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3

The Defense Against Terror

FEAR AND TERROR

Fear has a paralyzing effect upon the body. Normally, an individual reacts to fear with fight or flight. He attempts to remove the danger or to escape it. If these reactions are blocked, his self-control is shattered. His personality collapses and his sanity is threatened. In this situation insanity can be avoided by certain maneuvers which deny and repress the fear. Some measure of self-control is reestablished, but the fear is not eliminated. In its repressed state it becomes a vague terror. It is transformed into the fear of losing control or going out of one's mind.

Underlying the fear of insanity is a terror which is all the more frightening since it is nameless and faceless. Its horror is expressed in such images as the snake pit. This terror lurks in the depths of each schizoid individual and can be compared to an unexploded bomb. The explosion of the terror into consciousness is a “world shattering” experience for the individual. It is represented in the schizoid mind as a world-destruction, or Weltuntergang fantasy or as a feeling of total annihilation. The schizoid individual reacts to this threat with a feeling of “falling apart” or “going to pieces.” Against this terror and its catastrophic effects he erects desperate defenses. If these defenses fail, the only means left of avoiding this terror is the complete escape into the unreality of schizophrenia.

Superficially, the terror appears to be related to the fear of insanity. Jack, whose case was presented in Chapter 2, said, “I think I'm just plain afraid of losing my mind.” Most patients experience the terror similarly. However, it can be shown that terror itself is the force that threatens to overwhelm the ego and destroy the sanity of the individual, and the schizophrenia is a final attempt to escape this terror. What is this nameless fright?

Fears become nameless and faceless when they are repressed. In the unconscious, they live on, with the terrifying effect they had upon the child. After a patient has been successfully released from the grip of this terror, some of its elements become clear. These are the fear of being abandoned, the fear of being destroyed, and the fear of destroying someone. But these are specific fears because they are conscious, while the unconscious terror of the schizoid is an amorphous dread whose tentacles chill the bones and paralyze the will. This terror is like the proverbial skeleton in the closet, which becomes less frightening when the door has been opened and its reality confronted. Before the closed door which hides the unknown, the person trembles with an overwhelming fear that saps his courage and defeats his resolution. Therapy must help the patient gain the courage and strength to face his fears. In the process, he will inevitably experience his terror. With the support and understanding of the therapist, this experience can have a positive effect.

Paul reported such an experience after having been in therapy about a year:

I've had a strange week. I have been alternating between periods of absolute helplessness and feeling much more alive. Friday I was quite active, but Saturday I just couldn't get on my feet. I felt the whole day slip through my fingers. I got very depressed and I cried a little. Sunday was better. I went out. Monday I felt so completely dead I just wanted to lie in bed the rest of my life.

That night I was coming out of a dream and in a half awake state; I turned over on my back and reached out with my mouth to suck. My lips were trembling, and I became very anxious and almost paralyzed. My arms felt heavy and lifeless, like dead weights which I couldn't move. I had to use all my will power to fight against succumbing to the paralysis. I felt that if I let myself go into it, something catastrophic would happen. I made myself wake up fully.

The analysis of Paul's experience shows that the terror manifested in the trembling anxiety and feeling of paralysis developed when Paul made a spontaneous gesture to reach out for pleasure. This gesture of reaching out to suck stirred some childhood memories in which a similar activity threatened to have a catastrophic result. As an infant, Paul met with a hostile reaction from his mother when he made a demand upon her. Her hostility was expressed in a look of murderous rage which the child understood as, I've had enough of your demands; if you don't shut up, I will leave you or destroy you! Such parental expressions of hostility are not uncommon. Many mothers scream their rage and exasperation. Some have even told me how many times they felt they could have killed their children. One such experience will not lead to an overwhelming terror in the child, but if it represents an unconscious attitude on the part of the mother, the effect on the child will be one of fear that any demand it makes could lead to abandonment or destruction. In turn, the child develops a murderous rage against the parent, which is equally terrifying.

The overall effect of such experiences is to inhibit the individual's aggression. The schizoid individual becomes afraid to make demands on life that would lead to pleasure and satisfaction. Reaching out to the world evokes a vague sense of terror. He guards against this terror by narrowing his environment and restricting his activities. I had a patient who was very uncomfortable when she had to travel outside of the area in which she lived. In other patients it is experienced as a panic at the thought of going out on the streets alone or making a trip. In all schizoid patients the terror is related to the fear of losing control, since loss of control would allow the emergence of repressed impulses which, as in Paul's case, carry in their wake the possibility of catastrophic results.

The inhibition of aggression, the restriction of activity, and the necessity for control impose a rigidity upon the body that limits self-assertive gestures. Impulses are restrained, and finally, impulse formation is weakened. Having repressed his desires out of fear, the schizoid individual ends up not knowing what he wants. The denial of pleasure leads to a rejection of the body. To survive in the face of terror he deadens his body by reducing his breathing and his motility.

In view of this situation, it is easy to understand the schizoid detachment and uninvolvement as a defense against terror. To the degree that he can keep himself aloof from emotional relationships, he can avoid the terror that might follow the breakthrough of repressed impulses. His physical rigidity serves the same purpose. But detachment and isolation diminish his contact with reality, undermine his ego, and weaken his sense of identity. Non-involvement also deprives him of the emotional satisfactions which sustain normal relationships and provide an inner feeling of well-being. Finally, rigidity creates an inner emptiness and vacuum which threatens to collapse the schizoid structure.

This defense against terror requires another maneuver. The schizoid individual uses “pseudo-contacts” and “intellectualizations” to maintain contact with reality and support a pattern of behavior which resembles the normal; that is, he plays a role. This unconscious role provides him with an identity and a meaning for his activities. As long as the role can be maintained, the danger of decompensation or of collapse into terror and insanity can be averted. But this maneuver also has its difficulties. Role playing narrows the base of existence. An assumed identity may crumble in the confrontation with the self when one is alone. For this reason, the schizoid is often afraid to be alone. Thus, all aspects of his defense (and maneuvers) render the schizoid vulnerable to the very dangers they are designed to avoid.

Schizoid behavior differs from normal behavior in important respects. It lacks the motivations which determine normal behavior; that is, it is not motivated by the search for pleasure but by the need to survive and the desire to escape the loneliness imposed by emotional detachment. It rests upon rationalizations (May's “technical formulations”) and role playing and does not stem from genuine feeling. Thus, while the schizoid is enabled to function, his behavior and actions have the bizarre quality one associates with automatons and creatures who go through the motions of living without a feeling for life.

It would be a mistake, however, to regard the schizoid individual as deprived of all feeling. Behind his defense lies an intense longing for real contact, warmth, and love. These desires are not completely absent from his motivation. Much as he may impress one at times as an automaton, he comes through at other times as a person in trouble. His actions not only resemble the normal, they partake of the normal. The difference from the normal is fundamentally one of degree. To the extent that the desire for pleasure and satisfaction motivates his behavior, he is normal. To the extent that he represses those feelings but acts as if they determined his behavior, he is schizoid.

THE DYNAMICS OF THE SCHIZOID DEFENSE

The schizoid defense is an emergency mechanism for coping with a danger to life and sanity. In this struggle all mental faculties are engaged in the fight for survival. Survival depends upon the absolute control and mastery of the body by the mind. If the mind should relax its vigilance, catastrophe would occur. In the normal individual, in whom no terror lurks, the body is not immobilized by the struggle for survival and is free to pursue its natural desire for pleasure.

One of my patients repeatedly saw in a Rorschach test the image of a person hanging on to the edge of a cliff. This vision was a projection of his unconscious awareness that he hovered over an abyss, and that to save life and reason, he must hang on with all his might. It also indicated the magnitude of the terror against which he struggled. The physical effort to hang on, literally, consumed all his energy. His improvement was ushered in by a feeling of exhaustion and a need to sleep. This indicated that his state of jeopardy had passed and that he was able to relax for the first time. In therapy, exhaustion is one of the first signs that the patient is coming into contact with his body in a meaningful way.

The immobilization of the schizoid body results in a lack of aliveness and responsiveness. The schizoid individual perceives this unresponsiveness as an “emptiness” in his body. If the condition becomes aggravated, that is, if there is further loss of feeling, he feels “removed.” His mind, as Jack said, feels detached from his body. He feels outside of himself, watching himself.

The mind and body of a normal individual function as complementary systems to further the well-being and pleasurable feelings of the individual. When an impulse arises in the body, the mind determines its meaning, adapts it to reality, and regulates its release. In all higher animals where the mind-body duality exists, the mind functions to control and coordinate movement in the interest of reality, while the body provides the impetus, the energy, and the mechanism for motion. Behavior which has this integrated aspect has an emotional quality. It starts from an impulse, which then gives rise to feeling, thought, and appropriate action. This kind of body-mind relationship is operative in emotional responses motivated by the desire for pleasure.

In the schizoid individual, whose impulses are rigidly controlled because of the underlying terror, there is an absence of feeling upon which the mind can act. In place of feeling, the mind substitutes logical thought as the motivation for action. The body becomes an instrument of the will, obeying the commands of the mind. I explain this difference to my patients as follows. Normally, one eats when one is hungry, but in the schizoid state, one has lunch because it is twelve o'clock. Although many people who are not schizoid are constrained to eat at fixed hours, it nevertheless illustrates the principle to my patients. The schizoid individual engages in sports or does exercises to improve his control over his body and not for the pleasure of the activity or the movement. Lacking the binding power of pleasure, the unity of his personality is threatened. He compensates for this lack by an increase in the direct control over the body by the mind acting through the will. By such a mechanism, schizoid individuals frequently become outstanding dancers, actors, or athletes.

In the normal individual, in addition to regulating and controlling the action of impulses, the mind can also, at times, command the body to act contrary to its natural instincts. Ordinarily, actions are motivated by the desire for the pleasure and satisfaction to be derived from the achievement of a goal. If the activity leading to the achievement of a goal is a pleasurable experience, the behavior of the organism is spontaneous, coordinated, and seemingly effortless. But situations arise where the attainment of a goal excludes the experience of pleasure. Action in the face of danger, such as that of a soldier on a battlefield, is motivated by considerations other than pleasure. The average schoolboy does his homework out of necessity rather than as a pleasure. Many situations require a conscious effort to mobilize the body, that is, an effort of will in which the mind commands the body to act in ways contrary to its spontaneous desires or feelings. The spontaneous desire of a soldier is to avoid the danger. He forces himself to meet the danger by the exercise of will. The schoolboy would rather play than study, but he is taught to submit to the discipline of the mind.

The world has long known the unique quality of the human will. Such expressions as “will power,” “the will to live,” and “where there's a will there's a way” give some indication of the nature of the will. The will functions as a biological shortcut mechanism of an emergency nature when all other means have failed. The will can achieve a goal which has appeared impossible. The incredible power of the human will resides in its ability to circumvent the natural desire for pleasure or safety and to accomplish the seemingly unnatural. The will acts through the ego's control over the voluntary musculature of the body. Paul used his will to pull himself together in opposition to the tendency of his body to succumb to its paralysis. Because the will can prevail against the feelings of the body, it is of crucial importance in the life of the schizoid individual.

Normally, the will occupies a secondary or accessory position in the psychic economy. Yet, the fact is that many people in our culture are forced to use their will in routine activities. How often one hears the remark, “I had to use all my will power to get to work this morning.” If this sounds like a schizoid statement, it should be realized that the conditions of work in modern culture alienate the individual from the creative process and deny him the pleasure and satisfaction of his productive effort. One works under these conditions because of compelling necessity, not desire. To regiment oneself to the mechanization and standardization of a mass production system requires an effort of will. When the will becomes the primary mechanism of action, displacing the normal motivating force of pleasure, the individual is functioning in a schizoid manner.

The schizoid individual is intensely willful. He is willful in the sense of being obstinate and defiant, but he is also willful in that every action is forced and determined. Sometimes he is successful, but more often not. Generally, each effort of will collapses into despair and hopelessness. As one of my patients remarked, “I am always turning over a new leaf, only to find that it becomes brown before I accomplish anything.” What is lacking in the schizoid structure is a reliance upon the natural and spontaneous functioning of the body. Another schizoid patient told me, “I can't understand how my body keeps working by itself. I think it will stop at any time. I'm surprised that it keeps going on. I'm always afraid that it's going to get out of control.”

THE SCHIZOID BARRICADE

Without a basis for his identity in the normal functioning of his body, the schizoid individual depends on his will to maintain the unity of his personality. To do this job the will must be constantly active. As a result, the musculature is in a continual state of contraction. The spasticity of the muscles explains the characteristic rigidity of the schizoid body, which then serves as a barricade against terror. Loss of control is a threat to the schizoid individual because it may engender a disruption of his personality, a literal falling apart of this barricade. In contrast to the schizoid, the normal individual maintains his unity and identity through the strength of his impulses and feelings. The difference in the two conditions can be contrasted diagrammatically in terms of impulse formation and muscular activity. Figure 6 shows the normal condition; Figure 7, the schizoid condition.

In the normal condition (Figure 6), the impulses that originate at the center of the body and flow to the periphery act like spokes in a wheel to maintain the fullness and integrity of the organism. The constant stream of impulses seeking pleasure through the satisfaction of needs in the external world, charges the periphery of the body, so that it is in a state of emotional readiness to respond. In the alive body the charge at the periphery is manifested in the tone and color of the skin, in the brightness of the eyes, in the spontaneity of gesture and in the relaxed state of the body musculature.

In the schizoid condition (Figure 7), impulse formation is weak and sporadic and does not reach the periphery of the body, which is therefore relatively undercharged. Since the impulses do not reach the surface of the body with sufficient strength to maintain its integrity, a contraction of the voluntary musculature occurs to hold the body together like a rigid container and to prevent the collapse threatened by the inner emptiness. The reduced charge at the periphery of the schizoid body results in an increased permeability of the surface membranes to external stimuli, which accounts for the hypersensitivity shown by most schizoid individuals. Necessarily, contact with the external environment is tenuous. Action upon the world to gain satisfaction is generally ineffective. The chronic contraction of the deep muscles is responsible for the narrowing of the body which gives it the typical asthenic appearance.

The immobilization of the body musculature in the schizoid condition has a double meaning. On one hand, it is a defense against terror and a means of maintaining some unity in the personality. On the other hand, it is a direct expression of the terror, since it represents the physical attitude of one who is frozen stiff with fear. Paul could not perceive this quality of his body because he was incapable of reacting emotionally. As long as he remained frozen, the terror would be hidden, like a skeleton in a closed closet. He had to thaw and reach out before this perception became possible. Only through the experience of the terror and its resolution into its component fears was there any hope for a significant improvement in his personality.

FIG. 6

FIG. 7

The collapse of the schizoid rigidity would plunge the individual into a schizophrenic crisis. Collapse brings about a loss of ego boundaries and the destruction of such unity and integrity as the personality has. This cannot happen to the normal individual. Once a strong contact is made with the reality of the external world, it operates to sustain the peripheral aliveness. This difference is illustrated in the reactions of these two types to excessive stress. It is an accepted concept that under sufficient stress the schizoid structure can give way, producing an acute psychotic break. In the normal individual, on the other hand, the breakdown which occurs due to insupportable stress generally takes place in the tissues and organs of the body and results in somatic illness rather than mental illness. It appears that the forces that bind mind to body are different in the two cases. One can compare these phenomena to the action of certain adhesives. Some are so strong that when a rupture is forced, it is the substance that yields and not the bonding medium. Other adhesives, such as rubber cement, permit the bonded objects to be pulled apart without the disruption of their structure.

What are the forces that unify the personality in the normal and the schizoid individual? In the normal person, body and mind are held together by the integrative function of pleasure. This refers to capacity for pleasure. Since pleasure is a principle of the body, the mind which anticipates pleasure affirms its identity with the body on the deepest level of experience. The capacity for pleasure also guarantees a steady stream of impulses reaching to the world for satisfaction. In the absence of this pleasure function, impulses are tentative and infrequent. The schizoid person therefore depends upon his will to cement mind to body. But the will, though hard as steel, is brittle, whereas pleasure is flexible and pervasive. It acts like the sap in the living tree to provide strength and elasticity.

The idea that there are two different mechanisms for maintaining the unity of a personality suggests that there may be some validity to the concept that somatic illness and mental illness tend to be mutually exclusive and antithetical, and that, broadly speaking, an individual is predisposed to one or to the other, but not to both at the same time. Under conditions of insupportable stress, these two unifying forces may be expected to give way with different results. When the pleasure functions disintegrate, one may generally expect somatic illness, while the disintegration of the will produces mental illness. Thus, one can anticipate an interchangeability of symptoms, depending on the state of functioning of the total organism. Leopold Bellak comments on this same phenomenon, “The low incidence of allergic disorders in psychotics, and the return of allergic complaints after improvements and recovery, is probably one of the best documented instances of such interchangeability.”¹⁷

My clinical experience is that schizophrenics rarely manifest the symptoms of a common cold; when they do, I regard it as a sign of clinical improvement. It is also well documented that states of intense emotional excitement and upheaval may alleviate physical afflictions in normal individuals. An example is the effect of emotional shock upon the condition of rheumatoid arthritis. The remission of this illness due to emotional shock was one of the observations that led to the use of cortisone in the treatment of this condition. Cortisone is similar in action to the corticosteroids which are produced by the adrenal gland in conditions of stress or shock.

The interchangeability of symptoms is dramatically illustrated in the following case of a male schizophrenic patient whom I treated for a number of years. In the course of therapy most of his schizophrenic tendencies and manifestations were considerably reduced. At one point, after what I felt had been a significant improvement, the patient developed an epidermoid cancer at the tip of his nose. Actually, the patient had been aware of this growth for some time, but had ignored it. The patient had a history of X-ray treatments on his face for an acne condition many years earlier. However, the appearance of the cancer at this particular time in the therapy seemed significant to me. Was it possible that when his escape into psychosis as a withdrawal from reality was prevented by the analytic working-through of the schizophrenic mechanisms, he attempted to withdraw from life by developing a cancer? This interpretation was accepted by the patient and proved helpful to his therapy. An operation was successfully performed, which led the patient to comment, “I guess I cut off my nose to spite my face.” Following the operation, however, the patient made a big step forward toward building a stable personality.

I do not wish to suggest that physical illness does not occur among schizophrenics or that schizophrenia cannot develop in the presence of somatic disease. We are dealing with tendencies which, while they are mutually exclusive as theoretical postulates, are only relatively so in life. One may hypothesize that once the ego anchors in reality it cannot easily be dislodged.

THE SCHIZOID RETREAT

The schizoid individual defends himself against terror and insanity by one of two strategies. The most common defensive strategy, as has been described above, is a physical and psychological rigidity that serves to repress feeling and keep the body under the control of the ego. It is structured to withstand insults from the outside world in the form of rejection and disappointment. It is a fortress within which the schizoid lives in the relative security of illusion and fantasy.

But not all schizoid individuals show this typical rigidity. Many, including Barbara, whose case was presented in Chapter 1, show in their body structures a superficial flabbiness or lack of muscle tone instead of the rigidity described above. Impulse formation is further reduced—to the point where the body looks more dead than alive, the peripheral charge is very low, and skin color is pasty yellow or muddy brown. Logically, such a condition would follow the breakdown of the rigid defense and lead to schizophrenia. However, in Barbara's case it may be postulated that a collapse occurred in early childhood, before a rigid defense could be structured by her personality. Barbara gave in before she could fight back.

To account for a personality that remains sane yet whose body structure shows collapse, it is necessary that the concept of the schizoid defense against terror be extended beyond that of rigidity. When the terror is extreme, a more desperate maneuver is required. What could be more terrifying than to picture oneself as the victim of a human sacrifice? The feelings which this image evokes would be enough to drive one out of his mind. Yet Barbara and other patients have lived with this terror and have not gone mad. They saved their sanity by believing in the necessity and the value of the sacrifice. They gave up their bodies and accepted their symbolic death, but by this action they robbed the terror of its sting. A body that lacks all feeling can no longer be frightened or shocked.

Thus, the two maneuvers by which the schizoid can defend himself can be described as (1) the rigid barricade, or (2) the retreat from the field of action. In the retreat the schizoid individual surrenders most of his troops (muscular tone) and loses the ability to fight back, although he retains control of the rest of his personality. He may be compared to a general without an army, but he is very much better off than an army in chaos without a general. The schizophrenic condition is one of chaos in which each faculty of the personality abandons the others. The schizoid retreat is a maneuver to avoid a rout.

In both schizoid rigidity and schizoid retreat the defense against insanity is the power of the rational mind to sustain the individual's function in society under all conditions. In schizoid rigidity the mind acts through the will. In the schizoid retreat the will is inoperative, but the mind joins forces with the enemy to avoid a final defeat. Barbara did this by identifying with her demon. Having no will to cope with danger, Barbara avoided disaster by being submissive in every situation. This submission was tolerable, since it could be rationalized as a sacrifice in the interest of survival.

Generally, these two defense maneuvers are mutually exclusive. The individual who has committed all his energies to the rigid barricade cannot retreat if his defense is overrun. His ego lacks the flexibility to rationalize a defeat and the collapse of his resistance could lead to a psychotic break. The schizoid individual whose defense is based on retreat and sacrifice has lost the possibility of making a stand. A further retreat becomes impossible, and if required, decompensation into schizophrenia would occur. Nevertheless, these two defense maneuvers are related to each other logically and historically. Logically, schizoid rigidity is a defense against collapse, while the retreat stems from a breakdown of a previous resistance. Historically, it can be shown that the schizoid maneuver of retreat and sacrifice developed at an early age in the child following an unsuccessful effort to erect a rigid defense against the impact of parental hostility.

BREAKDOWN AND SCHIZOPHRENIA

Since the schizoid defense serves to keep repressed impulses in check, it depends upon a degree of control that taxes the endurance of the individual. Consequently many forces can upset the schizoid equilibrium and bring on a psychotic episode. It is not his defense which protects the schizoid person against a nervous breakdown, but the amount of health which persists in his personality. Here follow a few of the common situations that can produce a collapse in the schizoid structure.

1. Often an acute psychotic attack is brought on by the use of a drug which temporarily prevents the mind from exercising its control over the body. Mescaline and LSD function in this way. Under the influence of these hallucinogenic drugs, direct contact with the body is broken. The sensations and fantasies which flood the schizoid mind often produce a feeling of terror so overwhelming that it shatters the ego. It may be recalled that Jack was shocked by his experience with mescaline. The danger of LSD in the treatment of borderline schizophrenics is now recognized.

2. Lack of sleep, as Paul Federn has pointed out,¹⁸ is another factor which may produce a psychotic break in predisposed individuals. It has been shown that sleep deprivation produces hallucinatory phenomena even in normal individuals. Lack of sleep weakens the mind's control of the body. A breakdown may occur in a schizoid individual who spends his nights studying for exams.

3. Emotional situations which the schizoid individual cannot handle may produce a break-down. Schizoid patients have been known to crack up in the face of an impending marriage, a financial crisis, or following the birth of a child. One of my patients attempted suicide after rejection by a young man.

4. Critical periods of life: adolescence and menopause. Adolescence with its surging sexual impulses is a particularly difficult period for the schizoid personality. Indeed, schizophrenia was formerly called dementia praecox because it occurred most frequently in early adulthood. Menopause is another period when inadequate ego adjustments collapse under the impact of strong emotions, often plunging the individual into an emotional crisis.

A nervous breakdown is a loss of control over feelings and behavior. Its manifestations differ, however, from one patient to another. In some patients it appears as an overwhelming anxiety and confusion. Others become wildly destructive and have to be restrained. Still others develop paranoid delusions. And some become progressively withdrawn and unresponsive. Each reacts according to the dynamics of his personality structure, that is, according to the relative strength of the repressed impulses and the defenses against them. In all cases the experience contains common elements which show that a similar process is at work. These elements are:

1. Confusion and feelings of anxiety verging on terror.

2. Estrangement—a state of partial unreality in which one cannot tell if one is dreaming or awake. In this situation one pinches oneself to tell the difference. Estrangement occurs when a person is overwhelmed by sensations.

3. Depersonalization—the loss of the feeling of self.

4. Finally, schizophrenia—a withdrawal and regression to infantile or archaic levels of functioning as a means of survival.

The person going through a breakdown is not aware that repressed feelings have broken through his defenses. Such an awareness would require self-knowledge and ego strength that the schizoid doesn't have. When he acquires these through therapy he is in a position to release the repression without danger to himself or others. The incident which sets off the breakdown may be almost insignificant. If conditions are right, it acts like the fuse which explodes the dynamite. The catastrophic result can only be explained in terms of the terror which is buried within the personality. On no other basis can one understand the extreme steps that the person will take if the terror continues.

The schizophrenic state is a denial of reality. If the denial is complete, the terror vanishes. Since one aspect of his terror is the fear of being destroyed, the schizophrenic's condition is a refuge. He can hardly be destroyed if he is not “here,” that is, not existing in present time and space. He cannot be punished if he is not himself, that is, if he is really Napoleon or Jesus Christ or some god in disguise. On the other hand, if his terror stems from his fear that he will destroy someone else, then a paranoid mechanism removes his fear. He has no reason to reproach himself, since, by means of the paranoid delusion, he is convinced that others are scheming to destroy him. It is amazing how little anxiety the paranoid individual shows when he recounts his story of imagined persecutions. Finally, not to feel and not to think dispels all fear.