The Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis: Bulletin No. V Understanding of Individual Panic

Experiences in England indicate that only those persons react with excessive anxiety to war emergencies who are predisposed to do so, or as one might say, persons who are neurotic. Fortunately, not all such people react with panic. Many of them are effective and courageous in the face of real emergencies or even improve considerably under such conditions. For instance, if they have felt inferior hitherto and then during war find a task which gives them the feeling of being useful, their self-esteem is thereby lifted.

The statement then that a person develops panic because he is “neurotic” is too general to be useful. In order to understand individual panic we must be more specific.

To begin with, we must be aware of two facts. One is that panic is not a response to realistic danger. People reacting with panic to bombing or war news are no more afraid of these dangers than their more serene or more self-controlled neighbors. The other fact is that the real source of anxiety is not the same with everybody but varies from one person to another. Ostensibly three people are seized by an identical panic provoked by an identical cause; the terror that each of the three experiences however is different in quality. Most of us, though adjusted to reality on the surface, harbor certain hidden dreads. Generally we are not aware of their existence nor of their depth. One person, for instance, dreads the limelight while another one is equally afraid of not being admired. One is terrified at having to assume hardships, while another is equally afraid of losing any vestige of power. Still another one is terrified at being alone and feeling unwanted, while the other feels safe only in his ivory tower and dreads any closeness. These anxieties often are dormant but can flare up in a fit of panic when touched off by external circumstances, just as dynamite may explode when shaken up or kindled. War emergencies may provoke an explosion if they happen to touch off these specific anxieties