The psychoanalytic concept of anxiety has been changed continuously since 1895 when Freud suggested that anxiety should be a transformation of libido. He thought this transformation resulted from excessive repression of sexual drives. In 1926,
Freud
suggested a new theory of anxiety based on his understanding of interagency conflict in the structural model. According to his new theory, anxiety is a signal of danger when an individual perceives a danger situations. The prototype of the
straumatic
situation is the experience of birth, while the danger situation can be perceived when people anticipate a traumatic situation under different conditions before it really happens. The signal anxiety in response to the anticipation of danger can
be
viewed as relatively less unpleasurable than the anxiety that would develop if there were no signal and the traumatic situation of abandonment fully developed. Thus, signal anxiety is a way of attenuating a more profound and terrifying anxiety.
From the
perspective of a developmental hierarchy, Freud also viewed anxiety as follows ; fear of losing object, fear of losing love, castration fear, and fear of conscience. The concepts on persecutory and disintegration anxiety were later added to this
perspective by Klein and Kohut. According to the modern psychoanalytic concepts on anxiety, it is practically classified for clinicians such as id anxiety, separation anxiety, castration anxiety, and superego anxiety. I present brief clinical
vignettes
to illustrate the 4 different kinds of anxiety better.
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