Discussions

Anxiety is a psycho-physiological phenomenon which involves the whole organism. The study of this phenomenon requires a holistic and dynamic approach: holistic because the psychological as well as the somatic aspect of the individual is included and because the degree of body participation in anxiety is often inversely proportionate to that of psychological participation. Our approach has to be dynamic because anxiety occupies a key position in the processes with which psychiatry and psychoanalysis are dealing.

What is “dynamic”? Statements about dynamics, in my opinion, are valid and pertinent only to the extent to which they are adequate and meaningful in the context of the structure and the processes to which they are being applied. Attempts to use concepts derived from other sciences, especially physics, have not only failed to be helpful for the understanding of psychological phenomena, they have often actually retarded the progress of psychiatric and psychoanalytic research. A prime example is Freud's early attempt to apply the laws of thermodynamics to psychoanalytic processes. I agree with Juergen Ruesch, who states:

“Undoubtedly the men and women working in physics, chemistry and engineering have shown us how to construct and apply modern scientific models. But unfortunately their systems, which are concerned exclusively with mass effects and not with

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identified and living entities, cannot without extended modification be applied to those disciplines that deal with individuals.1

A meaningful dynamic approach to the phenomenon of anxiety must, in my opinion, be a psychodynamic one, as it is cogently expressed in the report of the Conference on Psychiatric Education of the A.P.A.:

“The main currents of 19th century medical science … have been directed away from any concern with personal motives and in the direction of impersonal, mechanical, physical and chemical phenomena and explanations. To achieve a reliable understanding of motives is, however, the central