Abstract
Fear has dramatic significance for the human actor. Like the body’s immune system, fear defends the person from physical, social, and even cosmic dangers. Fears seem to be given, automatic, but also acquired through painful experiences. Fears are easily generalized and are often enduring. Fears often are institutionalized and presented as codified social regulations. Fears are part of the positive emotional bouquet of life, for they provide the material for thrills, adventures, and delightful surprises. They can also be crippling, as they develop easily into phobias or descend into an abject terror. Death can be a source of such terror, or can be approached with courage, depending entirely upon the dramatic context in which it is conceived.
“Having spoken with students, faculty and staff over the last week, and having conferred with the Board of Trustees, I think it very important to declare that Wesleyan University is a sanctuary campus.”
Michael Roth , President of Wesleyan University, November 23, 2016
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Notes
- 1.
The general approach of considering psychological problems from the dramatic point of view is developed in The Drama of Everyday Life (Scheibe, 2000).
- 2.
Electric fences for horses, cattle, and dogs make use of this principle. After leaving the current on for a while, animals often stay obediently in their confines without repetitions of the painful shocks.
- 3.
If food aversions were established in this way, then one should find that people can remember traumatic episodes associated with hated foods. Alas, this is rarely the case (cf. Sluckin, 1979) Also, when a traumatic or painful episode does coincide with the ingestion of some food, an aversion should thereby be established. Evidence for the uniform effectiveness of trauma to establish aversions is also sparse.
- 4.
To extend the list, consider fastening seatbelts, carrying an umbrella, carrying a handkerchief, observing traffic signals on empty roads in the dead of night, keeping records of financial transactions, washing hands before eating, carrying legal identification documents, keeping first aid kits handy, making sure newspapers do not pile up on doorsteps while away on vacation, and so on. These are not activities that are normally accompanied by any experience of fear at all. But to each of them is connected a specific potential fear. The important point to observe is that these activities do not require additional “reinforcements” in order to be continued indefinitely as simple routines in living.
- 5.
“Certainly there is no nobler field for human effort than the insurance line of business—especially accident insurance. Ever since I have been a director in an accident-insurance company I have felt that I am a better man. Life has seemed more precious. Accidents have assumed a kindlier aspect. Distressing special providences have lost half their horror. I look upon a cripple now with affectionate interest—as an advertisement. I do not seem to care for poetry any more. I do not care for politics—even agriculture does not excite me. But to me now there is a charm about a railway collision that is unspeakable.” (Twain, 1875).
- 6.
I was astonished two years ago to take a flight between two cities on South Island of New Zealand without passing through a security control of any kind. I was later told by people living on the island that the practice of forcing passengers through an inspection for domestic flights in New Zealand was quietly dropped a few years go.
- 7.
- 8.
Bourke (2005) reports a similar radio-induced panic in 1926, when citizens of London were taken in by a play called “Broadcasting from the Barricades,” which purported to describe a demonstration of unemployed people in Trafalgar Square who were setting fires and arbitrarily executing certain public figures. As in the case of the Welles episode, many people in London reacted to this reported incongruity with genuine panic.
- 9.
The fear addressed by Kierkegaard is a particularly human creation. Ortega y Gasset has noted that for human beings, as for other animals, the days of life are numbered and will end. However, Ortega speculates that only for human beings are the spaces above those numbers empty—that other animals do not seem much troubled by how to fill their time with meaningful activity. It is a simple extension of this insight to note that human beings are likely the only animals to have the sense of being somehow connected to an abstract and invisible higher power—and then to worry about whether they are or are not properly connected to or related to that creative force. Let us speculate that the lamb finally sacrificed by Abraham’s knife also knew fear—but that it was a different order of fear than Isaac or Abraham might have experienced.
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Scheibe, K.E. (2017). The Drama of Fear. In: Deep Drama. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62986-5_5
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