24,656
edits
Changes
no edit summary
SYMPTOM
[[Anxiety]] ([[French]]:''angoisse'') has long been recognised in [[psychiatry]] as one of the most common [[symptom]]s of mental disorder.
DESCRIPTION
Psychiatric descriptions of anxiety generally refer to both mental phenomena (apprehension, worry) and bodily phenomena (breathlessnes, palpitations, muscle tension, fatigue, dizziness, sweating and tremor).
Psychiatrists also distinguish between generalised anxiety states, when "free-floating anxiety" is present most of the time, and "panic attacks", which are "intermittent episodes of acute anxiety."<ref>Hughes, 1981: 48-9</ref>
The German term employed by [[Freud]] (''Angst'') can have the psychiatric sense described above, but is by no means an exclusively technical term, being also in common use in ordinary speech.
[[Freud]] developed two theories of [[anxiety]] during the course of his work.
From 1884 to 1925 he argued that [[neurotic]] [[anxiety]] is simply a transformation of [[sexual]] [[libido]] that has not been adequately discharged.
In 1926, [[Freud]] argued that [[anxiety]] is a reaction to a '[[trauma]]tic situation', an experience of [[helplessness]] in the face of an accumulation of excitation that cannot be discharged.
[[Trauma]]tic situations are precipitated by 'situations of danger' such as birth, [[loss]] of the [[mother]] as [[object]], [[loss]] of the [[object]]'s [[love]] and, above all, [[castration]].
[[Freud]] distinguishes between 'automatic anxiety', when the [[anxiety]] arises directly as a result of a [[trauma]]tic situation, and 'anxiety as signal', when the [[anxiety]] is actively reproduced by the [[ego]] as a warning of an anticipated situation of danger.
In his early work, [[Lacan]] relates [[anxiety]] to the [[threat]] of [[fragmentation]] which the [[subject]] confronts in the [[mirror stage]].
It is only long after the [[mirror stage]], he argues, that these fantasies of bodily dismemberment coalesce around the [[penis]], giving rise to [[castration]] [[anxiety]].<ref>Lacan, 1938: 44</ref>
He also links [[anxiety]] with the [[fear]] of being engulfed by the devouring [[mother]].
This theme (with its distinctly [[Klein]]ian tone) remains an important aspect of [[Lacan]]'s account of [[anxiety]] thereafter, and marks an apparent difference between [[Lacan]] and [[Freud]]: whereas [[Freud]] posits that one of the causes of [[anxiety]] is [[separation]] from the [[mother]], [[Lacan]] argues that it is precisely a lack of such [[separation]] which induces [[anxiety]].
After 1953, [[Lacan]] comes increasingly to articulate [[anxiety]] with his concept of the [[real]], a [[trauma]]tic element which remains [[external]] to [[symbolisation], and hence which lacks any possible mediation.
This [[real]] is "the essential object which isn't an object any longer, but this something faced with which all words cease and all categories fail, the object of anxiety par excellence."<ref>{{S2}} p.164</ref>
As well as linking [[anxiety]] with the [[real]], [[Lacan]] also locates it in the [[imaginary]] [[order]] and contrasts it with [[guilt]], which he situates in the [[symbolic]].<ref>Lacan, 1956b: 272-3</ref>
"Anxiety, as we know, is always connected with a loss . . . with a two-sided relation on the point of fading away to be superseded by something else, something which the patient cannot face without vertigo."<ref>Lacan, 1956b: 273</ref>
In the seminar of 1956-7 Lacan goes on to develop his theory of [[anxiety]] further, in the context of his discussion of [[phobia]].
[[Lacan]] argues that [[anxiety]] is the radical danger which the [[subject]] attempts to avoid at all costs, and that the various subjective formations encountered in [[psychoanalysis]], from [[phobia]]s to [[fetishism]], are protections against [[anxiety]].<ref>{{S4}} p.23</ref>
Anxiety is thus present in all [[neurotic]] [[structure]]s, but is especially evident in [[phobia]].<ref>{{E}} p.321</ref>
Even a [[phobia]] is preferable to [[anxiety]];<ref>{{S4}} p.345</ref> a [[phobia]] at least replaces [[anxiety]] with [[fear]] (which is focused on a particular object and thus may be symbolically worked-through).<ref>{{S4}} p.243-6</ref>
In his analysis of the case of [[Little Hans]],<ref>Freud, 1909b</ref> [[Lacan]] argues that [[anxiety]] arises at that moment when the [[subject]] is poised between the [[imaginary]] preoedipal triangle and the [[Oedipal]] [[quaternary]].
It is at this junction that Hans's real [[penis]] makes itself felt in infantile masturbation; [[anxiety]] is produced because he can now measure the difference between that for which he is loved by the [[mother]] (his position as [[imaginary phallus]]) and that which he really has to give (his insignificant real organ).<ref>{{S4}} p.243</ref>
[[Anxiety]] is this point where the [[subject]] is suspended between a moment where he no longer knows where he is and a future where he will never again be able to refind himself.<ref>{{S4}} p.226</ref>
[[Hans]] would have been saved from this [[anxiety]] by the [[castrating]] intervention of the [[real]] [[father]], but this does not happen; the [[father]] fails to intervene to separate [[Hans]] from the [[mother]], and thus [[Hans]] develops a [[phobia]] as a substitute for this intervention.
Once again, what emerges from [[Lacan]]'s account of [[Little Hans]] is that it is not separation from the [[mother]] which gives rise to [[anxiety]], but failure to separate from her.<ref>{{S4}} p.319</ref>
Consequently, [[castration]], far from being the principal source of [[anxiety]], is actually what saves the [[subject]] from [[anxiety]].
In the 1960-1 [[seminar]], [[Le transfert]], [[Lacan]]
stresses the relationship of [[anxiety]] to [[desire]].
[[Anxiety]] is a way to sustain [[desire]] when the [[object]] is [[missing]].
[[Desire]] is a remedy for [[anxiety]], easier to bear than [[anxiety]].<ref>{{S8}} p.430</ref>
He also argues that the source of [[anxiety]] is not always internal to the [[subject]], but can often come from another, just as it is transmitted from one animal to another in a herd; "if anxiety is a signal, it means it can come from another."<ref>{{S8}} p.427</ref>
This is why the [[analyst]] must not allow his own [[anxiety]] to interfere with the [[treatment]], a requirement which he is only able to meet because he maintains a [[desire]] of his own, the [[desire]] of the [[analyst]].<ref>{{S8}} p.430</ref>
In the [[seminar]] of 1962-3, entitled simply '[[Anxiety]]', [[Lacan]] argues that [[anxiety]] is an [[affect]], not an emotion, and furthermore that it is the only [[affect]] which is beyond all doubt, which is not deceptive.<ref>{{S11}} p.41</ref>
Whereas [[Freud]] distinguished between [[fear]] (which is focused on a specific object) and [[anxiety]] (which is not), [[Lacan]] now argues that anxiety is not without an [[object]] (''n'est pas sans objet''); it simply involves a different kind of [[object]], an [[object]] which cannot be [[symbolise]]d in the same way as all other [[object]]s.
This [[object]] is [[objet petit a]], the [[object-cause of desire]], and [[anxiety]] appears when something appears in the place of this [[object]].
[[Anxiety]] arises when the [[subject]] is confronted by the [[desire]] of the [[Other]] and does not know what [[object]] he is for that [[desire]].
[[Lacan]] links [[anxiety]] to the concept of [[lack]].
[[Anxiety]] arises when [[lack]] is itself [[lack]]ing.
[[Anxiety]] is the [[lack]] of a [[lack]].
[[Desire]] arises from [[lack]].
[[Anxiety]] is not the [[absence]] of the [[breast]], but its enveloping [[presence]].
it is the possibility of its [[absence]] which is, in fact, that which saves us from [[anxiety]].
[[Acting out]] and [[passage to the act]] are last [[defence]]s against [[anxiety]].
[[Anxiety]] is also linked to the [[mirror stage]].
Even in the usually comforting experience of seeing one's reflection in the mirror there can occur a moment when the specular image is modified and suddenly seems strange to us.
In this way, Lacan links anxiety to Freud's concept of the uncanny.<ref>Freud, 1919h</ref>
Whereas the [[seminar]] of 1962-3 is largely concerned with [[Freud]]'s second theory of [[anxiety]] (anxiety as signal), in the [[seminar]] of 1974-5 [[Lacan]] appears to return to the first Freudian theory of anxiety (anxiety as transformed [[libido]]).
Thus he comments that [[anxiety]] is that which exists in the interior of the [[body]] when the [[body]] is overcome with phallic jouissance.<ref>Lacan, 1974-5: seminar of 17 December 1974</ref><ref>anxiety 41, 73 [[Seminar XI]]</ref>
== References ==
<references/>
[[Category:Jacques Lacan]]
[[Category:Terms]]
[[Category:Dictionary]]
[[Category:Concepts]]
[[Category:Psychoanalysis]]
