ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the main claim of the article and explicates how one can legitimately call our age the age of anxiety. It elucidates specific kinds of anxiety that are sweeping through contemporary western societies and discusses why these kinds are particularly actualized. The chapter explains why these kinds of anxiety are to be understood as signs of social pathology and not just individualized disorders. The cultural aspect of anxiety took precedence over the medical, one could say. According to American sociologist Allan V. Horwitz, three major influences can explain this. First of all, Sigmund Freud's pathbreaking theoretical perspective on anxiety was immensely popular among intellectuals and in the media. Second, anxiety played a major role in existential philosophy, which addressed anxiety as a core human predicament. Third, it was commonplace in especially the middle of the twentieth century to perceive anxiety as a natural response to socially and politically generated circumstances.
