In Kierkegaard's existentialist drafts, and especially in Heidegger's, anxiety is the situation (Befindlichkeit) which characterizes man and which makes his relationship to himself and to the world comprehensible. The author sees anxiety as the decisive force in Freud's theory of ontogenetic development. Habermas has attributed a 'scientistic self-misunderstanding' to psychoanalysis and the author finds this represented in Freud's (latent) biologically orientated theory of man. Freud analysed 'experiential processes' and 'inner connexions'; according to the author, these cannot be accommodated in the framework of the machine theory of the psychic apparatus or in the theory of the biological determination of man. She therefore proposes that Freud's theory be underpinned with Heidegger's concept of 'being in the world', i.e. the bridging of subject and object, thereby supplying a more satisfactory anthropological basis for his discoveries.