[Anxiety, a basic human experience].

Abstract

Anxiety, unlike fear, which is strongly object-related, accompanies man all his life. This anxious condition appears especially then, when danger is imminent, also in the case of being severely ill. Anxiety and hope, even in people severely ill, do not exclude each other. Human life for many and perhaps for all is a race with time. The anxiety not being able to realize enough in a given time often is the reason for a busy and restless activity. Man often suffers from anxiety of other human beings. As ever an individual may live, it always owes something to others. Accordingly, the doctor or other helpers never are able to behave totally in the way as the patient expects and the patient cannot act as the helper truly would like it. Man experiences anxiety, however, also then, when he recognizes to remain in debts towards himself and, in the view of religion, towards a task given by God. Yet, man suffers anxiety not only because of his confrontation with death but also with life and the responsibilities which he has to take over when growing up in society. The struggle for existence described by Darwin, a result of anxiety, seems to be lost for the patient knowing he or she is severely ill, and he/she is therefore upset against a destiny which threatens to exclude him/her from the community of healthy people and perhaps soon from the living persons. Anxiety always turns also around the existence in the group.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)