Fear and Primordial Trust

Monika Renz's work is at the forefront of those thinkers who are outlining a new concept of humankind, a concept that is based on movement and on a connection with the cosmos while accounting for what makes us special as human beings. Her inspiration and certainty are rooted in a field that might be said to constitute pure, unmistakable movement: music. Music can be grasped, yet not touched. Music, moreover, is perhaps the most recognized reality, which, although it is related to material structures, is not itself material. Experiences of music and music therapy form the basis for Dr Renz's search for a new concept of the human being, a concept of our becoming, suffering, and healing. This basis has rested on experiences of music since antiquity. It is also highly relevant for our eventful times, which are characterized by upheaval and by a departure to both a new unity of the world and the associated dimension of our responsibility as humans and that of society. Prof. Dr. med. Heinz Stefan Herzka, Zurich The only thing we have to fear is fear itself, Franklin D. Roosevelt observed in his inaugural speech as the 32nd President of the United States of America in 1933 in the midst of the Great Depression. What Roosevelt articulated as a political issue is also a fateful theme of being in the world, as Monika Renz impressively explains in her latest book Fear and Primordial Trust. Her approach, which is grounded in developmental psychology and in spirituality, assumes that a state exists before and beyond fear. She understands this condition as being connected with the One, the Whole - in religious terms, with God. And yet, she is not concerned with dogmatic reflection, but with experience, which each of us can make. Starting from being contained in the Whole, human development leads to limitations and separateness of our every-day consiousness, in which we live because we are an I. In addition to primordial trust, in which we originate, we experience primordial fear already at an early age in becoming an ego. We take this fear with us, along with its problematic consequences, as we move through life, bearing our load. Yet development leads, if permitted, to maturation processes beyond life-determining fear, in perfect agreement with Richard Rohr's words: It is not necessary to be perfect but to be connected. By this, he means being connected to our roots in the Whole, in God. Dr Renz illustrates her reflections with examples and experiences from day-to-day hospital life. This book is a must-read for anyone seeking to better understand the phenomenon of fear. Prof. Dr. theol. Paul M. Zulehner, Vienna