The Fear Paradox: How Our Obsession with Feeling Secure Imprisons Our Minds and Shapes Our Lives

by Frank Faranda, Natal'ya Kiyachenko (Translator)

Overview

We come into this world as helpless as the first person on a bare and unsafe earth, and endowed with a unique gift of imagination, we are able to populate our personal future with many real and imaginary threats. Thus, the most powerful, productive, creative ability, to which Homo Sapience owes all its inventions, from the digging stick to nuclear energy and artificial intelligence, turns into the main obstacle to self-realization, becomes a source of stress, phobias, an epidemic of anxiety disorders. In an effort to prevent possible dangers, we - as individuals and as a society - can literally deprive ourselves of the future. This book is about how to face your fears, understand the nature of their occurrence, protect your inner child, peer into the darkness and see potential opportunities through it.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9785001394884
Publisher:	Alpina Non Fiction
Publication date:	05/03/2023
Sold by:	Bookwire
Format:	eBook
Pages:	228
File size:	804 KB
Language:	Russian

About the Author

Dr. Frank Faranda earned his master’s degree in developmental psychology and education from Columbia University, Teacher’s College, and his Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the Derner Institute at Adelphi University. He was awarded postdoctoral fellowships from New York University’s Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis, and the Rusk Institute of Rehabilitation Medicine, where he trained in neuropsychological testing and cognitive remediation. Over the last several years he has published academic articles, guest-edited two themed journal issues for Psychoanalytic Inquiry, and taught at The New School.

He is a clinical psychologist with fifteen years of experience in private practice.

Table of Contents

Introduction Fear as a Threat 11

Chapter 1 What Fear Can Do to Us 19

Chapter 2 The Security Alarm System 33

Chapter 3 When Fear and Imagination First Met 41

Chapter 4 The Future of Anxiety 53

Chapter 5 Fear of Our Own Minds 63

Chapter 6 Can You Imagine? 77

Chapter 7 Imaginative Revolution 97

Chapter 8 The Fear Paradox 105

Chapter 9 A Turtle 125

Acknowledgments 135

Bibliography and Suggested Reading 136

Endnotes 152

Index 162

About the Author 169

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“Frank Faranda is an accomplished student of the mind, and especially of the interplay between fear and imagination. He’s not only a great thinker and writer, but also a terrific storyteller, keen observer of humanity, and gentle mentor on how we can do better.”

—Douglas Rushkoff, bestselling author and Professor of Media Theory and Digital Economics at CUNY/Queens

“A tour of psychoanalytical thinking around anxiety and how fear drives us, this is an insightful and informative book that challenges us to face our vulnerabilities so that we can be better and wiser.”

—Dr. Stephen Joseph, psychologist at the University of Nottingham and author of Authentic: How to be Yourself and Why It Matters