Dramatic stage acting, or acting out visually and in performance, in one's room, office, or outdoors, defuses the fear/anxiety element, if one acts out in a safe space their fear. During dramatic acting out, such as in playing a role in a play or in one's mind, what otherwise might be done without self-control is brought under control, even an unnatural or unusual fear response. It's part of bringing to full consciousness our most unspeakable fears and using them to our advantage for self-control. I first learned this as a child, growing up in Germany then Italy, at age 5-7 I had a fear of being chased by American tourists in Europe, I saw them as sloppy illiterates, of American style fried chicken legs (drumsticks, sort of a phallic symbolism) being thrown at me, and of being hit in the face if someone came too near. My Mother accommodated my fears, first in Germany at age 5, by purchasing me Billy the Kid jeans as my first jeans, two play six shooters and a dual holster, a cowgirl hat, a cork shooting play Winchester rifle (air gun), and a big bouncing ball with a bull face painted on it to practice riding a horse and shooting, while enrolling me in a convent so I would have extremely good manners to not attract unwanted persons. It worked, she let me play out my fears at home yet present a very strict and educated persona outside the home. I later applied this experience to my work in theater production (in San Francisco) and in psychophysiological research of the broad behavioral spectrum of the personality matrix. One significant work that helped me understand the phenomenon of spontaneous or baseless fears/anxieties was Ian Stevenson, MD. I then understood why I avoid groups that do not maintain a good moral standard or are in anyway disrespectful. I had previous memories of Americans ripping off my eyeglasses and beating me to death. https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/cfa4/f59f34f49029634c153e70658d4e6e8c90b6.pdf

Yes, it is really possible. Be careful when selecting stimulation materials to ensure that they are not material that may cause fear. The processing of anamnestic data is very important. Like reminiscence therapy, where we work with memories that can be not always positive but also negative.

This published(Wickramasekera & Wickramasekera 1997) psychophysiological controlled case study illustrates how multiple somatic and psychological symptoms can be driven for many years by an implicit or repressed fear . The presenting somatic and psychological symptoms were resistant for 5 years to psychiatric and medical therapy.

Ian Wickramasekera PhD

Dear Yong Yang,

Fear acquisition outside awareness is a persistent idea. However, the evidence for it is not very strong. Several systematic review of the literature have concluded that awareness is necessary for fear acquisition (Brewer, 1974; Lovibond & Shanks, 2002). Together with a colleague, I reached a similar conclusion in a recent meta-analysis of the available evidence (available here: https://psyarxiv.com/qz5st/ ).

Best wishes,

Gaetan

PS: I would also be very interested in your new study using an improved masking technique. Could you forward me a copy once you have the paper available?

references:

Brewer, W. F. (1974). There is no convincing evidence for operant or classical conditioning in adult humans. In W. B. Weimer & D. S. Palermo (Eds.), Cognition and the symbolic processes. Oxford, England: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Dawson, M. E., & Furedy, J. J. (1976). The role of awareness in human differential autonomic classical conditioning: The necessary‐gate hypothesis. Psychophysiology, 13(1), 50-53.

Lovibond, P. F., & Shanks, D. R. (2002). The role of awareness in Pavlovian conditioning: empirical evidence and theoretical implications. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes, 28(1), 3.

Gaëtan Mertens Thanks for your informative answer! If you need (please let me know), I would send you a copy when we have new publication.

Yong Yang Sounds great, thanks! I've started following you updates, so I'm sure I will see the paper appear in my timeline when you have it ready :)

Good luck with your projects!

Experimental studies of implicit(UNCONSCIOUS) CS or conditioned stimuli and explicit CS (Wickramasekera 1980,1985, Ader 1985,Babel 2019,Colloca 2019,) for both nocebo("fear") learning and placebo( "hope") learning provide ROBUST empirical evidence of the role of UNCONSCIOUS stimuli(Jensen etal 2015,2012) in human nocebo and placebo learning.In Jensen et al 2015 & Jensen et al 2012 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

That Pavlovian " hope" and "fear" learning (Mowrer 1960) is implicated in the above methodologically meticulous empirical studies(Jensen etal 2015,2012),is a theoretical inference(Wickramasekera 1980,1985) of mine.

There appears to be also empirical evidence of "non conscious pain modulation after direct and OBSERVATIONAL learning"(Egorova etal 2015).The above UNCONSCIOUS observational learning mechanism is consistent with a model of respondent, operant and observational learning mechanisms of healing, operating today through high credibility scientific medical instruments(Wickramasekera 1977,a,b,Redberg 2014) which are modulated by trait hypnotizability (Wickramasekera 1999).

Clinical illustrations of the above experimentally elucidated phenomena of UNCONSCIOUS fear learning is depicted in Wickramasekera 1994,Wickramasekera & Wickramasekera II 1997.

Ian Wickramasekera PhD

Ian Wickramasekera Thank you so much! Your answer is very very good!

You are welcome Dr.Yang.

You isolated a very salient and profound experimental and clinical topic in the acquisition and extinction of implicit (unconscious) and explicit fear or THREAT perception(Wickramasekera 1979, 1988,1995,2003,Santarcangelo 2011,2012,Santarcangelo et al 2010,2012,2018,2019).

I hope your future work will use methodologically elegant methods like those of Jensen et al 2012,2015, in P.N.A.S .USA ,to elucidate other salient topics(eg interoceptors and baroreceptors,etc) on the frontiers of psychophysiology, somatization and stress related diseases.

Ian Wickramasekera PhD

Based on the work on the reticular activating system (RSA) of the great neurophysiologist Prof.Moruzzi ,we(Budzynski 1972,Sittenfield ,Stoyva, Pichittino, ,1976, Wickramasekera 1977) developed a Twilight learning system(Biofeedback systems,Inc,Boulder,Colorado) to install implicit(UNCONSCIOUS) disinhibitory and inhibitory information about hypnosis. .We used contingent frontalis EMG,and Alpha,Theta biofeedback to induce a LOW arousal state to install disinhibitory information about hypnosis to amplify TRAIT hypnotizability(Hilgard 1965,Barber 1969) with preliminary promising results, reported in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences(Wickramasekera 1977).

There is no theoretical reason why INHIBITORY implicit(UNCONSCIOUS) PHOBIC information cannot be installed in a stage 1 or 2 EEG twilight state, with an even better(current progress in electronic technology) LOW arousal electronic learning system.

A clinical example of the extinction of such a hypothesized " repressed" or implicit( UNCONSCIOUS) fear of HIV exposure, driving EXPLICIT ANS somatic symptoms is illustrated by this case study(Wickramasekera & Wickramasekera II 19970.

Ian Wickramasekera PhD