I've seen several patients now who fear change at a very primitive level. One one of them who has been living with her parents for the last couple years brought up enrolling in school and how she's afraid and part of her wants it to be just like it was many years ago when she had went before. She even said that the last time she went was awful and that it made no sense to want to repeat it. The conversation expanded and she soon recognized that she didn't want any change in general.
This reminded me of some of Nietzsche's remarks on nihilism:
...this hate against what is human, and even more against animality, even more against material things—this abhorrence of the senses, even of reason, this fear of happiness and beauty, this longing for the beyond away from all appearance, change, becoming, death, desire, even longing itself—all this means, let's have the courage to understand this, a will to nothingness, an aversion to life, a revolt against the most fundamental preconditions of life—but it is and remains a will! . . . And to repeat at the conclusion what I said at the start: man will sooner will nothingness than not will . . . (Genealogy of Morals)
I wonder if this can be formulated as only having a relation to one's memories or mnemic traces... one is closed off against any new experience and only feels comfortable knowing how the movie ends, how the song goes, and won't even let oneself get emotionally invested in new things because the risk can't be made...
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