Post-adaptive fear
A biopsychosocial case analysis and cognitive framework for the treatment of a novel conception of death anxiety tailored to the information age
Keywords:
anxiety, fear, death awareness, post-adaptive fear, post-adaptive, adaptation, modernity, death, death anxiety, COVID-19, case analysis, memento mori, information theory, cognition, evolution, terror management theory, TMTAbstract
Post-adaptive fear is a proposed permutation of death and generalized anxiety stipulated mainly to convolve death-related cognitions and morbid epiphenomena, which is given expression in terms of a) the increasingly competitive and information-laden modern ecology, b) a cognitive-informatical-dynamical therapeutic framework, and c) the facultative centrality of anxiety to action. The purpose of this original proposal, through deconstruction of two fictional biopsychosocial assessments and related critical-theoretic exposition, is to equip clinicians with a cogent, salient, and productive alternative which admits unique generative and integrative facility and potential against often limited or inadequate clinical means.
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