Includes bibliographical references (pages 361-452) and index.

The tangled web of anxiety and fear -- Rethinking the emotional brain -- Life is dangerous -- The defensive brain -- Have we inherited emotional states of mind from our animal ancestors? -- Let's get physical : the consciousness problem -- It's personal : how memory affects consciousness -- Feeling it : emotional consciousness -- Forty million anxious brains -- Changing the anxious brain -- Therapy : lessons from the laboratory.

"Collectively, anxiety disorders are our most prevalent psychiatric problem, affecting about forty million adults in the United States. In Anxious, Joseph LeDoux, whose NYU lab has been at the forefront of research efforts to understand and treat fear and anxiety, explains the range of these disorders, their origins, and discoveries that can restore sufferers to normalcy. LeDoux's groundbreaking premise is that we've been thinking about fear and anxiety in the wrong way. These are not innate states waiting to be unleashed from the brain, but experiences that we assemble cognitively. Treatment of these problems must address both their conscious manifestations and underlying non-conscious processes. While knowledge about how the brain works will help us discover new drugs, LeDoux argues that the greatest breakthroughs may come from using brain research to help reshape psychotherapy. A major work on our most pressing mental health issue, Anxious explains the science behind fear and anxiety disorders-- Source other than Library of Congress.