Page 8 - NAMAH-Jul-2018

Editorial

Anxiety in ontological terms

The term ‘anxiety’ and its concept seems to There is however one thing common to all
be no less anxiety-provoking than the clinical types of anxiety, which is that the phenomenon
states we associate with anxiety. We are still strikes at the central core of the subject’s self-
undecided if we should consider anxiety in esteem and his sense of value as the self. In
a dimensional or categorical perspective for ontological terms, anxiety is a threat to Dasein
the truth may be somewhere in between. — the existentialist’s term for the distinctive
character of human existence.Though it is
Though it is doubtful if there are actually translated from German to English by the
natural categories of anxiety, it is necessary to term ‘existence’, Dasein signifies something
clinically differentiate the anxiety underlying more. It has two components: sein (being)
a phobic state or panic disorder from a type and da (there), indicating that the subject has
of anxiety often perceived at the beginning a ‘there’ in the sense that he can know he is
of a psychosis when a subject can literally there and can take a standpoint that he is
experience the threat of dissolution of the there. The ‘there’ refers to one’s existence
self. In fact, the notion that anxiety might in time and space. Thus one can be aware
be the nuclear-driving force behind all of one’s being which distinguishes the
psychopathology that gives credence to the human being from other beings. That is why
dimensional view can become difficult to existentialists consider the human being as
sustain with advances in the psychobiology not only ‘being-in-itself’ but also as ’being-
of different psychiatric disorders (1). for-itself’(3).

Perhaps the term ‘anxiety’ is used too loosely This brings us to the existential significance of
in the clinical setting. Freud, Binswanger, the otherwise everyday term — ‘the human
Goldstein and Kierkegaard used the German being.’ Used as a participle, a verb form,
term Angst, which has no exact equivalence ‘being’ implies a process of being something.
in English and at most is the first cousin When used as a general noun in English,
to anguish. Thus the English term anxiety the term ‘being’ is used to denote a static
represents a watered-down affect (a term substance; whereas used as a particular
used in psychology for an intense and short noun, such as ‘a being’, it refers to a particular
emotional state with motor and visceral entity. However, as a general noun, ‘being’
changes) that carries literary value but not can be interpreted as potentia, the source
the depth of the pervasive and devastating of potentiality, signifying the process of
qualities of the anxiety states we meet in becoming — a projection of potentia in action.
clinical practice (2). A projection always is towards the future

8