← Back to Concept Indexontological-insecurity
A thematic concept in Brian Aldiss's Report on Probability A describing the unsettling uncertainty about the nature of reality and self, conveyed through multidimensional narrative perspectives.
5 chapters across 2 books
Chapter 16This chapter examines the transformative period of radical science fiction in the 1960s, focusing on the British magazine New Worlds under Michael Moorcock's editorship. It highlights the magazine's role in introducing experimental, politically radical, and sexually frank science fiction that challenged traditional genre boundaries and societal norms. The chapter also discusses key works and authors, such as Brian Aldiss and Norman Spinrad, illustrating how New Worlds became a platform for innovative narrative styles and controversial content during a culturally tumultuous era.
PreambleThe 'Preamble' chapter of R. D. Laing's 'The Divided Self' introduces the book's aim to make madness, particularly schizoid and schizophrenic conditions, comprehensible through an existential and phenomenological lens. Laing emphasizes the experience of individuals estranged from themselves and society, developing a 'false self' as a coping mechanism, and situates his work as distinct from but indebted to existential philosophy and psychoanalysis. The chapter also outlines the scope and limitations of the study, acknowledging clinical observations and intellectual influences while clarifying what the book does not attempt to do.
CHAPTER III Ontological insecurity We can now state more precisely the nature of our clinical inquiry. A man may have a sense of his presence in the world as a real, alive, whole, and, in a temporal sense, continuous person. As such, he can live out into the world and meet others: a world and others experienced as equally real, alive, whole, and continuous. Such a basically ontologically1 secure person will encounter all the hazards of life, social, ethical, spiritual, biological, from a centrally firm sense of his own and other people’s reality and identity. It is often difficult for a person with such a sense of his integral selfhood and personal identity, of the permanency of things, of the reliability of natural processes, of the substantiality of natural processes, of the substantiality of others, to transpose himself into the world of an individual whose experiences may be utterly lacking in any unquestionable self-validating certainties. This study is concerned with the issues involved where there is the partial or almost complete absence of the assurances derived from an existential position of what I shall call primary ontological security: with anxieties and dangers that I shall suggest arise only in terms of primary ontological insecurity; and with the consequent attempts to deal with such anxieties and dangers. The literary critic, Lionel Trilling (1955), points up the con- 1 Despite the philosophical use of‘ontology’ (by Heidegger, Sartre, Tillich, especially), I have used the term in its present empirical sense because it appears to be the best adverbial or adjectival derivative of ‘being’. 40This chapter explores the concept of ontological security as the fundamental sense of being real, alive, whole, and continuous in time, which allows a person to engage meaningfully with the world and others. It contrasts ontological security with ontological insecurity, where individuals lack these self-validating certainties, leading to profound anxieties and altered experiences of reality. The chapter uses literary examples to illustrate these states and introduces clinical observations about how ontological insecurity manifests, including three forms of anxiety: engulfment, implosion, and petrification.
CHAPTER IV The embodied and unembodied self Thus far I have tried to characterize some of the anxieties that are aspects of a basic ontological insecurity. These anxieties arise in this particular existential setting and are a function of this setting. When a person is secure in his own being, they do not arise with anything like the same force or persistence, since there is no occasion for them to arise and persist in this way. In the absence of such basic security, life must, nevertheless, go on. The question that one must now attempt to answer is what form of relation with himself is developed by the ontologically insecure person. I shall try to show how some such persons do not seem to have a sense of that basic unity which can abide through the most intense conflicts with oneself, but seem rather to have come to experience themselves as primarily split into a mind and a body. Usually they feel most closely identified with the ‘mind’. It is with certain of the consequences of this basic way in which one’s own being can become organized within itself that the remainder of this book will be principally concerned. This split will be seen as an attempt to deal with the basic underlying insecurity. In some cases it may be a means of effectively living with it or even an attempt to transcend it; but it is also liable to perpetuate the anxieties it is in some measure a defence against and it may provide the starting position for a line of development 67This chapter explores the ontological insecurity underlying certain anxieties and how some individuals experience a fundamental split between the embodied self and the unembodied self. The embodied self is characterized by a direct, substantial connection with one's body and its vulnerabilities, while the unembodied self is detached from the body, observing and controlling it from a distance. The chapter introduces the idea that this split can be a defense against insecurity but may also perpetuate anxiety and potentially lead to psychosis, illustrated through a case example.
CHAPTER VII Self-consciousness Self-consciousness, as the term is ordinarily used, implies two things: an awareness of oneself by oneself, and an awareness of oneself as an object of someone else’s observation. These two forms of awareness of the self, as an object in one’s own eyes and as an object in the other’s eyes, are closely related to each other. In the schizoid individual both are enhanced and both assume a somewhat compulsive nature. The schizoid indivi¬ dual is frequently tormented by the compulsive nature of his awareness of his own processes, and also by the equally compul¬ sive nature of his sense of his body as an object in the world of others. The heightened sense of being always seen, or at any rate of being always potentially seeable, may be principally referable to the body, but the preoccupation with being seeable may be condensed with the idea of the mental self being penetrable, and vulnerable, as when the individual feels that one can look right through him into his ‘mind’ or ‘soul’. Such ‘plate-glass’ feelings are usually spoken about in terms of metaphor or simile, but in psychotic conditions the gaze or scrutiny of the other can be experienced as an actual penetration into the core of the ‘inner’ self. The heightening or intensifying of the awareness of one’s own being, both as an object of one’s own awareness and of the aware¬ ness of others, is practically universal in adolescents, and is associated with the well-known accompaniments of shyness, ii3This chapter explores the dual nature of self-consciousness as awareness of oneself by oneself and as an object of others' observation, emphasizing how these are intensified and compulsive in schizoid individuals. It discusses the ontological insecurity underlying self-consciousness, the biological and existential risks of being seen, and the defensive strategies individuals use to manage the anxiety of visibility and vulnerability. The chapter also critiques simplistic guilt-based explanations for self-consciousness and highlights the complex interplay between identity, visibility, and existential fear.