Letters to the Editor

I appreciate Dr. Ingram's thoughtful comments on my paper, “Horney Theory and Mother/Child Impact on Early Childhood.” His letter challenges me to further clarify my thinking about Horney theory and early development. My concern about the broader usage of basic anxiety stems from two sources. First, the actual experience of anxiety in the neonate is different from that of the toddler. I think that it is useful to recognize this difference in our psychoanalytic concepts. Second, overwhelming anxiety, experienced at different developmental stages, will lead to different psychic consequences. If the anxiety is experienced very early, it may lead to borderline conditions or psychosis, rather than neurotic process.

Winnicott dubs the earliest form annihilation anxiety, or unthinkable anxiety. He asks us to think of the baby, “as an immature being who is all the time on the brink of unthinkable anxiety” (1). The varieties of unthinkable anxiety are: going to pieces, falling forever, having no relation to the