The author reviews the development of Freud's thinking on the concept of anxiety, beginning with his earliest ideas of the conversion of dammed-up libido into anxiety and culminating in what is surely Freud's second greatest integrative achievement, the unifying concept in Inhibitions, Symptoms, and Anxiety, wherein 'Freud considered that anxiety is a signal which reminds a person of his helplessness without love and protection'. Ramzy then makes a useful restatement: anxiety detracts from successful creative processes. He also suggests that the common and erroneous belief that neuroses enhance creative productions is often a defensive rationalization for the absence of talent. He does not, however, explore the nature of gift or talent in creativity.