Fear

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fear

[fir]

(psychology)

Emotional and physiologic response to recognized sources of danger.

The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Fear

(1) In psychology, a negative emotion toward a real or imagined danger that threatens an individual’s life, personality, or values, including ideals, goals, and principles.

(2) One of the main tenets of existentialism introduced by S. Kierkegaard, who distinguished between a common, empirical fear (in German, Furcht) brought about by a concrete object or condition and an indefinite and uncontrollable dread (in German, Angst). Dread is a metaphysical fear unknown to animals. Its object is nothing, and it results from man being mortal and knowing it. For M. Heidegger dread functions to disclose the final potential of existence—death. J.-P. Sartre defines metaphysical, existential fear (angoisse) as anxiety before one’s own self, potential, and freedom.

(3) Early psychoanalysis distinguished between a rational fear in the face of external danger and a deep, irrational fear. The latter was interpreted to be a result of unrealized ambitions and a repression of unsatisfied desires. Modern neo-Freudianism interprets fear in terms of anxiety, which is a state of general irrationality associated with the irrational nature of bourgeois society. It is also considered to be the main source of neuroses.

Many theories on the origin of religion regard the emotion of fear to be a reason for the development of religious ideas and beliefs. This trend of thought was developed by Lucretius and Democritus in antiquity and D. Hume, P. Holbach, and L. Feuerbach in modern times.

What does it mean when you dream about your fears?

Fearful dreams are quite common, reflecting either anxiety about concrete problems in the world or anxieties arising from inner tensions. For a deeper understanding, the dreamer should attempt to identify the source of fear in the dream.

Fear

(dreams)

If you are experiencing great fear in your dreams, you are having nightmares. These types of dreams are positive because your unconscious mind is trying to tell you something. If you have repressed issues, they may be coming to the surface. Think about the fear in your dreams and try to be honest with yourself. Face your fears and as a great American president once said “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” Having fearful dreams seems to be relatively common. Most dreams are unpleasant and that is the nature of our private unconscious. Issues and concerns, repressed emotions, and daily stress all contribute to an uneasy sleep and to fear-filled dreams.

References in classic literature ?

When he came to the cave, Fear, the Hairless One, put out his hand and called him 'The Striped One that comes by night,' and the First of the Tigers was afraid of the Hairless One, and ran back to the swamps howling."

Then the First of the Tigers said: 'What have I done that this comes to me?' Tha said, 'Thou hast killed the buck, and thou hast let Death loose in the Jungle, and with Death has come Fear, so that the people of the Jungle are afraid one of the other, as thou art afraid of the Hairless One.' The First of the Tigers said,

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He tried to teach it, and found a ray of hope in the fact that Go-bu-balu had mastered a few words of the language of the anthropoids, and that he could now cling to a high-tossed branch without screaming in fear; but there was something about the child which worried Tarzan.

Go-bu-balu merely no longer feared Tarzan--that was all.

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But the fear that he might indeed be a devil, and that out there in the jungle behind him his fierce demons waited to do his bidding, kept M'ganwazam from putting his desires into action.

Judging, however, from what the Waganwazam had learned from those of the Russian's blacks who were not too far gone in terror of the brutal Rokoff to fear even to speak of their plans, it was apparent that he would not travel any great distance before the last of his porters, cooks, tent-boys, gun-bearers, askari, and even his headman, would have turned back into the bush, leaving him to the mercy of the merciless jungle.

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I thought of my nights of fear, and knew that mine were the real things--real as life itself, not attenuated vapors and surmised shadows.

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His mother and fear impelled him to keep away from the white wall.

Fear urged him to go back, but growth drove him on.

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However great their intellectual degradation, the Eloi had kept too much of the human form not to claim my sympathy, and to make me perforce a sharer in their degradation and their Fear.

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"Early or late, Fear is a guest that all must feast, even kings, O Earth-Shaker!" I answered; and we turned and went homewards in silence.

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She feared not O-tar, she feared not me, she feared not all the warriors of Manator.