In Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety Freud defined danger situations, aligned them with the various neuroses, and developed a therapeutic perspective in helping patients understand them. Schafer utilizes his own theoretical work on action language to arrive at a concept of anxiety as an action, best remembered by the ego through the use of verbs and adverbs. Danger situations are interpreted as actions (such as recognizing, remembering, and interpreting) taken by persons to define a situation from a certain standpoint. Acting anxiously is a defining feature of the ego which implies a danger situation. The theory of signal anxiety is questioned. Rather than use the term inhibition, Schafer prefers to call it "refraining from taking certain actions." Neurotic symptoms are viewed as actions taken by the patients, rather than afflictions visited upon them. Similarly, character traits are seen as complex actions. From this point of view, the diagnosis of neurosis is the diagnosis of what someone is doing in terms of danger situations.