The Specifically Human Dimension of Anxiety: An Existential-Phenomenological Account Grounded in the Structure of Possible Existence

Abstract

Contemporary research on anxiety has focused on neurobiological and behavioral approaches that conceptualize anxiety as an evolutionarily developed protective system. In doing so, it has tended to marginalize dimensions of anxiety that concern the specifically human condition. Within the tradition of existential philosophy and psychology, anxiety has long been understood as an ontological feature of human existence. Building on Kierkegaard and Jaspers, the present article offers a systematic and integrative existential-phenomenological account of anxiety grounded in the structure of possible existence. The human being is understood as possible existence, which realizes itself only in its present enactment and is therefore continually exposed to the threat of non-being. From this perspective, existential anxiety is not a disorder but a signum of the human condition. This view opens an affirmative approach to anxiety: existential anxiety is distressing yet revelatory, functioning as a call to realize existence. It is therefore not something to be eliminated but integrated. The account is situated in relation to contemporary theory and research, and its implications for clinical practice are outlined.

Keywords

existential anxiety existence existential psychotherapy meaning and authenticity critical discussion of terror management theory

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