The Meaning of Anxiety by Rollo May (Norton, 1950)
Rollo May refutes the assertion that mental health is living without anxiety, proposing instead that anxiety is a necessary condition for creativity, intellect, and freedom. He defines anxiety as the “experience of Being affirming itself against Nonbeing,” as that which propels us to more self-awareness, consciousness, and life. He likewise shows that the refusal to embrace this anxiety, to attend to it and work with it and through it, is an invitation to authoritarianism and fascism. When we lack the skills of being with our anxiety, and feel our only option is to flee, we often flee right into the hands of a strongman who promises security at the cost of liberty. May wrote during the height of fascism in the last century; we read it during the renewal of the same in this one. The lessons hold.
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