ABSTRACT
This chapter illuminates how fear and anxiety are pervasive and implicit in both the UK and Egypt, and illustrates the consequences of fear and anxiety on male subjectivity in terms of relations between self and other. In her monograph on the subject, Joanna Bourke argues that fear is the most pervasive emotion in modern society. It considers anxiety, to explore how the two interlinked emotions work away within masculine subjectivity. Rustin, Young and Davids draw on a Kleinian framework to 'examine the interconnections between pain, destructiveness and loss in human social relationships'. The psychic responses occur in the present but have as much to do with the past as with the present situation, and with what may be repressed but remains active nonetheless. Economic and material situations cause the anxiety of possible castration. It cannot be underestimated how not being able to provide for one's family is a cause of failure in Egypt.
