Anxiety: the liquid modern emotion

Freud once argued that the key emotion of ‘civilisation’ (read: solid modernity) was guilt. Indeed, for Freud, civilisation could not maintain itself without making its members guilty. This chapter will argue that the key emotion of liquid modernity is no longer guilt but instead anxiety. The expansion of anxiety in the 21st century, especially among the young and women, is well documented. According to the World Health Organization, anxiety is now the most common mental health problem globally, with 301 million sufferers, a number which includes an increase of 25% following the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing upon Bauman’s theorisation of liquid modernity, I will show how this expansion of anxiety is a response to the changes in how people are expected to live. This will include discussions of: an increased notion of choice combined with unequal possibilities to realise it; the uncertainty of the future; the retreat of the collective mission of the nation state and the unfulfillment built into a consumer society. In turn, while most attempts to understand and treat anxiety have drawn upon the same individualised processes, I will argue that anxiety can only truly be dealt with by collective solutions. Much as Freud saw psychoanalysis as a means to lessen the overbearing feelings of guilt in solid modernity, Bauman’s sociology offers us lessons for how to tackle anxiety in liquid modernity.