Chronophobia

Chronophobia is anxiety over the passage of time.^[1] Chronophobia is especially common in prison inmates and the elderly, but it can manifest in any person who has an extreme amount of stress and anxiety in their life.^[2]

Causes and contributing factors

In the book Chronophobia: On Time in the Art of the 1960s by Pamela Lee, Chronophobia is described as “an experience of unease and anxiety about time, a feeling that events are moving too fast and are thus hard to make sense of.”^[3] In Peter PaulAnnas Lichtenstein's review he reveals it can be caused by a traumatic experience in one's childhood, genetics, incarceration, or old age. Most traumatic experiences can lead to personal withdrawals from one's surroundings such as dissociation, depersonalization, or derealisation.^[4] A person may be genetically affected after the traumatic experience due to Adrenal insufficiency. Those with these insufficiencies are more susceptible to anxiety and fear. When people are incarcerated, they experience a heightened sense of anxiety.^[5] The stress of prison makes inmates especially at risk. Inmates start to contemplate time extensively because they are incarcerated for a certain amount of time. It is not uncommon for prison inmates to count-down the days until their release. The elderly also exhibit more of a risk because they feel that death is closer than it had ever been before in their life. The threat of death can cause an overwhelming sensation of chronophobia.^[2]

The affected

Two main groups are affected by chronophobia. These groups involve prison inmates and the elderly. Often referred to as Prison Neurosis, chronophobia can affect the incarcerated. Because of the length of time prison inmates spend in their cells, and because of the confined space that they share with others, they can develop psychological symptoms of chronophobia.^[2] Some symptoms include delusions, dissatisfaction with life, claustrophobia, depression, and feelings of panic and madness.^[2]

The elderly show these symptoms of chronophobia as well. When they feel that their lives are near to the end, they start to fear time because it threatens their existence. This fear is similar to chronoperception because it includes the idea that the speed of brain function depends on the metabolic rate in the hypothalamus. As people get older, their metabolism slows. The elderly may believe that as a result of their slowing metabolism, their brains do not function as well, which makes them more chronophobic.^[2] A subset of chronophobia, macrophobia, is the fear of waiting for an extensive amount of time; some people with agoraphobia fear being exposed in open for long periods of time.^[6]

In literature

In her work Chronophobia: On Time in the Art of the 1960s, Pamela Lee studies art and technology in the 1960s. Within this period, such artists as Bridget Riley, Carolee Schneemann, Jean Tinguely, Andy Warhol, and On Kawara pique her interest. She “identifies an experience of time common to both [art and technology], and she calls this experience 'chronophobia'.” After studying Michael Fried's essay Art and Objecthood, she discovers that as time goes by, art starts to reflect the quickness of time. Within her work, Lee references Alvin Toffler's book Future Shock. She *claims that “the concept of time they espouse is chronophobic as defined in her book, and their popularity means that their concept of time was widely shared.” In her work she fears “perpetual presentness, [that is] time is constant without conclusion.” Many chronophobes feel this way, they fear the fact that time is never ending.^[1]

Chronophobic characters are seen in Jerzy Kosinski's Being There. The character Chance Gardiner has no sense of time because he was raised watching television and now defines time in terms of technology. He is described as being in a state of “perpetual nowness.” He has no sense of the past or future, but lives only in the moment. Kosinski explains that the only way for Chance to overcome his chronophobia is if “peace filled his chest.” Kosinski believes that chronophobia “negates the possibility of full human development.”^[7]

Thomas Pynchon offers another view of chronophobia in his novel The Crying of Lot 49. The character Oedipa is similar to Chance Gardiner because she lacks dimension, but she is able to distinguish that events have occurred in the past, present or future. Her cure for chronophobia is to create a world where events are scrambled together randomly. Time becomes irrelevant to her.^[8]

Perhaps the most recognized literary work dealing with chronophobia lies in the story of Rip Van Winkle by Washington Irving. This tall-tale introduces a man that has slept for 20 years and wakes to a completely new society. His wife and friends have died, his dog is missing and his gun is rusty. The fact that his entire world has changed sends him into a feeling of fear and panic. At first he is confused and lost, but his chronophobia is cured when he realizes that although it seems that everything around him has changed, his core beliefs still exist. In this instance, chronophobia is overcome because Rip Van Winkle is able to make new friends, and regain parts of the life he lost while he was asleep.^[9]

References