The Concept of Anxiety in Relation to the Development of Psychoanalysis1

I have attempted in this paper to review briefly the psychoanalytic concept of anxiety, tracing some of the landmarks in the development of Freud's views on the subject. I have also tried to indicate the trends of recent developments, attempting as far as

possible to limit my attention to specifically psychoanalytic contributions. From the period of Freud's earliest discoveries anxiety has occupied a central position in psychoanalytic theory. In the first place, here more than anywhere else, we are on the borderlines between the realms of psychology and physiology. This has been evident throughout, from Freud's earliest formulations of the anxiety neurosis as a "toxic" manifestation to recent stimulating work on the physiological and psychological effects of unresolved sustained stress particularly in the early months of life. That anxiety bears some relation to physiological stress appears to be undoubted. In addition, however, it appears that this same physiological stress is at a relatively early stage of development experienced by the psychic apparatus. Here it is localized in the ego, or its more primitive precursors, and serves as a stimulus for the development of defensive processes. The quality and efficiency of these defenses will at every period of life be determined partly by the greater or lesser demands which have been put on the organism in the earliest stages of development, partly on the degree to which a new danger situation whether external or internal regressively revives older fears, partly on the degree and extent of the new stimulus, partly on inborn factors possibly related to the capacity to tolerate unrelieved tension without somatic discharge. In spite of the very great importance for future development of recent work in related fields, the detailed understanding of the predisposition to anxiety, of specific anxiety situations, and of the various methods by which they are handled, has been and remains the main task of clinical psychoanalysis.