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In Inhibition, Symptom and Anxiety, Freud proposed the hypothesis that there are two kinds of anxiety: 1, that which arises automatically, without the participation of the ego, as the result of excessive quantity and intensity of psychic stimulation with a resulting state of psychic helplessness; and 2, that which arises as a signal of an approaching danger perceived by the ego. The first type Freud considered to be characteristic of infancy and of the actual neuroses; the second type he considered to be characteristic of later stages of psychic life and of the psychoneuroses. The present paper is concerned with the hypothesis concerning the mode of origin of the first type only. The evidence for this hypothesis is reviewed. The author suggests the following alternative hypotheses. 1. Anxiety is an emotion (affect) which the anticipation of danger evokes in the ego. 2. Anxiety as such is not present from birth or early infancy. In such very early periods the infant is aware only of pleasure or unpleasure as far as emotions are concerned. 3. As experience increases and other ego functions, such as memory and sensory perception, develop, the child becomes able to predict or anticipate that a state of unpleasure (traumatic situation) will develop. This dawning ability of the child to react to danger in advance is the beginning of the specific emotion of anxiety, which in the course of further development we may suppose to become increasingly sharply differentiated from other unpleasant emotions. This alternative hypothesis has the advantage of leaving open the possibility that the emotion experienced by the infant in a traumatic situation is also related genetically to other unpleasant emotions of later life.
AUTHOR'S ABSTRACT