The Physician of Naked Fear

Anxiety, as a form of suffering, represents an existential crisis, a questioning of the significance of our lives.

Those who suffer from stomach ailments are typically emotional, anxious, unpleasant, and bitter.

The mind can greatly affect the body. In this respect, the following two cases are common: 1) individuals who, due to anxiety, begin suffering imaginary pains that they feel as being real 2) individuals with certain personality characteristics that cause a real disease in their bodies, a typical example of this is the “peptic ulcer,” which is a psychosomatic disorder. Therefore, my two objectives are as follows: 1) anxiety and 2) psychosomatic disorder.

Anxiety or Nothingness:

A man feels discomfort. He consults a doctor. After performing several physical examinations, the doctor says, “You have nothing, what you are experiencing is an imaginary illness.” After saying this, he advises the patient to distract himself or prescribes strength of will exercises such as “have courage” and refers him to a psychiatrist. The man tries to overcome it, but the physical discomfort and anxiety, alone or accompanied by sadness continue, possibly with greater intensity. He decides to consult a psychiatrist. During interviews,he will make him perceive the many ways in which anxiety can manifest itself. But what is anxiety? In what way does it differ from fear? Anxiety is “the state of mind of the individual who perceives and feels that his/her existence is doomed, that it can totally envelop him/her, and change it into nothing. It may be interpreted as follows: when we are born we come from nothingness and when we die we head toward nothingness. The most essential part of anxiety is the fear of death, that nothingness which our finite nature leads us to. This has been called “existential anxiety” which is derived from “psychological anxiety,” which may be normal or pathological. “Existential anxiety” (which is also called “Naked Fear”) expresses the intimate awareness of our own finite nature. “Psychological anxiety” is the strange method by which the individual comes to suffer from imaginary ailments that in reality feel like real ones.

Anxiety differs from fear in that fear is produced by a real threat, while anxiety is an unknown,undefinable threat that cannot be located. Anxiety is the echo of nothingness. Nothingness signifies negation. Anxiety, as a form of suffering, represents an existential crisis, a questioning of the significance of our lives.

Psychosomatic Disorders (Peptic Ulcer):

A large number of people suffer from gastrointestinal discomfort. Without a doubt, among these gastrointestinal discomforts, ulcers in the stomach and duodenum represent the most relevant forms. These ulcers, according to experts, run the risk of becoming a real epidemic. The global outlook is as follows: if the two world wars are compared, it is observed that in the English army, for example, the number of leaves of absence due to peptic ulcers was thirty-three times higher, demonstrating a alarming increase. In America after the war, six and a half million ulcer cases were recorded. In 1945, there was one clinically diagnosed ulcer case for every thirty inhabitants; all the countries of Northern Europe experienced the same event and in Sweden this disease increased more so, especially in children.

Peptic ulcer disease is particularly notorious in family and social life due to the frequency of relapses (60 percent) and for being a “disease that occurs during the best years.” It occurs in persons during a period in which they should be experiencing the plenitude of their physical and mental health. It is known that Indians and the Javanese while living their normal daily life did not know of such disease, but once they become part of Western civilization begin to suffer from it.

It is common knowledge that those who suffer from stomach ailments — the “old dyspeptics” — such as heartburn, bloating, and slow and heavy digestion, often show states of mind that are typically emotional, anxious, unpleasant, and bitter. Only in last few decades has this disease been scientifically studied. The Americans were strongly absorbed in psychoanalysis and who — along with Alexander and French — first studied the psychological factors that were involved in people suffering from ulcers. According to them, during childhood these persons were emotionally unsatisfied, needed nursing, and who were told far too often: “Be hardworking, skillful, and work; if not you will never achieve anything in life.” Your own self-awareness considers the need for protection as a weakness, the passive infantile desire to receive love and warmth is rejected as a character deficiency and seeks compensation through an active, strenuous life with clear desires to dominate although sometimes under the guise of philanthropic offerings. The person who is ambitious, aggressive, and eager, and who wants to absorb the prestige, esteem, and affection that was denied to him/her during his/her childhood is the most frequent type of person found in these ulcer cases. But behind this facade lives his/her most deepest secret desire: to be protected, loved, and babied (including being breastfed, it has been said, recalling the milk diet that is given to people who suffer from this disease). The unconscious conflict between “dependency needs and help” violently repressed and the “spirit of revalidation and assertiveness” excessively inclines one to new endeavors, positions, and responsibilities and could be the catalyst for nervous impulses, causing gastric hypersecretion and contractions that give rise to a peptic ulcer. Everywhere, these people see dangers, traps, and opponents that must be beaten back until pain paralyzes them and forces them to repose on the thorns of their thoughtlessness. In any case, taking into account the infinite variations and exceptions that all human life presents, people with ulcers show a mistaken approach of their existence.

The Italian novelist Votaliano Brancati in his work Paolo II Caldo says: “If we were to eliminate all pathological consequences of carelessness, laziness, an exaggerated sense of honor, idolatry, money, ambition for power, desire for vengeance, business fraud, and room for physical suffering. It can be said that if there did not exist moral evil on Earth, physical evil would retreat in such a fashion that our world would be unrecognizable.”