Phobias and their Vicissitudes1

Anna Maenchen stated that the purpose of the panel was to re-examine the theory of phobias. She listed some of the problems requiring further study, both theoretical as well as therapeutical. As it has often been pointed out, phobias hold a key position in the psychoanalytic theory of anxiety and symptom formation. The central role of anxiety is more evident in the phobias than in other neuroses. The question is: what kind of anxiety? Does the anxiety in phobias always represent castration anxiety? Freud, in considering what might represent a danger of helplessness, concluded that the danger would be modified in different stages of development, and he correlated these modifications with them. He made a distinction between early infantile phobias (fear of loss of the protecting and gratifying object), and later phobias (castration anxiety).

As to the different infantile phobias, though they have many features in common, they may be structured in various ways. This leads to the relationship between infantile phobias and character formation. The way in which the developing ego transforms the infantile phobias into character traits needs further study. These character traits show as much of the attitude of avoidance as the preceding phobias did.

Of great theoretical significance is the comparison of phobic symptoms and dreams. She mentioned Bertram Lewin's article. The manifest content of phobias—the psychological equivalent of the manifest dream—should be interpreted according to the rules of dream interpretation. There are many excellent studies of the phobic façade, but these deal mainly with the form rather than the content. Freud showed that pregenital and preoedipal anxieties distort regressively the manifest façade. Then there is the question of whether phobias serve as protective shields against severer disturbances, a question which in turn is related to the wider problem of the basic structure of the phobias. Important as the analysis of the lib