The Danish Philosopher Soren Kierkegaard on Anxiety

The Danish philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard (1813-55) was a nineteenth century philosopher who wrote a great deal on the subject of anxiety. He was part of the existentialist movement and sought to find a new basis for unity of personality during a time when Western society was facing a crisis brought on by the industrial revolution and the compartmentalization of culture, religion, and the sciences. The disunity and compartmentalization of society created enough anxiety among the people of the day that it became an important issue among nineteenth century thinkers. While Freud approached the problem from a psychological angle, Kierkegaard tackled it from a philosophical point of view.

Kierkegaard believed that each person's truth is based on that person's experience and that experience exists only because of that person's actions. The individual is thus considered to have the freedom to think and decide their own course in life. Kierkegaard's main concept about the basis of anxiety is that it is a result of this freedom. He believed that "freedom is the goal of personality development." (Rollo May in The Meaning of Anxiety) He also used the words freedom and possibility interchangeably. It is this possibility which, according to Kierkegaard, separates humans from animals. This is because the human has a capacity for self-awareness of possibility, is able to visualize it, and then finally able to bring the possibility into actuality by their actions.

Kierkegaard's definition of anxiety is that it is the possibility of freedom. He thought that the potential for anxiety is always present at the point where an individual begins to visualize possibility. In its most obvious terms, this could be illustrated by the anxiety on faces during life changes. The individual sees the possibility of moving ahead, yet at the same time he flirts with the idea of not moving ahead. This causes an inner conflict to occur which results in anxiety.

Kierkegaard developed a theory of self-awareness to further explain his ideas about anxiety. He used the story of Adam as a myth to illustrate his ideas. According to Kierkegaard, all individuals obtain a knowledge of "good and evil" between the ages of one and three which leads to self-consciousness. This gives the individual the possibility of conscious choice. (Rollo May in The Meaning of Anxiety) With conscious choice comes crises and conflicts. The second stage the individual enters into is individuation. This generally causes the child to have conflicts with their environment, especially with parent. These conflicts often result in defiance and then a feeling of powerlessness which leads to anxiety. It is therefore necessary for one to go through anxiety in order to achieve individuation.

The theories that Kierkegaard espouses are not that different than those proposed by Freud and other psychoanalysts. Both stress the importance of overcoming inner conflicts which were caused because the individual has repressed self-awareness. The awakening of self-awareness can be compared to Freud's "emergence of the ego" (Rollo May in The Meaning of Anxiety) Kierkegaard's description of anxiety comes even closer to psychoanalysis:

Anxiety is a desire for what one dreads, a sympathetic antipathy. Anxiety is an alien power which lays hold of the individual, and yet one cannot tear oneself away, not has a will to do so; for one fears, but what one fears one desires. (The Concept of Dread)

This could be compared to the cathexis theory of psychoanalysis because it is speaking of a repressed desire. Like the psychoanalysts, he also believed that every experience of anxiety involves an inner conflict. Kierkegaard's writing stress the importance of confronting anxiety and moving ahead. He differentiates between a healthy reaction to anxiety and a neurotic one by stressing that the healthy person will achieve freedom (possibility) by facing the conflict, while the unhealthy person will possibly develop a "shut-in", repressed condition and not actualize possibility. Failure to confront conflicts and anxiety will eventually lead the person to feeling guilt toward oneself.

Kierkegaard suggests that the way to overcome anxiety is to destroy the beliefs and patterns one has held on to from childhood. In order to grow, one must create new cognitive patterns, especially in the way one relates to other humans. The act of creating self-hood is thus a continuous process which goes on throughout a person's life. Kierkegaard states, "anxiety and guilt are potentially present at every instant that individuality is born into community." (Rollo May in The Meaning of Anxiety) He means this is not only in terms of physical birth, but in the continuous act of recreating the self as an individual.

Kierkegaard therefore believes that the causes of anxiety are conflicts which had their roots in childhood. He also stressed that there is a strong relationship between anxiety and creativity. When he speaks of creativity he is not necessarily speaking of the creativity in the arts, but a much broader definition. This includes creativity in human relationships, work, forms of living, as well as visual art. Kierkegaard suggests that each experience of creativity involves aggression against either established patterns within oneself or against other people in one's life. This could be illustrated mythologically in the story of Prometheus, where creativity is portrayed as a defiance of the gods. It is here that Kierkegaard's ideas synthesize with Freud's. Although individual tenets of both the psychoanalytic and Kierkegaardian model can be argued in terms of differences over the importance of psycho-sexual conflicts, both models emphasize the inner conflict as a recurring theme in a person's life. This recurring theme motivates the person to action. This action can take many possible forms, usually resulting in some form of creativity.