Freud's definition of anxiety as a response to a traumatic event leads to closer examination of primary shock, a condition of severe organic disturbances caused by excessive psychic stimulation. Shock may result from inadequacy of the homeostatic response to stress (failure of shock defense). Anxiety is an anticipatory reproduction of the shock reaction (and its congeners)

which is physiological in the postnatal period (oral shock). The economic constellation of this phase recurs in the Oedipal phase and leads to Oedipal shock represented in pavor nocturnus. Anxiety, rage, and repression are anticipatory defenses against annihilation through shock. The anticipatory process seems to provide the rationale for the relation between body and mind. The functions of the ego (the executive of the relief principle) are discussed, as well as problems of neurosis and psychosis.