ABSTRACT
Living in the latter part of the 20th century means having a constant and unwelcome companion-the potential for nuclear annihilation. Obviously, this fact has tended to transform atti tudes toward the future. Before the bomb, for better or worse, people were able to look forward to a continuance of the human race and human civilizations. This continuity seemed secure for so many generations into the future that it was out of consciousness for most people, a “zero-order belief’ in psychological language. Now, the specter of nuclear holocaust can bring a constant, although usually submerged, sense of jeopardy to our individual and collective beings. In recent years, analysts have explored the social, psychological, and spiritual Impacts of living with this kind of threat (e.g„ Lifton, 1979; Macy, 1983). Not surprisingly, they have found that we tend to avoid the painful stimulus and try to repress our profound fear and sadness over the possibility. If we are not careful, however, we can develop a generalized Juture-phobla-a condition in which we uncontrollably evade thinking seriously about the future.
