Dear Colleagues,
Fear dominates so much of our personal, political, and societal lives that we think it appropriate to focus on this basic emotion, which has so many ramifications. Of course, as human beings, we tend to want to hide our fears from most around us if not ourselves, mostly finding socially acceptable ways of expressing them. The sense that others share our fears seems to make them more palatable. Does the aggrandizement of politicians, musicians, and leaders of all sorts serve as a way of escaping from our sense of vulnerability in a world in which there is so much to fear? To what extent has the pandemic enlarged our fears? Is the prevalence of escapism into media (TV, movies, games, social media, echo chambers of the like-minded) an attempt to escape from our fears? It is our hope that in probing fear, we can be more realistic in dealing with and discourage escapism into alcohol, drugs, and other negative outlets.
Because FEAR is endemic in our society and world, we are having this work-in-progress virtual meeting on “The Psychoanalysis/Psychology of Fear and Anxiety” with Drs. Inna Rozentsvit, Jerome S. Blackman, and Paul Elovitz on January 7th, 2023 (Saturday), 10:30am-1pm EST.
Topic: Psychohistory Forum Meeting on January 7th, 2023
We look forward to a lively and informative January 7th presentation and discussion, which I hope you can attend after reading the papers and perhaps writing your own commentary on the papers or a longer paper on the subject.
Best regards,
Paul
Paul H. Elovitz, PhD, Historian, Research Psychoanalyst, Professor, Director of the Psychohistory Forum, Editor, Clio’s Psyche, and the Author of The Making of Psychohistory: Origins, Controversies, and Pioneering Contributors (Routledge Publisher), cliospsycheeditor@gmail.com
Clio’s Psyche
Call for Papers: The Psychoanalysis and Psychology of Fear
In conjunction with our January 7th, 2023 Psychohistory Forum Work-in-Progress virtual meeting on the subject with three presenters, for this Spring 2023 Special Issue of Clio’s Psyche, we welcome your submissions, especially personalized ones with psychoanalytic, psychological, and psychohistorical insights on FEAR in a polarized, pandemic stressed world suffering from information overload and attacks on democracy and rationality, including the following subjects:
- Why does fear abound in our personal lives, country, society, and world?
- Why not write about fear in your life, and its ramifications, as is Clio’s editor?
- How do we process fear rather than become immobilized by it or using it to go to war?
- What are the gender differences in the processing of fear in the U.S. and elsewhere?
- Is the enormous anxiety of our society of rapid technological change based upon our fears?
- How do you deal with a patient’s anxiety and fear being so great that they may kill themselves?
- Why are the culture wars (abortion, gay marriage, gender, etc.) based so much on fear of change?
- In “gun crazy America,” do we unconsciously engender fear by encouraging gun ownership?
- Are personal and societal enemies essential to maintain a national and individual identity?
- Why did Bush 43 find it strange to lose the Soviet enemy and then start a needless war?
- Did the Soviet Union collapse because Gorbachev saw the U.S. as a model rather than enemy?
- To what extent has the COVID-19 pandemic enlarged our fears and affected our behavior?
- Why not write a comparative article on the impact of the Spanish Flu and the current pandemic?
- How does fear relate to hope, early childhood, and good/bad/troubled interpersonal relations?
- Why not write an anxiety/fear-focused book review of a famous or important person?
We seek commentaries of up to 1,200 words in the file or longer articles from 1,500-2,500 words—including your title, author name with affiliation, a 25-word abstract, 7-10 keywords, and your brief biography (3-4 sentences) ending in your email address. Send documents in Microsoft Word (*docx or doc) format by January 15, 2023. A high-quality, extremely well written article of up to 3,000 words, which may be accepted to serve as an additional symposium article if received by November 20, 2022.
For full Call for Papers document, follow the link below: