Anxiety: an Ontological and Medical Examination (original) (raw)

“Anxiety” is a word heard frequently in our culture. It has become diluted in common parlance almost to the point of meaninglessness. “Man, I’m so anxious.” “I think I have Social Anxiety Disorder because I didn’t want to go to class today.” “That test gave me so much anxiety.” Anxiety is typically, and somewhat erroneously, thought of as a state of being nervous, tense, or fearful as a result of some situation in which an individual finds herself, or as a result of something she has done. Not only is the popular understanding of anxiety as a state largely misunderstood as it relates to the body of medical knowledge called anxiety disorders, it is also an incorrect understanding of anxiety as it relates to the thought of Vigilius Haufniensis in The Concept of Anxiety. It is the latter misunderstanding on which I intend to focus. In this paper, I will: provide a detailed description of the concept of anxiety as it is discussed in Haufniensis’s work, carefully distinguishing it from anxiety as it is popularly and medically understood; reflect on my personal experience of both anxiety as Haufniensis defines it and as a medical diagnosis; and provide some suggestions for how these two kinds of anxiety might be mutually resonant in their effectiveness in bringing about the awareness of freedom within the individual.