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Psychology of Fear
Psyc245 St Joseph College Rick Rayfield
These are my lectures for my first on-line course, Psychology of Fear. I first taught the course in four day-long
lectures in Summer of 2004, at St Joseph College.
The lectures parallel the readings only roughly, because the readings
(focused on anxiety, aggression, coping, and cross-cultural aspects of pollution) do not cover the whole topic of fear.
Since I started teaching in 1979, I have always lectured from notes or memory. These are my first attempts,
for an on-line course, to provide typed-out text for my lectures. They should be considered a first draft both conceptually
and grammatically. I will appreciate feedback.
1 First Fear- What babies are born with- suffocation, heights, dark,
exposure
2 Fun and Fantasy Fear; Horror movies and amusement parks
3 Feeling Fear- Adrenaline and other
physiology of fear
4 Facial Fear- Expression of fear in face, body, and behavior
5 Fearing Fire- and
other fears learned early in childhood
6 Fixing Fear- how we learn to cope with fear, defenses.
7
Fear Farm and Forest- classifying fear, DSM,OCD, GAS et al.
8 Foreign Fear- fear of strangers, change, dirt, the
unknown, cognitive dissonance
9 Family Fear- Fear of loss of family, clan, social group
10 Federal
Fear- federal in the social sense, not so much political, ostracism, group identity, loss of family and community members.
But yes, also political fear
11 Phantom Fear- fearing what is not present, PTSD, dissociation, ghosts
12 Flying and Phobias- Focused Fears life-long and common, and subclinical usually.
13 Final Fear- fear of death
and corpses
14 Future Fear- fear of what may come to your offspring, your community, the World.
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Books for this course include: Barlow
Anxiety and Its Disorders (From basic biology of brain and hormones to clinical diagnosis and treatment) Lorenz On Aggression (Best-seller by Nobel laureate on why animals and people are aggressive
naturally.) Douglas Purity and Danger (Anthropology classic on why sacred is scary) DeBecker Gift of Fear (Pop street view) Comments are welcome.
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