The notion of anxiety or anguish arose from observations of a certain number of neurovegetative cardiovascular symptoms, in a context where psychiatry neglected affective and emotional symptomatology, prioritizing strictly mental disorders. It became central to the group of neuroses identified by Freud and Janet, and was the focal point of an entire series of clinical transformations. The term was then partially abandoned, with anxiety attacks becoming panic attacks and “stress” replacing anxiety. But the term itself is the heir to a psychic state akin to distress, taking anguish back to its most archaic forms, those of the anguish of being.