2. On the Theory of Anxiety and Guilt (1948)

My conclusions regarding anxiety and guilt have evolved gradually over a number of years; it may be useful to retrace some of the steps by which I arrived at them.

Concerning the origins of anxiety, Freud put forward to begin with the hypothesis that anxiety arises out of a direct transformation of libido. In Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety he reviewed his various theories on the origin of anxiety. As he put it: ‘I propose to assemble quite impartially, all the facts that we know about anxiety without expecting to arrive at a fresh synthesis’ (S.E. 20, p. 132). He stated again that anxiety arises from direct transformation of libido but now seemed to attribute less importance to this ‘economic’ aspect of the origin of anxiety. He qualified this view in the following statements: ‘The whole matter can be clarified, I think, if we commit ourselves to the definite statement that as a result of repression the intended course of the excitatory process in the id does not occur at all; the ego succeeds in inhibiting or deflecting it. If this is so the problem of “transformation of affect” under repression disappears’ (p. 91). And: ‘The problem of how anxiety arises in connection with repression may be no simple one; but we may legitimately hold firmly to the idea that the ego is the actual seat of anxiety and give up our earlier view that the cathectic energy of the repressed impulse is automatically turned into anxiety’ (p. 93).

Regarding the manifestations of anxiety in young children, Freud said that anxiety is caused by the child ‘missing someone who is loved and longed for’ (p. 136). In connection with the girl's most fundamental anxiety, he described the infantile fear of loss of love in terms which in some measure seem to apply to infants of both sexes: ‘If a mother is absent or has withdrawn her love from her child, it is no longer sure of the satisfaction of its needs and is perhaps exposed to the most distressing feelings of tension’ (S.E. 22, p. 87).

In the New I