THE DARK ROOTS OF ANXIETY
Michael Tsarion
Anxiety is an even better teacher than reality, for one can temporarily evade reality by avoiding the distasteful situation; but anxiety is a source of education always present because one carries it within – Rollo May
The Austrian Psychologist Otto Rank believed that everything we do, and have done throughout history, is based on our underlying desire to return to the womb. This is an extraordinary claim. However, what happens to our vision of reality if Rank is right?
Since this is physically impossible, we set out to find or create a womb-like state or existence by which to replicate the end we subliminally seek. We wish for a simulacrum of the womb to which we cannot physically return, and our ways of finding one are, according to Rank, ingenious and manifold.
Art, science, philosophy and psychology are not excluded as means by which we achieve the desired end. However, there is a complication. Since anxiety was experienced in the womb, and since anxiety is the basic mood tinging all later conceptions and perceptions of Self, other and world, it inhibits the desire to return to the primal condition. This means that our desire for the restoration of the original symbiosis is ambivalent.
People can be divided into those who simply wish for a return to the serene uroboric repose, and those who deeply fear as well as desire such a return. Both desires give rise to the common forms of neuroses. If anxiety over not finding a womb-like state overwhelms the ego, one displays depressive and catatonic tendencies, as well as guilt and masochism. If anxiety arises because of the fear of return, schizophrenic and paranoid tendencies are displayed, as well as manic and obsessive-compulsive trends.
With this in mind, we can now diagnose the world's foremost problems. Regardless of what manifold shapes it takes, human endeavour suffers perplexing problems on two main fronts. There is anxiety in our attempts to locate a simulacrum of uroboric repose, and anxiety from entering it. The result is ongoing confusion, anger and conflict. Are we now able to understand the underlying reasons for the constant foment in our world? Now do we understand why peace and happiness are so absent for all our efforts and high-sounding words?
Rank understood that ancient man did not introspect. His desire to actualize the uroboric condition led to expressions characteristic of ancient man, such as we read and study in mythology, anthropology and ethnology. Ancient man's fear of the dark, reverence for water, ritualistic sojourn in underground caves, deification of the great mother goddess, rites of castration, supplication to the terrible goddess, and so on, revealed to Rank ancient man's preoccupation with the regressive desire and fear of it.
