The Concept of Irrational Belief Systems as Primary Elements of Psychopathology

An essential and invariable component of psychopathology is the belief that one has sustained or is threatened by injury. I mean by injury, any event which is considered to be inimical to one's integrity or best interests. Thus, injury may be thought of as including rejection, humiliation, loss of valued objects, physical injury, and so on. A conviction that one will be injured by certain actions or situations is another way of saying that certain actions and situations are feared. Fear is a cognitive experience that reflects a conviction about being injured. One may be consciously aware of the fear, as in fear of flying, or one may be unaware, not conscious, of the fear as often happens in fear about success.

Fear must be distinguished from anxiety which also is a response to a threat of injury. Anxiety is an automatic, physiological response to a perception of threat. Anxiety is characterized by a hypermobilization of adaptive bodily resources manifested in such phenomena as tachycardia, tachypnea, increased blood pressure, and increased metabolism—the somatic mechanisms for coping with threats of injury. The physiological phenomena are accompanied by a distressing affect we refer to as anxiety, but this affective component is but one of many that make up the total anxiety reaction. Selye's term, “the alarm reaction,” seems to me to be more accurately descriptive. The relationship between fear and anxiety may be illustrated by the example that an individual may be afraid of flying but will not experience anxiety unless he boards a plane or actually decides to fly in the near future. Hence, fear can exist without anxiety though situations that evoke anxiety are also feared.