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I still think the ideas in my 1953 paper on anxiety are basically correct, and I'll tell you why as briefly as I can. What I suggested, and still subscribe to, is that it is both more accurate and more useful to speak of distress or intense unpleasure in describing the psychic state of a very young child in a traumatic situation, and to reserve the term anxiety for the psychic state of an infant in such a situation who is old enough to remember similar situations in the past, to connect them with external events, for example, absence of the mother, and to anticipate the possibility of their future return. And I might mention that Anny Katan (1972) expressed a similar opinion. That's what's meant by my unitary theory of anxiety.
Others, like Drs. Schur and Hurvich, prefer to follow Freud in labeling as anxiety right from the start what Dr. Katan and I call distress.
The psychic state of a very young infant is moot. One guess is as good as another. But what bears serious consideration is the role of anxiety in later childhood and adult life, say from the oedipal phase on. Dr. Hurvich says there are two kinds of anxiety that the patients we deal with can experience. One is related to present danger, the other to potential danger. The former, related to present danger, is uncontrolled and traumatic, the latter is controlled and functions as a signal.
If I try to relate these statements to observable clinical data, I find myself at a loss. Whether a person is frightened out of her or his wits that some calamity is in store, or whether a person is only a bit worried about the possibility, they have in common the idea of