Images Of Fear

Our thinking is inhabited by images-images of sometimes curious and overwhelming power. The mushroom cloud, weird rays that can transform the flesh, the twilight world following a nuclear war, the white city of the future, the brilliant but mad scientist who plots to destroy the world-all these images and more relate to nuclear energy, but that is not their only common bond. Decades before the first atom bomb exploded, a web of symbols with surprising linkages was fully formed in the public mind. The strange kinship of these symbols can be traced back, not only to medieval symbolism, but still deeper into experiences common to all of us. This is a disturbing book: it shows that much of what we believe about nuclear energy is not based on facts, but on a complex tangle of imagery suffused with emotions and rooted in the distant past. Nuclear Fear is the first work to explore all the symbolism attached to nuclear bombs, and to civilian nuclear energy as well, employing the powerful tools of history as well as findings from psychology, sociology, and even anthropology. The story runs from the turn of the century to the present day, following the scientists and journalists, the filmmakers and novelists, the officials and politicians of many nations who shaped the way people think about nuclear devices. The author, a historian who also holds a Ph.D. in physics, has been able to separate genuine scientific knowledge about nuclear energy and radiation from the luxuriant mythology that obscures them. In revealing the history of nuclear imagery, Weart conveys the hopeful message that once we understand how this imagery has secretly influenced history and our own thinking, we can move on to a clearer view of the choices that confront our civilization. Table of Contents: Preface Part One: Years of Fantasy, 1902-1938 1. Radioactive Hopes White Cities of the Future Missionaries for Science The Meaning of Transmutation 2. Radioactive Fears Scientific Doomsdays The Dangerous Scientist Scientists and Weapons Debating the Scientist's Role 3. Radium: Elixir or Poison? The Elixir of Life Rays of Life Death Rays Radium as Medicine and Poison 4. The Secret, the Master, and the Monster Smashing Atoms The Fearful Master Monsters and Victims Real Scientists The Situation before Fission Part Two: Confronting Reality, 1939-1952 5. Where Earth and Heaven Meet Imaginary Bomb-Reactors Real Reactors and Safety Questions Planned Massacres "The Second Coming" 6. The News from Hiroshima Cliché Experts Hiroshima Itself Security through Control by Scientists? Security through Control over Scientists? 7. National Defenses Civil Defenses Bombs as a Psychological Weapon The Airmen Part Three: New Hopes and Horrors, 1953-1963 8. Atoms for Peace A Positive Alternative Atomic Propaganda Abroad Atomic Propaganda at Home 9. Good and Bad Atoms Magical Atoms Real Reactors The Core of Mistrust Tainted Authorities 10. The New Blasphemy Bombs as a Violation of Nature Radioactive Monsters Blaming Authorities 11. Death Dust Crusaders against Contamination A Few Facts Clean or Filthy Bombs? 12. The Imagination of Survival Visions of the End Survivors as Savages The Victory of the Victim The Great Thermonuclear Strategy Debate The World as Hiroshima 13. The Politics of Survival The Movement Attacking the Warriors Running for Shelter Cuban Catharsis Reasons for Silence Part Four: Suspect Technology, 1956-1986 14. Fail/Safe Unwanted Explosions: Bombs Unwanted Explosions: Reactors Advertising the Maximum Accident 15. Reactor Poisons and Promises Pollution from Reactors The Public Loses Interest The Nuplex versus the China Syndrome 16. The Debate Explodes The Fight against Antimissiles Sounding the Radiation Alarm Reactors: A Surrogate for Bombs? Environmentalists Step In 17. Energy Choices Alternative Energy Sources Real Reactor Risks "It's Political" The Reactor Wars 18. Civilization or Liberation? The Logic of Authority and Its Enemies Nature versus Culture Modes of Expression The Public's Image of Nuclear Power 19. The War Fear Revival: An Unfinished Chapter Part Five The Search for Renewal 20. The Modern Arcanum Despair and Denial Help from Heaven? Objects in the Skies Mushroom and Mandala 21. Artistic Transmutations The Interior Holocaust Rebirth from Despair Toward the Four-Gated City Conclusion A Personal Note Sources and Methodology Notes Index Reviews of this book: Nuclear Fear is a rich, layered journey back through our 'atomic history' to the primal memories of monstrous mutants and mad scientists. It is a deeply serious book but written in an accessible style that reveals the culture in which this fear emerges only to be suppressed and emerge again. --Ellen Goodman, Boston Globe Reviews of this book: A historical portrait of the quintessential modern nightmare...Weart shows in meticulous and fascinating detail how [the] ancient images of alchemy-fire, sexuality, Armageddon, gold, eternity and all the rest-immediately clustered around the new science of atomic physics...There is no question that the image of nuclear power reflects a complex and deeply disturbing portrait of what it means to be human. --Stephan Salisbury, Philadelphia Inquirer Reviews of this book: A detailed, probing study of American hopes, dreams and insecurities in the twentieth-century. Weart has a poet's acumen for sensing human feelings ... Nuclear Fear remains captivating as history...and original as an anthropological study of how nuclear power, like alchemy in medieval times, offers a convenient symbol for deeply-rooted human feelings. --Los Angeles Times Reviews of this book: Weart's tale boldly sweeps from the futuristic White City of the 1893 Chicago World's Fair and the discovery of radioactivity in 1896 through Hiroshima and Star Wars... (An] admirable call for synthesis of art and science in a true transmutation that takes us beyond nuclear fear. --H. Bruce Franklin, Science

On the Western Front in World War I, a generation faced a horrifying reality that ushered in the modern age. But in the previous century, many of the fears we still face were first given form in the pages of popular fiction. Books such as Frankenstein, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Dracula became modern myths because they gave people a safe way to confront modern fears also taking shape at that time. By looking at such varied subjects as Victorian architecture, urban crime, women's rights, and the impact of new technology, we can come to understand the peculiar relationship between horror in literature and the horror of daily life. World War I made it clear that the images of horror in popular fiction had not been an escape from the world around us, but a way of seeing deeper into it, as well as revealing the shape of things to come.

"THE ART OF FEAR: A PHOTOGRAPHIC MEMOIR" BY KIMBERLY BUTLER Foreword by NEIL GAIMAN: "[Kimberly Butler] says I'm her muse, but all I ever do is tell her how beautiful and strange her pictures are, and how hard it is for me to get them out of my head" Photojournalist and celebrity photographer Kimberly Butler has published her first book, "The Art of Fear: A Photographic Memoir" publisher Sky Perspectives Publishingan epic poem and story of survival featuring 34 exquisite yet disturbing images - without using Photoshop -- where she faces her fears to reveal the childhood trauma she experienced when,at 8 years old, she was removed from her home and placed in Ottilie Orphanage in Jamaica, New York. The young woman posing in the photographs wearing a gas mask -a metaphor for the protective walls Butler built around her life - is her own daughter, Caitlin, whom she adopted from a Lithuanian orphanage - coincidentally - at the age of 8 years old.The locations for the photographs in this 100-page softcover book (which features a foreword by award-winning author Neil Gaiman) include a collapsed abandoned building, a deserted icy beach during winter, and an empty church and cemetery - each representing the loneliness, isolation, and fear she fought to overcome by using masks to cloak feelings of shame and worthlessness. "I wanted to share my journey to help others," says the award-winning photographer. "Those who are born into circumstances that make life even more difficult than it already is -- whether dueto dysfunctional childhoods or personal demons¿And, of course," Butler adds, "this turns out to be just about everyone to some degree or another."

Fear is an emotion that is strongly connected with violence and with the darkest periods of history, including terrorism, genocides, and totalitarianism. It is especially important for theology, where it can be considered to have very positive aspects. However, worldwide cultures are too often burdened with unnecessary fear. There are different factors involved in the cultivation of an 'adequate culture' of fear, and one of them is the certainly that mankind does indeed know how to cultivate it. Therefore, awareness and knowledge about the concept of fear is necessary. This book helps to increase and widen that understanding. (Series: Theology East-West / Theologie Ost-West - Vol. 17)

A devilishly funny collection of comics that explores our most gruesome, hilarious, and bizarre fears—and the dangers lurking around every corner. We all have strange, irrational fears—from seeing ghosts in the bedroom mirror to being sucked into a mall escalator or finding yourself miles below the ocean's surface on the deck of a sunken ship. In Deep Dark Fears, animator, illustrator, and cartoonist Fran Krause brings these fears to life in 101 vividly illustrated comics inspired by his wildly popular web comic and based on real fears submitted by online readers. Deep Dark Fears reveals a primal part of our humanity and highlighting both our idiosyncrasies and our similarities.

In the World Library of Psychologists series, international experts themselves present career-long collections of what they judge to be their finest pieces - extracts from books, key articles, salient research findings, and their major theoretical and practical contributions. This volume of self-selected papers recognises Andy Young’s major contribution to the study of face perception, for which he received the BPS Lifetime Achievement Award in 2013. Focusing on his work in facial expression recognition, a specially written introduction gives an overview of his work and contextualises the selection in relation to developments in the field during this time. Divided into five distinct sections, the book covers work on both theoretical and experimental approaches to facial expression recognition, neuropsychology, functional brain imaging, and applications of research. This book will be of great interest to students and researchers of cognitive psychology or neuropsychology interested in face perception. It will also appeal to those with an interest in the highly varied applications of the research and provide insight into a number of clinical disorders.

Fear and Primordial Trust explores fear as an existential phenomenon and how it can be overcome. Illustrated by clinical examples from the author’s practice as a psychotherapist and spiritual caregiver working with the severely ill and dying, the book outline theoretical insights into how primordial trust and archaic fear unconsciously shape our personality and behaviour. This book discusses in detail how in our everyday world, we lack primordial trust. Nevertheless, all of us have internalized it: as experiences of another non-dual world, of being unconditionally accepted, then sheltered and nurtured. The book outlines how from a spiritual viewpoint, we come from the non-dual world and experience a transition by becoming an ego, thereby experiencing archaic fear. This book explains fear in terms of two challenges encountered in this transition: firstly, leaving the non-world world when everything changes and we feel forlorn. Secondly, on awakening in the ego when we feel dependent and overwhelmed by otherness. The book also helps readers to understand trust as the emotional and spiritual foundation of the human soul, as well as how fear shapes us and how it can be outgrown. The book makes the case that understanding fear and primordial trust improves care and helps us to better understand dying. It will be of interest to academics, scholars and students in the fields of psychiatry, counselling, psychotherapy and palliative care and to all those interested in understanding fear, trust and the healing potential of spiritual experiences. Chapters 1 and 3 of this book are freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license available at https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/9781003176572