, the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule for Children, and the Emotional Skills and Competence Questionnaire) at pretreatment, posttreatment, and 12-month follow-up time periods.. Our study’s findings at the posttreatment stage suggested that the APAC program improved the emotional abilities and reduced negative symptoms. Results from the 12-month follow-up assessment stage appeared to uphold these findings. However, we recommend that future second-generation mindfulness-based interventions for gifted children should include more activities and exercises that address the meaning of life and other related existential worries of particular concern to these young people.

Intrinsic religiosity protects believers from the existential fear of a human Jesus

ABSTRACTThe present study examined the role of internalised religious beliefs in defending against existential concerns aroused from a creaturely Jesus. Prior work has found that biologically human traits (e.g., vomiting, sweating, etc.) can increase death concerns when applied to both humans and a god. Intrinsic beliefs, however, have been shown to reduce mortality awareness. In the current study, religious participants were primed with thoughts of either a human or neutral Jesus followed by a single item measure about fear of death. A moderated regression analysis found that whereas high intrinsic individuals were buffered from existential concerns, low intrinsic individuals experienced a greater fear of death when primed with a human Jesus. These results replicate prior work within terror management theory and the psychology of religion suggesting that internalised beliefs serve a protective function against existential anxieties.

The Divine Relationship Ethics of Kierkegaard’s Love-Sleuth in Works of Love

Despite traditionally being characterised as a melancholy thinker with a propensity to dwell on existential anxiety, sin and despair, scholarly interest in the place of love in Søren Kierkegaard’s ethical thought is currently gaining significant traction. In particular, Kierkegaard’s Works of Love (1847) has increasingly come under the academic spotlight as a text with potentially rich and previously underappreciated insights for Christian ethics. This article aims to contribute to this ongoing illumination, by highlighting the moral psychology and theological anthropology of Kierkegaard’s Christian lover in discourses II–V of Works of Love’s second series. In doing this, I aim to put forward an overarching ethical framework which can be seen to structure these moral deliberations.

Regression in the elderly subject

Regression in the elderly subject is a symptom. Caregivers usually feel helpless faced with this clinical expression. It is important to read this symptom as a defence mechanism against existential anxieties. Caregivers do all they can to alleviate the elderly person.

Robot as the “mechanical other”: transcending karmic dilemma

As the artificial intelligence of computers grows ever-more sophisticated and continues to surpass the capacities of human minds in many ways, people are forced to question alleged ontological categories that separate humans from machines. As we are entering the world which is populated by non-enhanced and enhanced humans, cyborgs, robots, androids, avatars, and clones among them, the desire for evolutionary mastery of the natural world has taken on the two main directions: merging with machines in (1) disembodied forms or (2) embodied forms. As a path to breaking past the discontinuity between humans and machines and enter into a world beyond the “fourth” discontinuity, machines are viewed as an evolutionary step toward the “perfection” or “immortality” of humans. However, this popular, instrumental views of machines, stemming from the existential death anxiety and the hope for transcending mortality, reveals the karmic dilemma of desiring or grasping something. We shall discuss the possibility that machines can present, ultimately, a revolutionary step rather than an evolutionary step toward understanding “who we are.” The path toward a continuity with machines lies not in our desire for merging with the robots, but in recognizing the arbitrary nature of all such identity categories. This radical understanding of the self-identity can be seen as a facet of enlightened experience.

Career transition as identity learning: an autoethnographic understanding of human resource development

ABSTRACTThis paper examines the phenomenon of career transitions in terms of learning using an autoethnographic story of our own career moves. In the contemporary world of globalized flexible employment, inter-organizational career moves are increasingly prevalent and the learning associated with such transitions needs to be better understood within human resource development (HRD). We show that the learning required in career transitions extends beyond the acquisition of new knowledge and the development of new skills to the appropriation of new identities. We overview identity theorizing and, adopting a social constructionist perspective, explain the concept of identity work to understand the nature of identity learning in career transitions. We then reflexively examine our autoethnographic methodology, proceed to tell the story of our career transitions, and then interpret this story in terms of identity learning. Conclusions are drawn showing how the learning associated with career transitions involves conscious and unconscious identity work to release an established way of being, cultivate a new and desired way of being, and to cope with the existential anxieties associated with transition. Significant implications for international HRD scholarship, policy, and practice are proposed.

The Effectiveness of Schema Therapy Integrated with Rehabilitation on Cognitive Emotion Regulation and Existential Anxiety in Patients with Congestive Heart Failure

Patients with congestive heart failure (CHF) are faced with various physical and psychological stressful factors, which ‎leads to decreased quality of life. Considering the relationship between cognitive emotion regulation (CER) and existential anxiety with early maladaptive schemas, one of the methods capable of assisting the rehabilitation of the patients with CHF is the schema therapy. The current study aimed at determining the effectiveness of schema therapy integrated with rehabilitation on CER and existential anxiety in patients with CHF. The study was a true experimental with pretest/posttest design and a control group. The study sample was consisted of 25 patients with CHF in Guilan Province, Iran, 2017, selected by the convenience sampling method and assigned into two groups (one experimental and one control). To collect the data, cognitive emotion regulation questionnaire (CERQ) and existential anxiety inventory (EAI) were used before and after the intervention. A ten-session young schema therapy was implemented for the experimental group. Two-way ANOVA was used for data analysis and Cohen’s d test measured effect extent. The results of analysis showed that the group schema therapy integrated with rehabilitation improved CER and existential anxiety in patients with CHF (p < 0.001). According to the findings of the research, schema therapy can improve the cognitive and emotional symptoms in patients with CHF.

A Conceptual Model and Measurement of Identity-Based, Existential Annihilation Anxieties (EAA)

Existential (annihilation) anxiety (EAA) and its significant role in PTSD, complex PTSD and mental and physical health, were a long ignored variable in the mainstream clinical science. Further collective EAA is one of the important dimensions missing in the theory and measurement of EAA. The study evaluated the psychometric properties of an existing measure of existential annihilation scale (EAA) (Kira et al., 2012b), that had previously developed based on an integrative framework of identity-based existential annihilation anxiety (EAA) that include most of the personal and collective dimensions of EAA. We reanalyzed the data in seven studies that utilized the measure, conducting exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis for the pooled data (N = 2436), as well as path analysis with EAA as a mediator of the effects of cumulative stress and trauma on PTSD. We conducted Multigroup invariance to test the invariance of the measurement model as well as the predictive structural model across groups. The short measure found to have good internal consistency and test-retest stability, as well as construct, convergent, divergent and predictive validity and is strongly invariant across the main groups. As hypothesized, by the integrated model of EAA, EAA fully mediated the effects of cumulative trauma on PTSD. The results confirm at least in part the validity and utility of the integrative conceptual framework. Further development of the measurement model in future studies was proposed to include fear of death that was not included in the evaluated measure and is one of the components of integrated framework of EAA. The importance of integrating EAA in the mainstream clinical science and intervention was discussed.