Apathy

boredom is an agitated state and what he called apathetic boredom is simply apathy (Goldberg et al., 2011). One key component in the present definition of boredom is that the individual is motivated to engage, a factor that is precluded by the t

This passage delivers the definitive conceptual severance between apathy and boredom, arguing that apathy — unlike boredom — is characterized by the complete absence of motivational engagement, rendering the category of 'apathetic boredom' a misnomer.

Lench, Heather C., The Function of Emotions: When and Why Emotions Help Us, 2018thesis

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he can do this only by resigning from active living, 'resignation' seems a proper name for this solution. It is in a way the most radical of all solutions and, perhaps for this very reason, most often produces conditions that allow for a fairly smooth functioning.

Horney frames apathetic resignation as the most encompassing neurotic solution, one that purchases surface-level equanimity through a fundamental withdrawal from engaged living.

Horney, Karen, Neurosis and Human Growth: The Struggle Toward Self-Realization, 1950thesis

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there is an absence of goal-direction and planning, which may concern major and minor issues. What does he actually want to do with his life? The question has never occurred to him and is easily discarded, as if it were none of his concern.

Horney anatomizes the resigned neurotic's affective flatness as a structural absence of goal-direction, presenting apathetic indifference to life's purposes as a core feature of the detached character.

Horney, Karen, Neurosis and Human Growth: The Struggle Toward Self-Realization, 1950thesis

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Other eighteenth-century contributions to feeling vocabulary are 'ennui, chagrin, home-sickness, diffidence, apathy, while the older words, excitement, agitation, constraint, embarrassment, disappointment, come to be applied to inner experiences'

Von Franz situates 'apathy' as a concept born with the eighteenth-century turn toward psychological self-reflection, placing it within the historical emergence of feeling-consciousness rather than treating it as a timeless clinical given.

Marie-Louise von Franz, James Hillman, Lectures on Jung's Typology, 2013supporting

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FOUR OF CUPS Moon in Cancer. Lethargy, apathy, and discontent. Boredom. Meditation. Withdrawal of the emotions. Loneliness. Passive receptivity. Rest. Weariness. Disgust. Aversion.

Within a symbolic-psychological reading of the Tarot, apathy appears as one pole of emotional withdrawal — clustered with lethargy, discontent, and aversion — marking a fallow affective condition that may precede transformation.

Greer, Mary K., Tarot for Your Self: A Workbook for the Inward Journey, 1984supporting

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schizophrenia (both for negative symptoms such as apathy and withdrawal, and, positive symptoms such as hallucinations)

Yalom situates apathy as a clinically recognized negative symptom of schizophrenia, distinguishing it from positive symptoms and noting its amenability to group CBT intervention.

Yalom, Irvin D., The Theory and Practice of Group Psychotherapy, Fifth Edition, 2008supporting

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Apathetic boredom, 96 Apathy, 94

This index entry confirms the text's categorical distinction between apathetic boredom and apathy proper, cross-referencing both as discrete analytical entries within the emotion-function framework.

Lench, Heather C., The Function of Emotions: When and Why Emotions Help Us, 2018supporting

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he becomes indiscriminate. Anyone can be a 'very good friend,' 'such a nice fellow,' or 'such a beautiful girl.' But out of sight, out of mind. He may lose interest in them at the slightest provocation without even going to the trouble of examining what is happening.

Horney describes the deterioration of resigned detachment into shallow unrelatedness, a condition functionally akin to apathy in which depth of feeling is replaced by indiscriminate, low-investment social contact.

Horney, Karen, Neurosis and Human Growth: The Struggle Toward Self-Realization, 1950supporting

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he has relinquished his ambition in the sense of giving up any active pursuit of ambitious goals and active strivings toward them. He is determined not to want them, and not even to try to attain them.

Horney describes the volitional structure of resigned non-striving, a willed abdication of desire that underlies the resigned neurotic's apparent apathy toward achievement and mastery.

Horney, Karen, Neurosis and Human Growth: The Struggle Toward Self-Realization, 1950aside

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