Anxiety Concerning Change, as Seen in the Psychotherapy of Schizophrenic Patients—with Particular Reference to the Sense of Personal Identity1

It was nearly two thousand years ago that Ovid wrote, in his Metamorphoses, that 'Nothing is constant in the whole world' (13a). Discoveries made since his day, in such sciences as astronomy, geology, and physiology, have borne out, to an extent which Ovid and his contemporaries could not have conceived, his words, 'The heavens and everything that lies below them change their shape, as does the earth and all that it contains' (13b). '… our own bodies are always ceaselessly changing, and what we have been, or now are, we shall not be to-morrow' (13c). Intellectually we know this well; but the feeling-realization of the all-pervasiveness of change is a realization which persistently arouses anxiety in us. The manifestations and determinants of this anxiety concerning change are the subject of this paper.

Let us note briefly, at the outset, that to a degree such anxiety is existential in nature: not only do we know, from our life-experience, that change may prove harmful to us; we know, also, that none of us can escape the final change which will rob us of life itself. Ovid's own struggle against this anxiety is shown in the eloquent final passage of his poem:

My work is complete: a work which neither Jove's anger, nor fire nor sword shall destroy, nor yet the gnawing tooth of time. That day which has power over nothing but my body may, when it pleases, put an end to my uncertain span of years. Yet with my better part I shall soar, undying, far above the stars, and my name will be imperishable. Wherever Roman power extends over the lands Rome has subdued, people will read my verse. If there be any truth in poets' prophecies, I shall live to all eternity, immortalized by fame.' (13d).

Mankind's anxiety in face of the universality of change is revealed in many areas of human activity; I shall mention only three. It is to be seen, firstly, in the dependence of so many of us upon the religious concept of a god, somewhere, who is not only omnipotent but eternal, ch