Anxiety

Author(s): Hal Ritter

Source: Journal of Religion and Health, Vol. 29, No. 1 (Spring, 1990), pp. 49-53
Published by: Springer
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 Journal of Religion and Health Volume 29, No. 1, Spring 1990

Anxiety

HAL RITTER
ABSTRACT: The analysis is a study of the nature of anxiety in human experience. The author
reviews the work of theologian Paul Tillich and psychologist Rollo May and clarifies the role of
anxiety in life. The article reflects the need for a basic religious affirmation as one faces the anx
iety of life which comes from the many threats to human existence.

Background

The concept of anxiety has developed in the twentieth century among both
theologians and psychologists as a major topic for discussion and analysis. In
1957, one psychiatrist (Salzman) wrote, "The enormous development of heal
ing sects, cults, individual healers and healing movements, both in and out of
the church, attests to the need of human beings to solve their problems of
anxiety, ... [as well as the] inability to and
experience mutually exchange
loving attitudes."1
In his early writings, Freud talked about different levels of "excitation"
in an organism. According to his pleasure principle, the organism always
sought pleasure over unpleasure, that is, what was unpleasurable. Thus,
when some psychic excitation occurred, the organism would respond to it in a
pleasure-seeking manner either by acting on it physically or by establishing
a positive, psychic cathexis of it in order to receive some limited pleasure
from it, at least until it could be acted on physically.
When the excitation was actually or potentially destructive or unaccept
able, then it would be rejected from consciousness by the mechanism of re
pression. At this juncture it would become what Freud called "frustrated
excitation." In this fashion the organism would attempt to remove the excita
tion in order to avoid the unpleasant consequences of acting on it. However,
in avoiding the unpleasant consequences, the organism was actually taking
the frustrated excitation into itself. This "frustrated excitation" had real en
ergy within the psychic dynamisms of the organism, and Freud came to call
this frustrated excitation "anxiety."2
Much of the writing in the first half of this century was directed toward
anxiety as a neurotic condition in itself, and psychotherapy had as its goal, at

Hal Ritter, Ph.D., is a pastoral counselor at the Samaritan Center of Central Texas
Counseling
in Waco, Texas.

49 ? 1990 Institutes of Religion and Health

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All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 50 Journal of Religion and Health

least ideally, the removal of anxiety as a criterion for establishing healthy

equilibrium in the personality. During the same time, philosophical discus
sion of anxiety was focused more on anxiety as a natural part of the human
predicament, a given in terms of a person's experience in the world. During
the 1940s, a change was evidently taking place. Some philosophers began to
recognize the significance of research into neurotic anxiety as carried out by
psychologists, and some psychologists began to accept the significance of the
philosophical position that anxiety is a part of a person's condition as a hu
man being.3
This movement of both philosophy and psychology toward a concern for
anxiety seemed to emerge, at least partially, from the influence of existen
tialism, which began in the nineteenth century with Kierkegaard's protest
against rationalism. Two twentieth-century writers influenced by this new
mood of existentialism are the philosophical theologian Paul Tillich and the
clinical psychologist Rollo May.4

Paul Tillich

Paul Tillich was a chaplain in Europe during World War I. After coming to
the United States, he taught at Union Theological Seminary in New York
City. He spent some time in psychoanalysis, and his analyst was Karen Hor
ney.

Writing on the nature of anxiety, Tillich says,

The description of anxiety as the awareness of one's finitude is sometimes criti

cized as untrue from the point of view of the ordinary state of mind. Anxiety,
one says, appears under special conditions but is not an ever-present implication
of man's finitude. Certainly anxiety as an acute appears under defi
experience
nite conditions. But the underlying structure of finite life is the universal condi
tion which makes the appearance of anxiety under special conditions possible.5

What Tillich is saying is that the underlying ambiguities and uncertain

ties of finite life produce a basic kind of anxiety about life which is common
to all people. This basic, human anxiety is ontological in nature. Neverthe
less, it is a really felt experience in human life. Tillich points out that exis
tentialism often uses psychological language and terminology in order to pro
vide an ontological analysis of life. For example, words such as freedom, will,
power, and the unconscious, as "concepts of the non-rational, are psychologi
cal notions with an ontological significance."6
Ultimately, the threat to human existence is the threat to being from non
being. My being, who I am, is conditional, contingent, and temporary. There
are no guarantees on my existence because there is no permanence to life.
The Old Testament writer of Ecclesiastes begins his work with the words,

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Hal Ritter 51

"Vanity of vanities, all is vanity." He then sets up polarities about the con
tingencies of life: "A time to be born, a time to die; A time to kill, a time to
heal; A time to weep, a time to laugh; A time to love, a time to hate; A time
for war, a time for peace."7 And on and on he goes, for life is all vanity any
way. My life as a being is threatened by non-being on all sides. Or, as the
New Testament writer in the book of James says, "Life is but a vapor."8 For
him, life is like a morning fog, and once the sun comes up it vanishes into
nothingness.
Two of the threats to my existence, according to Tillich, are the threats of
the loss of time and the loss of space.9 Life is temporary, and the space that
belongs to me may be gone at any time. For example, when I think about
running late to a movie that I have looked forward to seeing, I notice that I
say, "I am 'anxious' to get there." Or, when I think about losing my place in
line after waiting for twenty minutes to get to the cash register, I realize that
I get frustrated and angry. My being, what makes sense for me in life is be
ing threatened, and I rage against it because I am helpless before its power.
Non-being continues to close in on me all around. My being is in constant
threat from the non-being of my loss of time and space. I lose time as my life
ages and time moves on and on into old age and death. I lose my space when I
lose my home by fire or repossession, or my space in the company by unem
ployment, or my space?or place?in the family by abuse, abandonment, di
vorce, or death. Death is the ultimate threat of non-being, the threat that life
is all meaningless anyway.
In something of a mixed metaphor of space and time Jesus said, "Who, by
being anxious, can add a foot to the length of one's life?"10 We are at the
mercy of forces larger than ourselves, for we are bit players in a massive uni
verse. The threats from non-being are all around us?from parent to child,
employer to employee, teacher to student, doctor to patient. Our lives are at
risk to what the insurance companies call "acts of God." We are threatened
with annihilation by hurricanes, tornadoes, and nuclear war. Somehow, we
are but ants on a hill, knowing that insecticide may annihilate us at any
moment.

This ontological anxiety of life must be faced and accepted, and Tillich says
that in the face of it all we live life by courage. It is the courage to be some
thing rather than nothing. It is the "courage to be," in the face of non-be
ing.11 The "courage to be" is Tillich's way of saying ontologically what we
mean in religious language when we say that we live by faith. However, if
the ontological anxiety of finitude is not faced and accepted, then it becomes
neurosis, the unwillingness to face life as it is.

Rollo May

Rollo May, a clinical psychologist, is a writer and a leader in the modern

movement of existential psychology. May studied under Paul Tillich at Union

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 52 Journal of Religion and Health

Theological Seminary, and later Tillich was one of May's committee advisors
for May's dissertation for a Ph.D. at Columbia University.12
May says that the word "anxiety" means "to narrow" or "to choke"; that is,
it has a narrowing or choking consequence for a person's existence.13 It is a
translation of the more devastating German word Angst, which means dread
or anguish. A person faces the threat of non-being every moment, and the
awareness of this threat is anxiety. It is the reality that a person "treads at
every moment on the sharp edge of possible annihilation and can never es
cape the fact that death will arrive at some unknown moment in the fu
ture."14 Like Tillich, May says that neurotic anxiety develops because of a
person's unwillingness or inability to accept the normal anxiety of existence.
Fear and anxiety are not the same. Fear is a response to an objective set of
threatening circumstances. In anxiety, a person is threatened without know
ing what the threat is, or what to do to meet the threat or attempt to over
come it. It is the quality of the threat which heightens anxiety and not the
quantity. For example, one may feel intense anxiety when snubbed by a
friend whose friendship is valued. It is not a great threat, but the quality of
the threat strikes at the core of who the person is. When anxiety begins to
take over, a person becomes immobilized and perceptions are blurred. The
heart pounds faster and faster, and there is a sense of panic, of being caught,
of being overwhelmed.15 Anxiety is cosmic because it invades a person to
tally, penetrating to the very core of one's being.16
The person who is institutionalized for not being able to manage anxiety
may walk down a hallway with the head or the face right against the wall.
The wall provides an external structure and security for the threatened self,
because the structures of personality have broken down and no longer protect
the self from overwhelming anxiety.17 The wall becomes a kind of external
ized defense mechanism.
As an existential psychologist, May admits that human anxiety is univer
sally associated with death. Death is final. We live in a materialistic age
which seems to feel that the accumulation of possessions will change the re
ality that this is all there is. We even take flowers to funerals as if to make
death smell better.18

Analysis

Anxiety manifests itself within a person in the course of daily living as the
various threats to one's being by non-being?ultimately death. Anxiety, how
ever, may be either constructive or destructive. Constructive anxiety pro
vides a zest for living and stimulates energy, as, for example, the anxiety of
stage fright just before a creative performance. Destructive anxiety may iso
late and paralyze, and lead to psychological panic or even psychosomatic
illness.19

Anxiety is like an alarm to the person. The person may heed the alarm and
respond in adaptation to it. If the person responds adequately in this way,

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Hal Ritter 53

then the purpose of the alarm is fulfilled and the normative function of anxi
ety is performed. If this normative function were always performed, then
anxiety would always be constructive. Symptoms, however, are created when
the alarm sounds but the person avoids the danger situation by repression of
it.20

The neurotic person is unable to manage the normal anxiety of life. In fact,
one has a problem managing even relatively low levels of anxiety because of
the inner conflicts which increase the threat to the person's inner self. "The
person feels threatened, but it is as though by a ghost; he does not know
where the enemy is, or how to fight it or flee from it."21 The anxiety from the
present is multiplied
threat by the anxiety of the previous threat which the
person did not
feel strong enough to face, and so repressed. The anxiety of the
repressed problem now returns in the form of more inner conflict. Self-aware
ness is diminished, and non-being is all pervasive. The person's inability to
face the normal anxieties of finitude has escalated the anxiety into neuro
sis.22

We live in a world fraught with ambiguities and contingencies. The aware

ness of our finitude in the face of overpowering threats from non-being mani
fests itself as anxiety within us. In courage we accept our finitude and anxi
ety, and we affirm life and meaning. It is the courage to be.

References

1. Salzman, L., "Observations on Dr. Tillich's Views on Guilt, Sin, and Reconciliation," J. Pas
toral Care, 1957,11, 1, 17.
2. Hiltner, S., "Some Theories of Anxiety: Psychiatric." In Hiltner S., and Menninger, K., eds.
Constructive Aspects of Anxiety. Nashville, Abingdon Press, 1963, p. 49.
3. May, R., Love and Will. New York, W. W. Norton & Co., Inc., 1975, pp. 24-26.
4._, The Discovery of Being. New York, W. W. Norton & Co., Inc., 1983, p. 49.
5. Tillich, P., Dynamics of Faith, New York, Harper & Row, 1957, p. 21.
6._, "Existential Philosophy," J. History of Ideas, 1944, 5, 59.
7. Ecclesiastes 1:2, 3:1-8.
8. James 4:14.
9. Tillich, P., Systematic Theology, Vol. I. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1951, p. 193.
10. Matthew 6:27.
11. Tillich, P., The Courage to Be. New Haven, Yale University Press, 1952, p. 34.
12. Reeves, C, The Psychology of Rollo May: A Study in Existential Theory and Psychotherapy.
San Francisco, Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1977, p. 252.
13. May, Discovery of Being, op. cit. p. 111.
14._, "Contributions of Existential Psychotherapy." In May, R., ed., Existence: A New Di
mension in Psychiatry and Psychology. New York, Random House, 1961, p. 47.
15._, Mans Search for Himself. New York, W. W. Norton & Co., Inc., 1969, p. 39.
16._, The Meaning of Anxiety. New York, Ronald Press, 1950, revised in Pocket Books,
1977, p. 181.
17._, The Courage to Create. New York, W. W. Norton & Co., Inc., 1975, p. 121.
18._, Love and Will, op. cit., p. 106.
19._, Freedom and Destiny. New York, W. W. Norton & Co., Inc., 1981, pp. 186-187.
20. Hiltner, op. cit., p. 49.
21. May, Mans Search for Himself op. cit., p. 43.
22. Ibid.

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