Rhetorical Analysis Of A Drug To Cure Fear Friedman

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Fear has become omnipresent in society generating conflicts such as anxiety. Professor of clinical psychiatry and director of the psychopharmacology clinic, Richard A. Friedman, in his article, “A Drug to Cure Fear”, argues that the elimination of pathological anxiety with the use of drugs is possible by altering painful emotional memories. He builds his credibility with reputable sources, citing statistics, researches and conveying his knowledge of the subject. He adopts an erudite tone in order to appear optimistic and informed about the possibility that a single drug could cure fear for individuals with fear or neuroscience specialist’s readers. Friedman’s purpose is to persuade and prove his claim through ethos, pathos and logos. Friedman begins his article utilizing pathos by questioning the audience “Who among us hasn’t wanted to let go of anxiety or forget about fear?” (1), …show more content…

He explains how fear isn’t specified with just humans but animals as well by describing how “Several studies of rats done in 2000 showed that a drug called anisomycin […] reduce fear associations […] exposed to the fear again […] they had forgotten their original fear” (3) and that “29 percent of America adults will suffer from anxiety at some point in their lives. Cause-and-effect is present with Mere; Kindt’s research on arachnophobia “exposed to the spider and given the drug were able to touch the tarantula within days and, by three months, many felt comfortable holding the spider in their bare hands” (2). These statistics and observations are a few of various that logically assist his claim that a drug could potentially cure pathological anxiety. In order to make his claim believable, Friedman demonstrates his knowledge through logos by using collected data. The data constructs an appeal to logos and suggests to the reader that this is a problem worth

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