ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the kind of 'symptoms' of which people complain are not merely indications of something's having gone wrong which can be put right, but rather are forms arising out of people's experience of the world, and constitute almost a language on their own, though a subjective rather than an objective one. Acute distress and anxiety are such ubiquitous and pervasive phenomena in these times that they can scarcely be dismissed as in some sense unnatural, unfortunate hiccups in the smooth running of our everyday lives. The experience of anxiety indicates to us that there are features of our world which we can no longer afford to ignore. Psychological distress and anxiety are of course bodily feelings – that is physical sensations with a meaning. They are neither imaginary nor purely the result of mechanical breakdown, but expressive of a certain kind of embodied relation with the world.
