Publisher's Synopsis
Anxiety is a binding agent of human relationships. It constitutes and stabilizes the existing power relations. If these are not to be endangered, it must not lose its significance. The common discourse that defines and establishes relationships is a hierarchical one. Anxiety has a considerable leverage function in this narrative. As a consequence of the disempowerment of aggression in the service of the ego, it remains indispensable for the regulation of hierarchical relationships. The deprivation of these aggressions means powerlessness - and that is anxiety. The common assumption that anxiety is a feeling, a vital feeling that protects us from danger, is able to give us insight into its importance and indispensability for the existing power relations. It is not anxiety that protects us from danger, it is dread. In dread we are not afraid: the aggressions in the service of the ego remain undamaged. Thus anxiety has a completely different meaning: it is not an indicator of an imminent danger, but of an existing form of violence creating hierarchies and establishing power relations. Anxiety is exclusively a bonding agent of hierarchical relationships - and not a protective factor. It is thus anxiety that is to be dreaded.
