THE FEAR PARADOX How Our Obsession with Security Imprisons Our Minds and Shapes Our Society FRANK FARANDA Frank Faranda is an accomplished student of the mind, and especially of the interplay between fear and imagination. He’s not only a great thinker and writer, but also a terrific storyteller, keen observer of humanity, and gentle mentor on how we can do better – Douglas Rushkoff, bestselling author and Professor of Media Theory and Digital Economics, Queens College, City University of New York
A clinical psychologist reveals how fear – which evolved to keep us safe and enhance our existence – has grown into the greatest single threat to our humanity and our collective survival. What if our exciting innovations and continuous technological progress are driven not by curiosity, pure creativity or bright ideals of human advancement but instead by fear, an evolutionary state embedded in our brains and reinforced over countless millennia? In THE FEAR PARADOX, Frank Faranda shows how most of our technological and social changes are simply more imaginative ways for us to run from danger. Yet no matter how many dangers, real or imagined, we neutralize, new ones emerge. Superbugs arise from our battle with bacteria; worldwide social media platforms give propagandists, trolls and outside operatives unprecedented power to manipulate and control; industrial robotics are devouring our workforce; and as we seek to share more of ourselves online, we feel less connected and more alone. Our level of fear remains constant. Faranda’s argument serves as a universal translator for our current state of affairs in politics, in Silicon Valley, online and in the real world – a lens that gathers diffuse light and focuses it into a sharp, incisive point. Our opioid crisis, our smartphone addictions, the rise of ‘strong’ authoritarian leaders who leverage our fear to gain power, the constant march of ever-more-convenient technologies that minimize genuine interaction with others, the rush to develop artificial intelligence – at the root of all of this is fear of pain, of domination by others, of outside threats, of the unknown. THE FEAR PARADOX tackles all this and more, uncovering the evolutionary roots of our heedless advancement and examining our personal and societal obsession with that mythical, always-just-outof-reach utopian future: a provocative, important and original work that connects the state of our world to the state of our minds. FRANK FARANDA is a clinical psychologist with 15 years of experience in private practice. He has helped thousands of patients deal with fear and conducted more than 30,000 hours of depth psychotherapy. He earned his master’s degree in developmental psychology and education from Columbia University, Teacher’s College, and his PhD in clinical psychology from the Derner Institute at Adelphi University. He was awarded postdoctoral fellowships from New York University’s Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis, and the Rusk Institute of Rehabilitation Medicine, where he trained in neuropsychological testing and cognitive remediation. Between 2003 and 2012, he taught several semesters of ‘The Development of the Self’ and ‘An Introduction to Jung’ courses at The New School in New York. Over the past several years he has published academic articles on mind, metaphor and imagination and guest-edited two themed journal issues for Psychoanalytic Inquiry. Agent: Jeff Shreve Publisher: Mango Media Publication: 19 May 2020 Length: 224 pages All rights available excluding World English Language (Mango Media), Japan (Newton Press), Russia (Alpina)
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