ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on anxiety and on depression. It describes some of the existential limiting factors that beset all of psychoanalysts and incline them to experience their existence as distressed-filled. The chapter discusses a few "moral" aspects of anxiety and depression that have been underappreciated in the psychoanalytic literature and have bearing on the problem of fashioning the "good life." For example, by living in the present, moment by moment, even amid intense pain as the Buddha taught, as opposed to getting stuck in the past and dwelling on the future, the analysand can better endure his suffering. Suffering arises, dwells, changes and ultimately fades away. Behavioral theory focuses on the critical importance of the environment in "shaping" human behaviour. Put differently, human behavior, including forms of mental anguish like depression and anxiety, is best understood by never forgetting that we are exquisitely context-dependent and setting-specific beings.
