"The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick" by Peter Handke – behaviour analysis of the protagonist

Piotr Majcher

Abstract

The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick (1970) by Peter Handke is not, as it might seem, a story about sports. The Austrian Nobel Prize winner presents the story of Josef Bloch, a former footballer and currently an assembly worker, who quits his job at a construction site feeling as if he had been fired. Then he makes contact with a cinema cashier, Gerda, whom he strangles after their first night together and leaves for a town on the southern border of Austria. However, it cannot be clearly stated whether he is escaping. Bloch is self-centered and focused on abstract thoughts. Analyzing his behavior allows to recognize the symptoms of generalized anxiety disorder.

The purpose of this article is to present Josef Bloch's mental condition and answer the question why Peter Handke decided to publish The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick. The whole is preceded by a short description of the possibilities of presenting anxiety in literature and its impact on the recipient of the text, as well as the clinical characteristics of generalized anxiety disorder.