This chapter starts by summarising an experiment showing how the brain’s emotion circuitry responds to a set of words signalling threat. The main emotion activated in Brexitspeak is fear; the triggers are both linguistic and visual. They include representation of alarming scenarios, and factual misrepresentations capable of causing various negative emotions. The chapter analyses three well-known cases that illustrate such effects. The first is Vote Leave’s propaganda displayed on the side of a red bus: the slogan was an inaccurate statement that could evoke feelings of attachment, resentment and anger. This is also analysed in terms of speech acts, ambiguous and deniable assertions, and lying. The second case, the rightly controversial ‘breaking point’ poster displayed by Leave.EU had the avowed goal of emotion arousal. The visual element is analysed with reference to cognitive image schemas, and their potential for activating fear reactions. The third case, the most effective of the Vote Leave campaign, was crafted in order to prompt the fear of losing agency. This, too, likely activated the brain’s fear circuitry.

Chapter 3 explores how the host state (France) and the home state (Tunisia) influenced the possibilities, nature and forms of pro- and anti-regime activism. It shows how the trans-state space of mobilisation should be understood in the light of the diverse and dynamic opportunities and constraints it offered. It first examines the ways in which the Tunisian system of control – the politics of encadrement – worked from afar, and shows how this system was characterised by a dialectic of assistance and surveillance. Through social and cultural encadrement, as well as surveillance, propaganda and a pervasive sense of threat, the Tunisian party-state succeeded in constraining Tunisian anti-regime mobilisation while simultaneously facing difficulties in encouraging support and pro-regime action in France. The chapter also looks at the ways in which the French authorities managed the different groups, from a diplomatic approach towards Ben Ali’s party-state to a securitised approach towards Islamists and a tendency towards indifference to the leftist movements.

This chapter explores how the three Middle English Otuel romances grapple with concerns about the power of non-Christian empires, Christian military vulnerability, and rash crusader conduct caused by the Mongol conquests, the Mamlūk recovery of Acre, and Ottoman victories at Nicopolis and Constantinople. The first part of the chapter reads the Otuel romances against the development of a dialectic of fear and hope in contemporary political discourse: fear about Christendom’s vulnerability and hope that a powerful non-Christian ally would infuse the Christian community with much-needed strength. The second part of the chapter discusses how these romances engage with and adapt what I call “reverse Orientalism”: a pan-European mode in which Muslim figures (real or imaginary) are made to look down on and offer damning critiques of Christians.

Lawyers are the leaders who defend society’s light. Like artists, lawyers must “dream the culture forward.” The responsibility to understand and improve lawyers’ brain health and mental strength extends to our communities because of the privilege, power, and prestige we enjoy. The neuro-intelligent lawyer and legal organization can enlighten government, business, media, education, and philanthropic entities. Like Seth Godin’s insight in The Song of Significance that work is not working for many employees, society isn’t working for many people. Social structures that feature fear, scarcity, exclusion, steep hierarchy, and extreme competition are dehumanizing. And humans are suffering. Maverick lawyer leaders must first dream, and then act, to move the culture forward. They must make neuro-intelligence available to all people, so they can experience the full range of their identities and capabilities. We cannot afford to exclude and lose humans and the light they could bring to the world. These lawyer leaders must educate us about the toxicity of extreme competition and cultures built on fear, scarcity, and chronic stress. These Mavericks can lead the social moonshot movement to further heal and humanize society.

This chapter investigates fundamentalist experience in self-described fundamentalist communities in order to ascertain the structures and motivations of their experiences. It shows how fundamentalist experience provides an alternative space and time, thus separating itself from society and living in highly structured fashion. Such experience is marked by an intense preoccupation with corporeality in particular, although affect also plays an important role. Fundamentalist communities provide a whole vision of the world – a way of being in the world – that makes other ways of living impossible to envision. Fundamentalist experience is essentially not at home in the world and is marked by profound angst about its own existence. It therefore cannot allow individual appropriation of religious life, but imposes tight control on its members. Fundamentalist experience is deeply marked by the desire for assurance and security in the face of the loss of the home, the world, and one’s identity within it.

Fears do not simply reflect the reality of the underlying dangers. Fear is itself created by society’s debates about what count as risks and how these should be managed. Beck has argued that modernity’s uncertainties have arisen from technological developments themselves, in that these have generated self-destructive threats that they are incapable of controlling. This chapter argues that Rome’s social structure generated its own specific set of anxieties. Just as technology has today created anxieties about the downside of that innovation, in Rome, empire generated a set of fears concerning its perceived negative side-effects. These were focused on moral issues, and their anxieties were expressed in areas where they had their own expertise, in particular the law and rhetoric. Their fears were also often constructed in a backward-looking way, seeking to reduce future risk by returning to the traditions of the past.

Children with sensory superpowers live life out loud! They have a vivid experience of themselves and the world around them that adds richness to life. Pain sensitivity does not have to be a vulnerability. This chapter is about reframing visceral hypersensitivity as an asset that contributes to three specific superpowers. First, children with visceral sensitivity have spell-binding powers of perception. Because of their history of pain, children may become hyper-vigilant and scared of all the sensations they notice. As they become FBI agents, children learn to harness this perception and use playfulness and curiosity to detect body clues and investigate body mysteries. Second, children with visceral hypersensitivity have awe-inspiring self-awareness. Readers learn about the function, power, and experience of emotions. The intensity with which children feel their bodies runs parallel to strong emotions that can provide vital information to help them get to know and trust themselves. Finally, children with sensory superpowers have faster-than-lightening intuitive decision-making capacities. We explore how sensitivity to physical sensations in the gut can translate to strong feelings that help one “go with their gut” reaction. This chapter links how the tools of the FBI intervention are designed to harness and build each of these superpowers.

This chapter provides the rationale and background of interoceptive exposure exercises, the body investigations parents and children (and possibly healthcare providers) will perform in each session. The origins of these exercises in the treatment of panic disorder will be reviewed, while introducing key developmental considerations and explaining the importance of an acceptance-based framework. In brief, in the context of panic disorder, interoceptive exposure exercises were intended to provoke a sensation that was feared and to provide new learning that this experience is not dangerous - new learning that competes with prior beliefs of harm or threat. One of the strengths of the FBI approach is that it uses sensations rather than cognitions as a framework for learning. This is essential for children who often do not have access to the content and meaning of their thoughts, or the language to articulate them with insight. As children do not have well-formed beliefs about threats, body exposure investigations are designed to help children learn how smart and trustworthy their bodies are –experiences that may directly contrast with their prior ones of weakness and vulnerability.

In this chapter, the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on new motherhood amongst the contemporary sample are examined through ‘diary’ entries (shared by email, WhatsApp messages or voice notes) shared by participants between April 2020 and May 2021. The pandemic resulted in daily living for many being concertinaed into available rooms in homes, as spaces and time were redefined. Taken-for-granted and minutiae aspects of daily living were suddenly apparent to those not normally involved in these tasks and family, caring and work dynamics shifted. The ‘diary’ entries focus on responses to the first and subsequent lockdowns and restrictions experienced between lockdowns when restrictions continued across the UK (e.g., face coverings, limits on numbers allowed to convene and where, access restricted to some places, childcare and schools being periodically closed). The unique situation and real-time, unfolding responses illuminate several things, including how aspects of perceived good mothering are hard to escape and continue to be invoked to frame individual experiences, including examples of what they perceive to be ‘poor’ mothering (‘too much screen time’) as well as resilience and coming through the trials of lockdown. The hard work of an unremitting sense of maternal responsibility is crystalised through this exceptional year.

Emotions have profound consequences for human functioning. Their influences can be adaptive, guiding people through life and ensuring effective functionality within society, but emotions can also result in irrationality and bias. This chapter focuses on the role of emotion in conspiratorial beliefs, using the QAnon conspiracy theory as an example. Within the chapter, we discuss affective factors that make QAnon appealing to its followers and the role of discrete emotions in the spread of misinformation and conspiratorial beliefs. The chapter also examines the influence of emotions on information processing. Given QAnon supporters’ strong emotional involvement in the movement, we discuss affective influences on information processing through the lens of affective polarization. In addition, we explain how emotions, particularly anger, influence the propensity towards extreme and sometimes violent action that has been on the rise among the followers of QAnon. The chapter concludes with a discussion of potential mitigating variables and strategies that might curb proliferation of QAnon.