Fear.
People will either go out of their way to find it and revel in the fact that they’re being terrified out of their skulls. Or they’ll do whatever it takes to avoid it the way someone with social anxiety avoids parties. Fear is a natural part of the human psyche and has often been cited by philosophers as being among the greatest internal motivators of the human spirit. However, despite the fact that we have extensive knowledge of what terrifies people and how fear can play a game with someone’s mental health, we have barely any idea how, exactly, does fear work in the human mind.
Modern science is still unsure what the chemical responses are in the mind when fear is triggered, or what psychoactive medication (if any) would have an appreciable effect in dispelling fear. There is still more than an air of uncertainty on what biochemical signals the brain produces as a reaction to fear, if there are any being released at all. The development of phobias is a noted process, though there is little data on what the actual biochemical responses they cause are. To put it simply, we may have some understanding of what terrifies us and why, but we...