The Panic Away: Chapter Summary

In the text “Relaxing Your Fears away,” the author presents how Joseph Wolpe, a behavior therapist, used a behavioral technique called systematic desensitization to treat anxiety disorders. Systematic desensitization is a technique that is supposed to lower a person’s level of anxiety steadily. The reason he used this technique was to see if this technique actually worked using his prior ideas that two feelings or responses cannot occur at the same time. Wolpe focused on the phobias his patients had and proposed that when his patients were in a relaxed state, then they would not respond with fear when presented with something that gave them anxiety.

CHAPTER 1: Main characters have a race, Maria hurts her leg. Barbara forced to complete a forfeit, Michele does it instead. Michele completes forfeit. Most of the main characters are talked about. Papa brings them a present of a model Gondola; Acqua Traverse is revealed.

The text chosen for this unit id the book Refuge by prominent Australian writer Jackie French (2013). Refuge follows the story of Faris, a young refugee feeling from his homeland with his grandmother to Australia. On the dangerous boat journey from Indonesia to Australia, they encounter a terrible storm where Faris falls unconscious and wakes up living his dream life in Australia. However, he has no recollection of how he got there. Whilst on the beach, he meets a strange group of children all from different times and places. Faris soon discovers that each child is like him, a migrant who travelled to Australia searching for a better place. Each child is living in their own ‘dream’ Australia and the beach provides a sort of ‘refuge’ from reality for them. Eventually, Faris has to make the decision to either continue living in this dream land or face his reality. This book is interesting as unlike other refugee texts, this novel serves to tell the multicultural history of Australian immigration. French relays the more than 60 000 year old history of people travelling to Australia by boat and makes the statement that all immigrants and refugees need to be treated with empathy and understanding.

Moral Panic Moral panic is a widely used and often misinterpreted concept in social sciences. The term was invented by the British sociologist Stanley Cohen the late sixties. Cohen defined moral panic as a form of collective behaviour during which: "A condition, episode, person or group emerges to become defined as a threat to societal values and interests; its nature is presented in a stylised and stereotypical fashion by the mass media; the moral barricades are manned by editors, bishops, politicians and other right thinking people; socially accredited experts pronounce their diagnosis and solutions; ways of coping are evolved or (more often) resorted to; the condition then disappears,

Criminology is continuously changing and developing. Advances of technology have made media our primary news source for crime. We believe the stories told by our local news media, not doubting a word because these sources are supposedly reliable. Nevertheless, they sometimes do spread false information. It may be intentional or unintentional. According to Cohen, media presence amplifies a problem which did not previously exist (Steeves and Milford, 2015) thus creating a moral panic. As media influence increases, it is necessary for criminologists to study moral panics, such as the Columbine School shootings or the Hurricane Katrina aftermath.

Eric Tang’s Unsettled is an ethnographic account of Cambodian refugees in the Bronx, New York that evokes a nuanced understanding of the refugee experience. Unlike many other ethnographies, Tang’s work centers around one individual named Ra Pronh, a fifty year old woman who survived the Cambodian genocide and has lived as a refugee for most of her life. The bulk of his work draws upon two main sources: Tang’s notes that are gathered from his work as a community organizer in refugee neighborhoods and his interviews with Ra Pronh over a three year time period. Throughout his interviews with Ra, Tang often encountered a language barrier with her. There were times where Ra’s children would translate her words from Khmer to English for Tang to

Fear is often characterized as an irrational sense of negativity toward the unknown or the unlikeable. In the eyes of many Americans, the majority of whom proclaim their Christian beliefs, this sensation is considered unavoidable. Marilynne Robinson argues in her article “Fear”, published by The New York Review of Books in 2015, that “...first, contemporary America is full of fear. And second, fear is not a Christian habit of mind” (Robinson 1). In other words, it is ‘unchristian’ to fear. In both the beginning and conclusion, she clearly expresses credibility through her extensive credentials and strong emotional arguments; however, this is overshadowed by the wordiness, sarcasm, and lack of

David Kennedy’s book Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War 1929-1945 shines light on the financial impacts that hit the country during the Great Depression and World War 2. This book shares how some people assumed that Franklyn D Roosevelt was a successor in getting things moving to a better economy but if it wasn’t for Hoover things may have been worse, or that’s what I took from it. Kennedy starts off the book with talking about the end of World War 1 and how the Great Depression started with the treaty of Versailles because it had led men of World War 2 to believe that they could be better leaders of their country. A prime example would be Hitler who believed that Jewish people were the reason Germany failed and this led to him rising to power.

According to Jewkes (2001: p.74), moral panic is referring to public and political reactions to minority or marginalized individual who appear to be threat to the social values and interest. Moral panic is mostly the consequences when by the media amplify the deviancy and public responses. The ‘bikie gangs’ is presented in a stylised and symbolic fashion by the mass media (Cohen, 2004: 1), fear against ‘bikie gangs is among the Australian society. General public concern about their safety on road and in other occasions because the media tells them that the ‘bikie gangs’ involve in other criminal activities. Moral panic now is not simply a social phenomenon of fear towards crime, but rather a social phenomenon of contemporary media structure,

In the novel Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, the theme of the power of fear

To Gladwell, Choking is a type of failure. The process of overthinking things that were learned unconsciously leads to choking. Since the action learned was obtained through implicit learning not explicit. Gladwell says choking is based on a human basically trying to perform actions never learned through explicit learning. While panic is something completely different than choking. Panic to Gladwell is when you stop thinking. This act of not thinking separates from choking which is the act of too much thinking. Failure is alway prevalent in everything, but measure can be taken to decrease failure. I think that main thing I do to prevent failure is to be prepared. Whether that means doing all my homework or making sure I have an umbrella on

For my summer reading assignment I chose to read “ Panic In Level 4: Cannibals, Killer Viruses, and Other Journeys to the Edge of Science” written by Richard Preston. The book is composed of several articles written by Preston in The New Yorker. It explores new frontiers in science and the people who continue to expand them from genetic entrepreneur Craig Venter to a pair of Russian immigrants who built, from mail-order catalogs, a supercomputer in their New York apartment to search for patterns in that most transcendent numeral, pi.

The video “Duck and Cover” used a certain approach which intended to gain the attention of children in order to inform them about an atomic bombing. The video begins with the incorporation of cartoon animals and a catchy toon, which initially grabs the attention of children. Once the child is interested, the video takes on a more serious tone. It discusses the effects of the blast and explains that: “It could knock you down hard or throw you against a tree or a wall” (“Duck and Cover”). Imagery of such an event could frighten a child. Later on in the film it states that the bomb could occur any time of the year day or night. This could leave a child in fear throughout their day, always thinking about when a bombing could occur. Additionally,

The Siren 1. Brief Summary of the plot The Siren by Kiera Cass is based in Florida and other surrounding states along the coast. It starts off with Kahlen on a cruise ship with her family, to see the world. Along the way the ocean wants her ship. Determined to get the ship she sends out her servants known as sirens.

Adrian Flynn’s playwright “The Valley of the Fear”, adapted from the novel by Conan Doyle, demonstrates how the writer uses techniques to convey an impression of suspense and mystery through scenes with a high level of anticipation and uncertainty. Suspense is achieved through the use of literary devices and events that stimulate the viewer’s moods. Readers wait with anticipation for the next secret to be revealed in strong, sudden scenes. Furthermore, Doyle creates a sense of tension by never giving the reader an entire answer so they can make up their own mind about what’s happening.