For this final essay for the class, I would like you to think about the relationship between contemporary, psychological approaches to anxiety and the way anxiety has been viewed in some of the other intellectual traditions we have explored this semester.
To do this, I’ll ask you to read and consider the approach to anxiety developed in Judson Brewer’s recent book Unwinding Anxiety: New Science Shows How to Break the Cycles of Worry and Fear to Heal the Mind (Penguin, 2022). Dr. Brewer is a psychiatrist who researches anxiety and who has developed a theraeupeutic approach to managing anxiety that is grounded in neuroscientific reserch.
Taking the examples Dr. Brewer discusses in the first section of his book, I’d like you to compare these with three of the approaches to anxiety we’ve examined together.
The first is the Existentialist concept of Anxiety as Possibility. In the understanding of anxiety developed by Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and Sartre, the subjective feeling of anxiety is our awareness of our own freedom and potential. We are anxious, the Existentialists argue, because we recognize a gap between the world as it is and the world as we would like it to be. Such anxiety is mobilizing: it forces us into an active and transformative engagement with the world.
The second approach we have explored is the Psychoanalytic concept of Signal Anxiety. For Freud, the experience of anxiety is like a red flag indicating danger. It’s an anticipation mechanism that alerts us to the possibility of a threat to our ego. Signal anxiety gives the psyche an opportunity to mobilize an ego-defense mechanism like repression (forcing unmanageable thoughts out of consciousness) or regression (retreating to an earlier, more childish state) in order to manage the anticipated threat.
A third approach we have examined this semester is the sociological concept of Anxiety as Role Failure. As George Herbert Mead and Erving Goffman understood it, our sense of our selves forms in a dynamic relationship with our social environment. We perceive the expectations of other people and we attempt to live up to them. When we are incapable of fulfilling an expected role, anxiety is the result. Sometimes, this anxiety can be managed through adaptation and perfection of our role performance. At other times, however, our role failure is connected to fixed aspects of our personality or physicality, resulting in stigma.
In your opinion, are these different understandings of anxiety each compatible with Brewer’s Trigger – Behavior – Reward model? Do they describe things that are outside Brewer’s scope? Or can each of these types of anxiety be managed successfully with Brewer’s method? If there are tensions between Brewer’s method and one of the other types of anxiety, try to explain why that might be the case.
Your essay should be 6-8 pages in length. It should be double-spaced and use a standard, 12 point typeface with readable margins. Citations should be footnoted, providing author name and page number (pdf page number is fine if the text doesn’t include page numbers). Only sources drawn from outside assigned class readings need to be put in a bibliography. The essay must be submitted in pdf format through blackboard by 5pm on Wednesday, May 22nd.
Here’s a rubric you can use as you approach this assignment:
Description of Brewer’s trigger-behavior-reward model. (15 pts)
Explanation of how Brewer applies this model to the therapeutic management of anxiety. (5 pts)
Description of Existentialist “Anxiety as Possibility” using citations. (15 pts)
Comparison of the Existentialist approach with Brewer’s. (5 pts)
Description of Psychoanalytic “Signal Anxiety” using citations. (15 pts)
Comparison of the Psychoanalytic approach with Brewer’s. (5 pts)
Description of Sociological “Anxiety as Role Failure” using citations. (15 pts)
Comparison of the Sociological approach with Brewer’s. (5 pts)
Well-formed thesis on the relationship between these different forms of anxiety (10 pts)
Clear introduction and conclusion, with structuring elements in essay. (5 pts)
Proper formatting, spell-checking, citation. (5 pts)
