U. Vianna Filho In his historical evolution, man has been able to
dominate nature by means of his technological achievements, his
knowledge and his inventiveness, attaining an increasing control over
the world and its organization. As a result, his power over his fellow
men has also increased, giving him more, and more responsibility which
leads, of necessity, to one existential problem: is the contemporary
man, with all his power and knowledge, really happy? Technological
progress has brought him several rights and desires: health, better
insight into the future and greater control over his own des- tiny, but
despite all this he still suffers from insecurity and from all the new
problems that he has to face, which fact accounts for his imperfections
and limitations that inevitably generate anxiety. Anxiety, therefore,
constitutes one of the main characteristics of modern man. It can be
foreseen today that, in the near future, the entire population of any
large city will suffer from anxiety and behave in a 'neurotic' way. Man
is seeking relief from pain, suffering and, naturally, also anxiety.
Thus all possible efforts are being made to find a solution for this
anxiety. The search for substances that are able to eliminate anxiety is
one of the constant concerns of modern science, and, in this context,
one of the turn- ing points, as we will see in this volume, has been the
discovery of the chemi- cal agents known as the benzodiazepines.
