ABSTRACT
Scepticism about sources of warnings follows from the need to deny the threatened danger, while ambivalence towards warning authorities serves further to justify the scepticism. Where acknowledging a threat would involve considerable inconvenience the tendency to deny the danger is further reenforced. This appears in people’s unwillingness to evacuate their homes when threatened with floods or hurricanes. Observations on soldiers and citizens in war time similarly suggest that anticipatory denial predisposes to subsequent disturbances. One might advance the hypothesis that one condition for taking warnings of imminent danger seriously would be fear of loss of emotional control which might be precipitated by an unforeseen situation. Accurate information about what to expect may not only mitigate painful reactions in the danger situation but also reduce the tendency towards denial beforehand. One of the motives of denial derives from nightmarish fantasies about what may happen, which one tries to exclude from consciousness because they are too frightening.
