"Maslow saw the biblical Book of Jonah as providing an answer. It related how the prophet Jonah was tasked with a difficult divine mission to perform. Fearful of failure, he attempted to flee from it. While doing so, Jonah was thrown overboard from a storm-tossed ship and swallowed by a huge fish. Swathed unharmed in its belly, Jonah finally accepted his mission and was thereupon thrown up onto the shore so he could perform his appointed task."
"In Maslow's secularized view of this biblical tale, virtually all people experience a harsh ambivalence about fulfilling their life purpose based on their unique mental and physical traits. "We fear our highest possibilities, as well as our lowest ones," he poetically wrote. "We are generally afraid to become that which we can glimpse in our most perfect moments...in such peak moments. And yet we simultaneously shiver with weakness, awe, and fear before these very same possibilities.""
Jonah Complex names a psychological tendency to avoid realizing one's highest potentials and life-purpose responsibilities. The concept links to the biblical Jonah story, in which fear drives Jonah to flee a divine mission before circumstances force him to accept it. Human ambivalence toward peak experiences produces fear of both highest and lowest possibilities, creating hesitation to pursue imagined ideals. The impulse toward self-improvement and self-actualization exists broadly, yet progressive fear and weakness can block progress. Recognition, social support, and deliberate self-directed effort can help individuals confront and overcome this avoidance, enabling action toward meaningful goals.
Read at Psychology Today
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