1844
The Concept of Anxiety
“I am sitting and listening to the sounds within myself, to the joyous intima-
tions of the music and the profound seriousness of the organ .Synthesizing
them is a task not for a composer but for a human being, who in the absence
of greater challenges in his life, limits himself to the simple task of wanting
to understand himself.” This journal entry, in all its demanding modesty, is
from the early autumn of 1843, shortly before Kierkegaard began to com-
pose the draft ofThe Concept of Anxiety, in which it is precisely introspec-
tion, the investigation of the self, that is elevated to the status of the only
legitimate psychological method .“Instead of the enormous task of under-
standing every human being,” the author wrote in a draft of the book’s
preface, “he has chosen something that may well be labeled narrow-minded
and foolish, namely understanding himself.” This point of view is retained
in the final version of the preface, where the author describes himself as a
“straggler who has seen nothing of the world and has only set out on an
internal journey within his own consciousness.”
The draft, 125 pages in all, consists of nine small, inexpensive school
notebooks, whose colorful covers of shiny paper form a striking contrast
with their serious contents: The first notebook is brown, the second is yel-
low, the third orange, the fourth black, the fifth blue, the sixth violet, the
seventh red-brown, and, like the fourth, the eighth notebook is also black.
In addition to these is an unnumbered booklet with a violet cover, and last
there is a booklet covered in black shiny paper and labeled “Vocalizations
for / On the Concept of Anxiety.” In this, as in the other little notebooks,
glued to the inside of the first page is a little label bearing the name of the
place of purchase: “N .C .Møller / Bookbinder / No .97 Ulfelds Place .”
In these notebooks Kierkegaard followed his usual custom when he
wrote drafts: He folded the pages lengthwise (vertically) so that each page
had a wide inner column for the main text and a narrow outer column for
subsequent reflections and additions .He began work on the book in Octo-
ber 1843 and intensified his preoccupation with it in December, but then
he suddenly began to have problems with the fourth chapter, and partway266