This episode is from the WNYC archives. It may contain language which is no longer politically or socially appropriate.

Murphy, chairman of the Department of Psychology at City College, talks about fear: "We live in a world of danger." People must be provided a constructive task, in daily life and in moments of danger. If everyone is assigned a constructive role in the case of danger, we will know what to do and will not be afraid. Studies of the roots of fear. "The state of being afraid is often the indirect reaction to a disturbed relationship between people, usually arising from pride and arrogance on the one hand and humiliation and inferiority on the other." Human society is filled with "keeping up with the Joneses." Children who feel rejected grow up in anxiety. Chronic anxiety may arise after long years of despair, doubts of ever achieving a place in the world. War is a bewildering experience; the normal fears of wartime can become worse by jealousies between social, religious, and economic groups in the armed forces, and those between civilians and those in uniforms. Everything that can be done by military and civilian leaders to enable our American religious, racial, and economic groups to understand and to respect one another serves to ally our fears and to give us strength. America is based on the principle of unity and diversity. William James's "The Modern Equivalent of War." Fears of today and the lurking anxieties of an unknown future.

Audio courtesy of the City University of New York

WNYC archives id: 71437