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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.
Download Word documents
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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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