Worrying: A Literary and Cultural History

by Francis O'Gorman

Worrying: A Literary and Cultural History suggests a unique approach to the inner life and its ordinary pains. Francis O'Gorman charts the emergence of our contemporary idea of worry in the Victorian era and its establishment, after the First World War, as a feature of modernity. For some writers between the Wars, worry was the “disease of the age.”

Worrying examines the everyday kind of worry-the fearful, non-pathological, and usually hidden questioning about uncertain futures. It shows worry to be a natural companion in a world where we try to live by reason and believe we have the right to choose, finding in the worrier a peculiarly contemporary sufferer whose mental life is not only exceptionally familiar, but also deeply strange.

Offering an intimately personal account of an all-too-common human experience, and of a word that slips in and out of ordinary conversation so often that it has become invisible in its familiarity, Worrying explores how the modern world has shaped our everyday anxieties.

Genres: Nonfiction, Psychology, Literary Criticism

192 pages, Hardcover

First published May 21, 2015

Reviews

[Sasha · Rating 1 out of 5]

O'Gorman describes his book as "a kind of literary there's-no-help book".

It is a meandering exploration of worry that finds the rise of reason and the culpability of individual action as its culprit. When one can blame destiny, the pressure to 'get it right' is less. It then backtracks and suggests perhaps worry has always existed because of the fact that our actions influence others and we selfishly do not want to have to apologize and say we were wrong about some action or another. And so we worry. About whether the gas was left on, whether the backdoor was open, whether we made the correct decision.

One of the parts I did enjoy was when O'Gorman fleshes out the reality of worry:

"Worriers may be often better at enjoying things after they've happened because it is secure there. Worriers are pleased with pleasures taken and its anticipation of pleasures that's the troublesome matter. We take more pleasure in holidays when they are concluded and can be safely enjoyed in memories that expunge worry: worry about unexpected travel costs; worry about the train not arriving on time; the hotel being noisy or hot or overpriced; the hire car being stolen or damaged; the food being expensive and poor; the mosquito bites; worry about our house being safe while we are away; the holiday itself being less enjoyable than last year's; the speed with which the holiday will be over and we have to go back to work. The pain of such troubles is, more or less, erased by memory. Or at least those worries cease to worry us because we know that everything was all right, we had a good time, and the house was fine. Now it's over, I can sit back and enjoy my holiday.

... Photographs of a worrier's past may bring a set of painful reflections: 'oh, didn't I look young then!' But they're also gently tranquillising because we can look at them without wondering what happened next." (151-2)

But, like he always seems to do, he backtracks and says, one can worry about the past - wondering how our personal past could have been different.

Though I don't agree with O'Gorman - that there is no way out of worry - my low rating is because I didn't find his exploration all that satisfying. The book that is about the source and historicism of worry, doesn't actually say anything of substance about the litany of reasons it finds for worry. It is not even sure whether there is a rise in worry post Enlightenment.

[Dawnie · Rating 5 out of 5]

You are not alone, worrier!

This book is perfect for everyone that worries.

It overs the perfect perspective of how people that are constantly worries always find the "but" in any situation, and showcases that no matter where you are and at what time of history you live in, worrying is always there and present.

This book is interesting and fantastically written, offers a nice view and annectoes and stories about worrying and how -in a way- it connects us all no matter who you are and where you are coming from.

If you are someone that worries -and is there really anyone that doesn't?- read this book. And find funny moments, honest moments, and just an interesting view on what worrying is and how you are just a small part of a big history.

* I received my copy for free in exchange for a honest review, thanks to NetGalley and the Publisher!*

[Karl-O]

Full review:

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015...

From the review, quoting the book:

Worriers like to enjoy things retrospectively, for worrying’s momentum is solely future-directed and the one thing it cannot touch is the past. “Now it’s over,” as he writes after returning from Venice, “I can sit back and enjoy my holiday.”

How true and funny is that!

[El]

What, Me Worry?

[Aaron · Rating 5 out of 5]

A worrying book.

[Meghna Achar · Rating 4 out of 5]

Attempting to review a book like Worrying: A Literary and Cultural History by Francis O’Gorman may be considered a challenge of sorts as it is, thematically, as the name itself suggests, about worrying. And this concept of worrying shares common ground with the discipline of sociology with regard to how its aspects and study from the layman’s perspective is so ingrained into everyday household usage, that an attempt to academically, and prudently examine it would be automatically regarded as futile.

O’Gorman, in the book, strives to assess the act, the science, the art, and the socio-psycho-philosophical phenomenon of worrying, by initially starting off by distinguishing between clinically diagnosed anxiety and worrying, and tracing a history of worrying through literature. This book is merely a literary and descriptive analysis, helping the reader (and the writer himself) gain insight into ways of perceiving worry and mechanism of worry-management differently.
The core arguments of the writer have been spread across the book, with him artfully linking one to the next, in a form of proposal/solution and rebuttal of the same. He starts off by categorising himself as a worrier. He attempts to define worry, but in the process discovers that due to the inattention that worry as a human condition has gathered throughout history, “worrying” has no apt synonym, even the term “anxiety” being too excessive, “trepidation” too mild, and so on. Even the act of writing a book on the same, he claims, is met with dissuasion, as it is immediately considered “boring” and not stimulating, and at the same time, to be a worrier is embarrassing. A worrier is subject to not being taken seriously due to its constant and recurring nature. Here, the author states an interesting proposition that by trying to trace the history of an illness means that not only has it undergone change chemically, or physiologically over time, but that illness becomes a sociological phenomenon, very intricately related to human culture, which is termed “bioculture” by another author he quotes – Lennard Davis. But worry isn’t an illness.

The author wishes to make worry a verbally express-able thing, as opposed to just being experienced which he calls an “act of personal exposure”. Worry, he then defines, as something personal, fuelled by uncertainty of the future. He calls it circular, and unquenchable. Worry is like an implicit mental process. It is also about possibility from the worrier’s perspective.
Worry is associated with normalcy. It’s floating between clinical anxiety and absolute carefreeness. He presents the obstacles in tracing the history of worrying due to the lack of substitutable words for it in ancient English. Worry also had religious and theological connotations, and solutions. He then describes the emergence of modern worry with the growth of American and British urban life.
There is an interesting proposition – there is something glamourous about and an attribution of social status and luxury to worry, because there is a certain “sophisticated consciousness” with worrying.

With constant worry, he says there is always “energy, but no progress” and “effort, but no advancement”, meaning that a worrier is unconsciously stubborn, in the sense that no solution to his/her worry will suffice. In relation to perception of the worrier by others, there is a pattern of “recognition, sympathy and irritation”.

The worrier is voluntarily inseparable from worrying as it may be a kind of “self-indulgence”. Because of this, the author believes, there is a dearth in the crop of historical accounts of worry, as it may have negative connotations of self-centeredness. There’s nothing noble in worrying. Worry may denote neediness – a kind of insecurity and fear of letting someone or something go. He also writes that our love, concern and worry for others, no matter how seemingly selfless they may be, are ultimately conditional.

The author finds himself in a dilemma of choosing between “sympathy and judgement” of worriers. He criticises self-help books by stating that the authors portray themselves as masters of the worrier’s mind, of “finding a cure”, but it’s not as easy as it looks. There are attempts to rationalise worry, to take control of one’s own mind, and modify. The author believes this is an oversimplification/dissolution.

There is a certain “temptation” about worry that plagues the worrier. It all boils down to belief about oneself and everything external to us, thus getting us to the determinants of worrying.
Rene Descartes’ “I think, therefore, I am” has also been closely scrutinised by the author. John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty is also evaluated in relation to worrying, where Mill proposes that “unencumbered play of the reasoning mind”, or that rational, logical thinking will culminate in a “truth” that will set the mind free and at peace. In opposition of this, the author stresses on how this doesn’t hold good with worriers, as worry “keeps us focused on what’s…manageable”. He links this to choice – greater the liberty, greater the variety of alternatives to choose from, greater the ‘what-if’ nature of worry, and the implication, guilt, and burden of blame of a ‘wrong’ choice.
The author also throws the spotlight on the merits of being a worrier – linking it to humour, advantageous skepticism, and foreseeing of probable mishaps. He ends, therefore, on this positive note of altered paradigms of perceiving a worrier and worry itself.

This book, I believe, has immense contemporary relevance, as the household, domestic or “garden worry”, as the author calls it, has risen in prevalence in the rapidly urbanising societies of the world. Worry as a concept as well as phenomenon is so universal in nature, and time-resistant, that it comes as a surprise that it hasn’t been extensively assessed in any domain or discipline in this form yet. It throws light on the modern-day science’s obsession with the abnormal, the excessive, and the extremes, so much so that we forget the mild, the basic human conditions like worry, whose incidence is far greater. One might argue that since worrying doesn’t encumber individuals or societies from functioning normally, there is no need for its in-depth study, but on the contrary, it questions our basic human motive to only study those entities and processes which are out of the ordinary, and not those which are so pervasive, that they are taken for granted.

Personally, this book is a well-constructed assessment of subtlety, which I like, and would recommend to those who find the extraordinary and explorative in the ordinary and mundane. The only critique that I would provide would be regarding how in certain segments of the book, the author’s description of worrying very easily blurs the line that separates it from clinically diagnosable anxiety, thereby provoking a large reader-base to recommend that the book be about the DSM, or medical illness. The book lacks a sense of clarity, and the author himself admits to the “structurelessness” of the worry model he is trying to construct in his work. What I did like about the book is that it’s not another self-help book to happiness or worrylessness. It is a very academically sound, researched piece of literature that is thought-provoking, yet, not too esoteric that it may confound a layman reader.

[Soohyun · Rating 5 out of 5]

걱정을 만들어내는 개인적 특질 중에서도 세상을 마주할 때의 내적 안정감과 강건함이야말로 초조함에 대항하는 최선의 방어가 될 것이다.
나 자신의 걱정에 관해서 신중하게 생각함으로써 내가 누구인지에 관한, 그리고 내가 어떻게 지각하는지에 관한 배후의 자신, 또는 배후의 관념을 드러내는 것이 가능하다. 나는 이 믿음을 분명하게 볼 수 있기 때문에, 실제로 나는 이 믿음에 도전하고, 나아가 이 믿음을 바꾸려고 시도할 수도 있다. 나는 이 믿음이 내게 유해하고 부정적인 것임을, 이 믿음이 내게 불필요하고도 회피 가능한 고통을 야기함을 스스로 인식할 수 있다. 이 뒤얽힘의 비밀, 이 외관상의 모순의 비밀은 오로지 자기 발견 과정이라는 힘에 놓여있을 수 있다. 이는 반드시 나 스스로 문제를 확인한다는 사실에서의 차이, 즉 자기 계발 서적이나 분석가나 친구가 나를 위해서 그렇게 해주는 것과는 완전히 별개라는 사실에 의존해야 한다. 여기서의 비결은 나 스스로 생각한다는 점에 있는 것처럼 보인다. 애초에 이 세상에 걱정을 가져오는 데 도움을 주는 독립적인 추론이라는 바로 그 조건 자체에 있는 것이다. 걱정은 내적 믿음에 관해서 가치 있는 지식을 제안할 수 있다. 하지만 그런 지식이 도움이 되려면, 그걸 스스로 파악해야만 한다.
걱정꾼은 실제로 또는 외관상 스스로를 확고하게 소유한 ���람들과 어울림으로써 즐거움을 찾는다. 우리에게 필요한 것은 의미를 써넣을 넓고도 텅 빈 페이지이다.
SNS사이트도 그럴싸한 허구로부터 힘을 끌어낼 수 있는 또 다른 장소를 제공한다. 사이버스페이스를 통해서만 닿을 수 있는 이 멀리 떨어진 인물들은 걱정꾼의 상태에 대한 해독제로서 이용 가능할지도.

[Laala Kashef Alghata · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Anxiety is beating a mental tattoo.”

As someone who suffers with anxiety and a psychology graduate, I was very interested in picking this up. However, in the end, it was unremarkable, and I took away very little from it.

[Özge Yılmaz · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read the Turkish translation which I found to be quite an unsuccessful translation. This might have been one of the reasons I sometimes found the text hard to follow.
Still I expected the book to be more involved in the connection and place of “worry” in literature and art.

[Amanda Witt]

A good little book, detailing the causes and sources of worries today. Worry as we know it now emerged in the Victorian era and became established after World War I.
Book is divided into sections discussing a working definition of worry, then the next on established strategies to deal with worry, the next separates it from reason and the final part discusses typical thoughts of a common 'worrier' and whether they are advantageous or not.

[Douglas · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was worried that I would find this book too abstract or too esoteric. I needn't have; it was a fascinating extended think piece for those of us who ponder the world and its propensity to deliver the unexpected.

[ericka · Rating 2 out of 5]

Meandering, reductive, unapologetically masturbatory.

[Mills College Library]

152.4609 O354 2016

[Bart · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting at moments but generally academic in the worst sense of the word.