Here, again, children can react to their own apprehension in different ways. One child's chief concern is with the
value of succeeding, of expanding his powers; he ignores the fear and marches forward—and the fear dissolves.
Another child is primarily concerned with the fear; it is of far more importance to him than the opportunity to grow
and to master the unfamiliar; so he retreats—and the fear masters him, instead. (I am speaking here of challenges
that are within the child's range of accomplishment, not of challenges that are, in fact, beyond the child's ability to
cope with.)
Now consider the following example. A young person ventures some opinion that seems entirely reasonable to him
(and, perhaps, is reasonable); his father reacts to it with shock and violent rage. The child feels apprehension;
perhaps his father will strike him, as he has done in the past. The fear is understandable and natural. But there is
more than one way the child can proceed to react, psychologically.
He can retain the awareness that his father has not answered him, has not given reason to support his disagreement,
but has merely shouted abuse and shaken his fist; he can remain conscious and judging, even though he is afraid
and recognizes that to argue with his father is futile; he can preserve the will to understand, even though he is
bewildered and distressed. Or he can let himself be mentally swamped by the fear, so that nothing else matters to
him, neither truth nor understanding; he can begin to doubt the validity of the view he expressed; he can decide that
he must be wrong, and surrender to a single desire: to escape this frightening situation and to avoid its recurrence —
and be willing to suspend his independent judgment in order to achieve this aim.
If, in such situations, a child struggles to preserve the clarity of his mind, he will find, as he grows older, that his
susceptibility to fear diminishes radically; what he will often feel, in its place, is a thoroughly appropriate contempt.
If, however, he characteristically surrenders to fear—surrenders psycho-epistemologically—then fear gains a
greater and greater power over him, and each subsequent surrender feels more and more inevitable. His sense of
personal efficacy is affected accordingly.
The same principles apply on an adult level. If, for example, a man remains silent and passively unprotesting when
things which he values are being attacked, through fear of not "belonging" or