Speaker
Dr. Jordan Peterson (University of Toronto, Psychology)
Title
Approach or Avoidance in the Confrontation with Anxiety and Existential Terror: A Conceptual, Empirical and Historical Analysis
Abstract
Many modern social psychologists, particularly those associated with positive illusion and terror management theory, have made a strong case for the necessity of defensive and illusory belief, in the face of anxiety and existential terror. Other psychologists, particularly those in clinical and industrial/organizational fields, have made a contrary case: confrontation with uncertainty and threat promotes health. This debate has its counterpart in the disagreement that brought Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung's professional relationship to a halt. Freud believed that belief, ideological and religious, was necessarily illusory and defensive. Jung, who grounded his theory in mythology and alchemy, argued the reverse: belief could be redemptive, without defense.