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Anxiety is an unpleasurable affect in which the individual experiences a feeling of danger whose cause is unconscious. Freud had already begun considering the problem of anxiety in his correspondence with Wilhelm Fliess at the very start of his psychoanalytic work (1950a [1887-1902]). His subsequent efforts were more and more systematic as he developed two successive theories of anxiety.

In both of Freud's theories of anxiety a fundamental role is played by an absence of discharge, and hence of instinctual satisfaction. In his first account, the sexual instinct, undischarged, was described as being transformed explicitly into anxiety by a seemingly biological mechanism (1895b [1894]). Somatic sexual excitation with the help of sexual ideas thus could not develop into psychic libido. However, sexual representations could be repressed, and their attendant excitation either diverted toward somatic outlets, so giving rise to hysterical conversion symptoms or, alternatively, redirected into the substitute representations typical of anxiety hysteria or phobic neurosis.

In Freud's second theory of anxiety, set forth in Inhibitions, Symptoms, and Anxiety (1926d [1925]), unsatisfied instincts were not explicitly evoked. In this account, anxiety as a signal is developed by the ego as a defensive measure against automatic anxiety. The infant's biological and mental immaturity does not enable it to confront the increase in tension arising from the enormous amounts of instinctual excitation that it cannot discharge and satisfy. This generates a state of distress that is traumatic for the newborn, triggering automatic anxiety. The infant gradually comes to understand that the maternal object can put an end to this state of affairs. It is then that the loss of the mother is experienced as a danger, and this experience constitutes anxiety as a signal.

When the newborn begins to perceive its mother, it is unable to distinguish temporary absence from enduring loss; thus from the moment the mother is lost sight of, the baby behaves as if it is never going to see her again. Repeated experiences of satisfaction have created this object, the mother, which, as need arises, is intensely cathected in a way that might be described as nostalgic. From this moment on, in Freud's view, object-loss provokes psychic pain, while anxiety is the reaction to the danger associated with that loss. Sadness arises whenever reality-testing forces an acknowledgment that the object has been lost. In its various forms, object-loss becomes the prototype of later anxieties, which Freud lists as: anxiety at the loss of the love of the object, castration anxiety, and anxiety at the loss of the love of the superego.

The novelty of this theorization derives, on the one hand, from the genetic notion according to which anxiety is tied to the fear of re-experiencing very early human states of distress, and on the other hand, from the fact that these states are associated during early infancy with various fantasies about the maternal object, and later with fantasies concerning other objects, including the father (castration anxiety or anxiety at the loss of the love of the superego). The close connection thus posited between anxiety and ideation is radically at odds with Freud's first theory of anxiety.

Anxiety always occupied a central place in the work of Melanie Klein, first of all with respect to technique, and secondly in terms of theory. She stated repeatedly that her chief technical principle was that interpretation must focus on the point of maximum anxiety. Equilibrium between the life instincts and the death instincts was fundamental to Klein's understanding of the different forms of anxiety and the fantasies that expressed them. In her earliest writings, she associated anxiety and its related inhibitions with sexual conflicts of childhood bound up with the Oedipus complex. At the same time, however, she was struck by the scope of aggressive fantasies in young children, especially during what she called the phase of maximal sadism. She gradually came to view the child's aggressiveness towards the mother's body and its fantasy contents (penis, baby, feces, etc.) as responsible for an anxiety based on the fear of the reciprocal aggression it could provoke. The danger intrinsic to anxiety was thus seen as the result of the subject's excessive aggressiveness.

Although to begin with Klein's theory leaned heavily on Freud's Inhibitions, Symptoms, and Anxiety, from 1935 on, and especially after 1940, with the gradual working out of the concept of the "depressive position," she assigned object-loss a central role. This implied a change in the conceptualization of anxiety, which acquired a depressive character: anxiety was now seen as expressing "pain," which for Klein included both suffering and sadness in Freud's sense. Anxiety states were engendered by lived experiences of object-loss that were more or less definitive and irreversible.

Since experiences of loss were closely associated with the damage wreaked in fantasy by aggressive impulses, painful feelings were accompanied by feelings of conscious or unconscious guilt. This guilt generally tended to remain unconscious because of the great importance it assumed for the subject, who attributed an all-powerful destructiveness to his own aggression. The ego would then turn to radical (psychotic, manic, or depressive) defenses, which also made it difficult for painful feelings to gain access to consciousness. On the other hand, the more real the guilt, the more vigorously it would be supported by the ego, clearing a path to consciousness by way of feelings of sadness. A basic exception to this rule were the strong guilt feelings manifested by melancholics, whose self-reproach masked an attempt by the ego to overwhelm the introjected and attacked object with guilt.

After introducing the "paranoid-schizoid position" (1946), which she contrasted with the depressive position as a type of psychic functioning, Melanie Klein was able to develop a systematic theory of anxiety and guilt (1948). The theory relied primarily on Freud's concept of the death instinct, which Klein had adopted. In this view, anxiety was provoked by the danger with which the death instinct threatened the organism. Klein spoke of anxiety about "annihilation" and "fragmentation" with reference to very primitive terrors triggered by the inner working of the death instinct and with reference to the paranoid anxiety generated by persecutory objects or by the primitive superego. In this sense fragmentation anxiety may be considered a very archaic precursor of castration anxiety.

In the face of maternal frustration, Klein contended, the sense of an internal threat created by the death instinct reinforces the projection of destructive impulses by the primitive ego of the paranoid-schizoid position. As a consequence the breast as "bad" part-object becomes the source of "paranoid" or persecutory anxiety. Another portion of the death instinct is used by the ego in the form of aggression to attack the persecutory object. Introjection of both the persecutory breast and the persecutory penis is the foundation of the primitive superego, which is at first difficult to distinguish from internal persecutory objects since it provokes very intense persecutory anxiety (fear of fragmentation). This very early superego, in spite of its aggressiveness, strives to protect the libidinal bonds that the ego is meanwhile forming with good or idealized objects, which are experienced as the source of life.

As progress is made, with the help of libidinal instincts, toward the successful integration of aggression, fantasies arise, characteristic of the early stages of the Oedipus complex, involving part-objects in the process of being made whole: the mother's stomach and its fantasized contents (penis, baby, feces, etc.). If such objects provoke psychotic persecutory anxieties, these will manifest themselves clinically as the outcome of a defensive transformation of intolerable depressive anxieties produced under pressure from an overly aggressive primitive superego. In fact, as Klein indicated in her last writings, the paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions act simultaneously, whether in the service of defense or of integration. In clinical work, this is reflected in the coexistence of paranoid and depressive anxieties; one or the other will prevail, depending on which position is predominant in the patient.

During the various steps in the integration of the depressive position, a whole range of depressive anxieties is encountered, as distinguished by the particular fantasies that attend the loss of the libidinally cathected object in each type of case (Palacio Espasa, 1993). Thus whenever fantasies of catastrophic destruction come to the fore and the damage is experienced by the subject as irreparable because of the great force of his aggression, as he perceives it, the intensity of the ensuing guilt makes the pain and sadness hard to bear. The ego can only resort to psychotic defenses that transform these disastrous depressive anxieties into persecutory anxieties.

Where fantasies of destruction are less significant, and the subject's aggressiveness is experienced as less destructive, fantasies of the death of libidinally cathected objects may be prevalent. The ego can then use its store of libido, which it experiences as limited, as a massive barrier to any manifestation of aggression. This arouses intense feelings of guilt, and hence of responsibility for fears of death or of object-loss. The ego tends to defend itself against such painful depressive affects either in manic fashion, through identification with idealized and intact objects, or else by melancholic means, such as identification with the dead or destroyed aspects of objects.

When fantasies of loss of the object's love predominate, they center on rejection or abandonment by the object. Death fantasies are less intense and are experienced as more easily reversible because of the greater libidinal capacity available to the ego of subjects in this category. Under these circumstances the ego has a whole panoply of neurotic defenses at its disposal. These include the retroactive denial of the ill consequences of the subject's aggression and reaction-formations against aggression of a typically obsessive-neurotic kind. By means of phobic displacement and symbolization, a predominance of libidinal impulses facilitates the transformation of the conflict provoked by the loss of the object's love into a triangular conflict in which fantasies of exclusion become more prominent. Given well-integrated instinctual relationships with two highly cathected parental imagos, the experienced object-loss may be reduced to that of the loss of the incestuous object's exclusive love. On the other hand, the dangerous aggressiveness deemed responsible for the loss of the object's love may be projected onto the other parent, who then becomes a rival. An oedipal situation is thus created, along with the various conflicts, directly or indirectly expressed, that characterize the Oedipus complex.

In short, as the intensity of depressive anxieties decreases, the Oedipus complex comes to the fore thanks to the transformation of depressive conflict into a variety of neurotic conflicts that generate castration anxiety. In neurosis, however, along with castration anxiety intense depressive anxieties (especially guilt) may continue to exist with respect to the oedipal parents—more complete objects, often neglected in the literature on neurosis. Such anxieties may indeed occasion significant regression back toward depressive conflict.

In psychoanalytic theory castration anxiety is closely bound up with the Oedipus complex. For Freud castration is one of the primal fantasies. In his view of childhood sexuality, the Oedipus complex makes its appearance during the stage of phallic primacy, which means that castration anxiety is rather similar in the two sexes. Because of the overvaluation of the phallus, the child does not recognize the female sex as such and considers it to be the result of castration. In Inhibitions, Symptoms, and Anxiety Freud sees castration as one loss, on the level of genital sexuality, in a series of object-losses: the loss of the mother's breast, the loss of the contents of the intestines, and so on.

For Melanie Klein castration anxiety develops as a fear of reprisal for the child's oedipal rivalry with the parent of the same sex. In boys this becomes an anxiety about the loss of the penis at the hands of a vengeful father; in girls it becomes an anxiety about attacks against her own belly by the persecuting maternal object. From this theoretical standpoint, castration anxiety appears as a form of punishment for the manic and narcissistic fantasies constructed by the young child as protection against its feelings of exclusion from the sexual and genital relations of the parents, to which it does not have access because of its biological immaturity. The infant then takes possession in fantasy of the idealized sexual attributes of the parent of the same sex, who thus becomes a rival, and imagines it is the exclusive recipient of the love of the parent of the opposite sex. Such a fantasy position can only generate castration anxiety, if for no other reason than that it derives from the infant's apprehension of its own biological immaturity as a mutilation.

Separation anxiety appears when the subject experiences separation as a more or less irreversible object-loss. In the descriptions given by Margaret Mahler, the very young infant manifests separation anxieties after the fifth or sixth month, and they become especially significant between 15 and 18 months of age, during the rapprochement subphase of the separation-individuation (Mahler et al.). During this time the baby experiences real despair, feelings close to the nascent melancholy that Klein describes as occurring at the height of the depressive position. The presence of the external mother is essential, for her internal image is experienced as very much under threat from the child's aggressive fantasies, perceived by the child as massive and highly destructive. Only after the age of two or three, during the phase of object constancy, does the child become able little by little to overcome separation anxiety; by then it can retain an inner mental representation of the mother that is cathected for the most part by libidinal impulses.

Anxiety in the presence of actual danger, or "realistic anxiety," is a somewhat paradoxical concept employed by Freud in Inhibitions, Symptoms, and Anxiety, where (as we have seen) he views anxiety as arising from a felt danger from within occasioned by object-loss. Freud himself resolves the ambiguity when he asserts, in discussing apparently external dangers such as the loss of the object's love, or castration anxiety, that "the loved person would not care to love us nor should we be threatened with castration if we did not entertain certain feelings and intentions within us. Thus such instinctual impulses are determinants of external dangers and so become dangerous in themselves" (p. 145). In other words, all realistic anxiety is also anxiety tout court, and not simply fear of an external danger, for it always arouses an internal threat. This idea is crucial, of course, to the Kleinian concept of the depressive position, where every outside loss is accompanied by an experience of the loss of internal objects. Primitive experiences of loss are reactivated by the real loss, so that the working-through of such early internal losses is a prerequisite if objects lost in the outside world are to be successfully mourned.

FRANCISCO PALACIO ESPASA

See also: Abandonment; Annihilation anxiety; Anxiety dream; Aphanisis; Claustrophobia; Counterphobic; Defense; Ego; Fear; Hypochondria; Hysteria; Inhibitions, Symptoms, and Anxiety; "Neurasthenia and Anxiety Neurosis"; Nervous Anxiety States and their Treatment; Nightmare; Paranoid-schizoid position; Phobias in children; Primitive agony; Quota of affect; Seminar, Lacan's; Signal anxiety; Specific action; Stranger, fear of; Substitutive formation; Trauma of Birth, The.