In Place of Fear
Christiana Spens, The Fear: A Memoir
Repeater Books, 256pp, £12.99, ISBN 9781914420450
reviewed by Adam Steiner
We carry within us our own shadow. This inner darkness, this phantom self, is a pillar of Jungian thought — and a guiding influence on what Christiana Spens calls ‘The Fear’, a broad existential state that forms the backbone of this philosophical memoir. The Fear, writes Spens, is the ‘emotional reality of oppression, whether it manifests as an individual battle with repressed memories and desires, or overt socio-political conflicts’.
Alongside these metaphysical observations are three deftly interwoven personal narratives: her father’s terminal illness; reflections on a series of damaging, abusive relationships; and her PhD research into public perceptions of the threat from terrorism. She recounts her challenges in caring for her father, and of becoming a parent herself. The philosophical approach adds heft, illuminating but never obscuring: Spens is admirably sparing with technical terms, which keeps the narrative engaging and considered. She describes with haunting precision the exacting formality of standardised psychological assessments, which provide a suitably detached view on moments of trauma, the triggering events that can shadow our lives.
When Spens begins her PhD studies at St Andrews, she returns to the family home in Fife. The choice to go home, to regroup and be with family, was not a moment of regression but a healthy and natural reaction to the fear she experienced working as an au pair, adrift and isolated in Paris. The author describes how she cares for her father by being present and available as he cloisters himself in his bedroom, emotionally distant. In her close attention, she comes to absorb her father’s worry over the imminence of death.
After emerging from depression, Spens re-examines her past. She touches on the inequality inherent in masochistic relationships, the way people take on the role of victim in the hope of changing their partner — an act of endurance, while the entitled sadistic partner remains aloof or indifferent. Determined not to repeat her past mistakes, she draws on Nietzsche's master-slave theory, whereby the individual must exercise strength in determining their own choices but also remain sensitive to the needs of others.
The account of Spens’ pregnancy becomes intertwined with the loss of her father and the subsequent months of grief. 'I had become a body, but not just my body,’ she writes. ‘It was someone else’s body now. It was not altogether unpleasant — merely surreal, dislocating and strange. Submission for new life. Fading into a season.’ The strain of carrying a pregnancy, bearing the child and giving birth is a major cause of mental ill health among women — even before post-birth parenting truly begins. Zooming in and out from relationship breakdowns later in the book, she recounts the challenges of managing the custody of her son with her ex-partner and writes movingly of the pressure to raise a healthy, happy child.
Seeing another life unfold in front of us for which we share both control and responsibility is a daunting, dizzying prospect. There are commonalities between Spens’s book and Tom Whyman’s recent memoir, Infinitely Full Of Hope. Like Spens, Whyman — also a philosopher — considers the state of the world into which the child is born. Every generation, he writes, seems to feel they live at once in the greatest and most civilised age but also in the most unprecedented and dire of global situations. Whyman interrogates Kant’s imperatives beyond morality and knowledge to question the power of hope in helping us to love and its possibility of redeeming the world. Nick Cave’s recent exploration of grief and the search for revolutionary resilience, Faith, Hope and Carnage, similarly suggests that the active work of kindness lives through hope. In a world of inevitable cruelty we cannot ‘fix’ The Fear, but we can mitigate it.
Spens takes on the mantle of single parent with spirit, embracing her deeply personal and private relationship with her son. In spite of all the suffering recounted in the book, she seems to find both challenge and resolve in their life together. The experience is enriched by her illustrations, which depict some of the people and situations featured in the book in the form of light sketches. She lets people be shown as they are, without all the loose ends neatly tied off or connected, with breaks and breathing gaps for where the light gets in.
Alongside these metaphysical observations are three deftly interwoven personal narratives: her father’s terminal illness; reflections on a series of damaging, abusive relationships; and her PhD research into public perceptions of the threat from terrorism. She recounts her challenges in caring for her father, and of becoming a parent herself. The philosophical approach adds heft, illuminating but never obscuring: Spens is admirably sparing with technical terms, which keeps the narrative engaging and considered. She describes with haunting precision the exacting formality of standardised psychological assessments, which provide a suitably detached view on moments of trauma, the triggering events that can shadow our lives.
When Spens begins her PhD studies at St Andrews, she returns to the family home in Fife. The choice to go home, to regroup and be with family, was not a moment of regression but a healthy and natural reaction to the fear she experienced working as an au pair, adrift and isolated in Paris. The author describes how she cares for her father by being present and available as he cloisters himself in his bedroom, emotionally distant. In her close attention, she comes to absorb her father’s worry over the imminence of death.
After emerging from depression, Spens re-examines her past. She touches on the inequality inherent in masochistic relationships, the way people take on the role of victim in the hope of changing their partner — an act of endurance, while the entitled sadistic partner remains aloof or indifferent. Determined not to repeat her past mistakes, she draws on Nietzsche's master-slave theory, whereby the individual must exercise strength in determining their own choices but also remain sensitive to the needs of others.
The account of Spens’ pregnancy becomes intertwined with the loss of her father and the subsequent months of grief. 'I had become a body, but not just my body,’ she writes. ‘It was someone else’s body now. It was not altogether unpleasant — merely surreal, dislocating and strange. Submission for new life. Fading into a season.’ The strain of carrying a pregnancy, bearing the child and giving birth is a major cause of mental ill health among women — even before post-birth parenting truly begins. Zooming in and out from relationship breakdowns later in the book, she recounts the challenges of managing the custody of her son with her ex-partner and writes movingly of the pressure to raise a healthy, happy child.
Seeing another life unfold in front of us for which we share both control and responsibility is a daunting, dizzying prospect. There are commonalities between Spens’s book and Tom Whyman’s recent memoir, Infinitely Full Of Hope. Like Spens, Whyman — also a philosopher — considers the state of the world into which the child is born. Every generation, he writes, seems to feel they live at once in the greatest and most civilised age but also in the most unprecedented and dire of global situations. Whyman interrogates Kant’s imperatives beyond morality and knowledge to question the power of hope in helping us to love and its possibility of redeeming the world. Nick Cave’s recent exploration of grief and the search for revolutionary resilience, Faith, Hope and Carnage, similarly suggests that the active work of kindness lives through hope. In a world of inevitable cruelty we cannot ‘fix’ The Fear, but we can mitigate it.
Spens takes on the mantle of single parent with spirit, embracing her deeply personal and private relationship with her son. In spite of all the suffering recounted in the book, she seems to find both challenge and resolve in their life together. The experience is enriched by her illustrations, which depict some of the people and situations featured in the book in the form of light sketches. She lets people be shown as they are, without all the loose ends neatly tied off or connected, with breaks and breathing gaps for where the light gets in.