The Fear

A philosophical memoir about the deepest and most primal of human emotions, how it controls us all, and how we try to control one another when the stakes are so high.

The Fear is a book about what scares us the most, how we live with these threats, and the emotional turmoil they inspire.

From gas-lighting to terrorism, and from scapegoating to psychoanalysis, The Fear stares deep into the abyss, searching for the monsters, horrors and spectres that destabilise and haunt us, and finding out what these fears—and how we respond to them—shape us as people and societies.

The Fear is a personal and critical exploration of fear and its impact in public and private lives, revealing how our cultural landscape informs and even justifies the way we relate to one another, and how it can set us free. Combining memoir with philosophical reflection on terrorism, psychology, relationships and culture, The Fear is a multi-faceted and poetic response to a subject that plagues us all.

Christiana Spens is a writer and artist based in London, with a background in academia. She has published several books in the past, including Shooting Hipsters (Repeater Books) and The Portrayal and Punishment of Terrorists in Western Media: Playing the Villain (Palgrave Macmillan), and she holds a PhD in International Relations from the University of St Andrews. She writes regularly for publications such as Glamour, The London Magazine, The Irish Times, Prospect, Byline Times, Aeon + Psyche, Elephant and Studio International.