Fear instinct

“ Thus, we find from different standpoints that the feeling of anxiety with its accompanying phenomena is one of the most potent manifestations of animal instincts, the fear instinct, which is at the basis of all psychopathic, neurotic maladies. ”

“ The primitive anterior type of the fear instinct is by no means absent, in fact, it is more overpowering, its effects are overwhelming when it comes forth from the subconscious regions to which it is confined, and is manifested under conditions of lowered vitality. ”

“ While the motor system may react differently in various animals, the fear instinct is alike in all of them. This stage of the fear instinct should be regarded as the healthy physiological reaction to strange and new stimuli, and is essentially protective, inasmuch as it serves for the arousal of energy and proper reactions of self-defense, characteristic of the particular individual. ”

“ An uncultivated personality with a limited mental horizon, with a narrow range of interests, a personality sensitive to fear inhibitions, is a fit subject to all forms of obsessions. The fear instinct, fostered by mysteries, frights, scares, dread of sickness, dread of the moral mind and its shadows and fear of thought-transmission of deadly mortal ghosts of ideas, entertained by superstitious sects known by the pompous name of Christian Scientists, is, a fundamental factor in the causation of abnormal mental states termed psychopathic. ”

“ I have found that if an intelligent patient who is suffering from fear can be made to see so plainly as to become firmly convinced that his brain, his various organs, indeed his whole being, could be physically damaged by fear, that this same instinct of self-preservation will, to the extent of his conviction, banish fear. ”

“ The fear instinct may be awakened directly by a sensory stimulus, when, for instance, one finds himself in darkness and feels some creeping, slimy thing, or when attacked suddenly with a club or a knife. ”

“ An individual limited in intelligence, leading a narrow life, is specially subject to fear suggestions which can be easily aroused. Inhibitions of the personal self are produced by stimulation of the fear instinct with consequent easy access, by means of fear suggestions, to man’s subconscious fear instinct, thus inducing various forms of morbid mental life. ”

“ Not to remain on debatable ground, we must admit—since individual experience cannot be appealed to—that the bases of fear exist in the organism, form part of the constitution of animals and men, and help them to live by a defensive adaptation, which in most cases proves useful. As for the obscure mechanism of this instinctive fear, we may suppose that certain sensations produce a painful shock which excites the organic, motor, and vaso-motor relations constituting emotion, and that the conservative instinct, in order to escape actual pain, reacts blindly, with or without profit. ”

“ In short, the fear instinct may still serve as a stimulation to greater effort, but the chances of such a result are far smaller than in the first stage, which is essentially of a stimulating, useful, and healthful character. ”

“ Human institutions depend for their existence and stability on the impulse of self-preservation and its close associate,—the fear instinct. ”

“ Those who escape from danger by the performance of some complex activity bear almost unanimous witness that, while so engaged they were wholly free from the fear which the danger might have been expected to arouse. Highly complex acts designed to allow escape from, or to overcome, the danger are carried out as coolly as, or even more coolly than, is customary in the ordinary behaviour of daily life. There seems to be in action a process of suppression of the fear or other affective state. ”

“ When I scratched against the sides of the curb beneath them like some animal trying to climb up, their voices instantly hushed; the instinct of fear promptly overcame the instinct of hunger! Instinct is intelligence, but it is not the same as acquired individual intelligence ”

“ Thus, fear is especially connected with the instinctive reaction to danger by flight; anger with the reaction to danger or injury by aggression; love with the parental and sexual instincts, etc., while the primary states of pleasure and pain are the psychical accompaniments of the fundamental reactions of attraction towards the useful and repulsion from the harmful. ”

“ In the last chapter I have adopted the current view that such emotions as fear or anger, with the reactions characteristic of them, are expressions of instinct. When they occur in Man, these reactions are prominent, even the most prominent, elements in that part of his behaviour which can be ascribed to instinct. ”