A Unitary Theory of Anxiety

This is an attempt to begin formulating a unitary theory of anxiety and to present some of its essentials. This interest has many sources. Daily we are experiencing anxiety in ourselves and in the troubled people we are helping. Both we and they are aware of anxiety in many aspects of our living, in others and in the world around us. Many have referred to our time as the “Age of Anxiety.”

My interest is dreams, broadened to the dreaming process, and to process in general, in daily living, in theory and in therapy. A study of dreams soon confronts us with anxiety dreams. Many theories of human nature, motivation, or personality have had their limitations brought to light in attempting to understand anxiety dreams.

Methodology and theory building are a third source of stimulation for this presentation. Some of the values of a theory are that it helps us order our observations and bring them into meaningful relationship. It should be able to utilize more productively data already available, data which did not seem to fit well, or at all, in previous theories, and bring to light new facts. It should make possible the posing and answering of fruitful questions. A theory is economical in ordering our data. Without one they would remain in meaningless confusion and our investigations would be carried on in a hit-or-miss fashion.

There are some who assert that theory is not important, that the theory a therapist is guided by is of limited significance, and that what is important is the personality of the therapist. I speak here of comments by therapists and a trend observed in psychiatric literature. Not so concealed is the implication that theory is of no significance and the person of the therapist all-important. This to me is the invalidation of what so many psychiatrists and psychoanalysts have labored to produce in the last seventy-five years and that has been utilized with so much benefit to so many. This anti-theory attitude implies some theories of it