Anxiety occurs because of a threat to the values a person identifies with his existence as a self … most anxiety comes from a threat to social, emoti… - Rollo May

Another example of how the sense of the self has been disintegrating in our day can be seen when we consider humor and laughter. It is not generally realized how closely one’s sense of humor is connected with one’s sense of selfhood. Humor normally should have the function of preserving the sense of self. It is an expression of our uniquely human capacity to experience ourselves as subjects who are not swallowed up in the objective situation. It is the healthy way of feeling a “distance” between one’s self and the problem, a way of standing off and looking at one’s problem with perspective. One cannot laugh when in an anxiety panic, for then one is swallowed up, one has lost the distinction between himself as subject and the objective world around him.

But in our age of emptiness, tragedies are relatively rare. Or if they are written, the tragic aspect is the very fact that human life is so empty, as in Eugene O’Neill’s drama, The Iceman Cometh. This play is set in a saloon, and its dramatis personae — alcoholics, prostitutes, and, as the chief character, a man who in the course of the play goes psychotic — can dimly recall the periods in their lives when they did believe in something. It is this echo of human dignity in a great void of emptiness that gives this drama the power to elicit the emotions of pity and terror of classical tragedy.

One must have at least a readiness to love the other person, broadly speaking, if one is to be able to understand him.