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This paper has a threefold task—first, an evaluation of the present theoretical status of anxiety and its place in psycho-analytic metapsychology, the divergences which exist and a synthesis into a unitary theory; second, the integration of the concept of anxiety into the psycho-analytic theory of affects and into the recent developments in ego psychology; third, some remarks on anxiety in the therapeutic process.
The first section opens with a description of the two types of anxiety reaction which Freud distinguished: (a) anxiety as a signal, and (b) anxiety resulting from a traumatic factor. Recent psycho-analytic publications dealing with anxiety centre around two main themes—the nature of the 'actual neurosis' and the problem of anxiety in the earliest period of life. Having reviewed this literature the author postulates a unitary theory of anxiety which while consistent with the 'signal' hypothesis is applicable to all demonstrable instances of anxiety reactions. In states of mild or severe damming up of tension (traumatic situation) it is not anxiety which is automatically produced but the affect of unpleasure. Just as diffuse unpleasure is an automatic accompaniment of the tension and discharge of the traumatic state so is the anxiety, set off when the ego is confronted with danger, an automatic and inevitable psychobiological accompaniment. The anxiety in the latter case is used and responded to as a signal but it is not produced by the ego in the first instance.
The second section of the paper describes how anxiety is transformed from an 'all or nothing' response to a more modulated, controlled and effective reaction. This is accomplished by the development and structualization of affect discharge thresholds with the gradual attainment of ego control. If this ego control weakens a reversal of this process can occur and signal anxiety is converted into the traumatic state. Two further problems are raised in this part of the paper—first, the source of