You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Freud's relatively short work of one hundred thirty-six pages will perforce arrest the attention and compel the interest of the psychologist and the psychiatrist alike. For it deals with a subject that has been for many a day a problem of paramount importance in the domains of both normal and abnormal psychology. It presents an exposition of what psychoanalysis can contribute to the understanding of the problem of anxiety (Angst).1 That this topic is of special moment and consequence in the field of psychopathology scarcely needs to be said. Jones has aptly stated: “Including its indirect manifestations, morbid anxiety is the most frequent single symptom in psychopathology, and, I feel tempted to add, perhaps in all medicine; it has been called, and without gross exaggeration, the Alpha and Omega of practical psychiatry. Secondly, the intensity of distress it may give rise to is equaled by that of very few other forms of suffering. Thirdly, the study of the pathogenesis of it is qualified, as perhaps no other, to lead us towards a comprehension of those deeper biological problems concerning the relation of body to mind that underlie the questions of the derivation of mental disturbances in general. Lastly, it is a disorder that in a great many cases obstinately resists treatment, unless this is based on a proper understanding of the pathology of it. “2
As we turn the pages of “Hemmung, Symptom und Angst, “only gradually are we led to sense the immediate occasion of the writing of Freud's book. With a fine feeling for real values, with a noteworthy appreciation of relative importance, and with an exemplary demonstration of restraint Freud has kept this incident well in the background. A suggestive intimation on page 16 states: “Ich halte es auch fiir unberechtigt anzunehmen, dass bei jedem Angstausbruch