Talk:Anxiety (psychoanalysis)

Anxiety (psychoanalysis)

Anxiety in psychoanalysis is a fundamental affect that signals unconscious conflict and plays a central role in the regulation of psychic life. Unlike fear, which is oriented toward a clearly identifiable external object, anxiety is understood as arising from internal psychic processes, particularly conflicts between instinctual drives, ego functions, and symbolic structures. The concept is foundational in the theories of Sigmund Freud, Melanie Klein, and Jacques Lacan, each of whom developed distinct but influential accounts of its origins, functions, and clinical significance.

Historical Development

Sigmund Freud

Freud’s theory of anxiety underwent significant revision over the course of his work. In his early writings, anxiety was conceived as the result of transformed libido: when instinctual (primarily sexual) excitation could not be adequately discharged due to repression, it was converted into anxiety. In this early model, anxiety was treated as a consequence of repression.

By the mid‑1920s, Freud fundamentally revised this position. In Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety (1926), he reconceptualised anxiety as a signal function of the ego rather than a by‑product of repression. Anxiety arises when the ego anticipates danger—either from external reality or from internal instinctual demands—and serves to mobilise defence mechanisms, such as repression, avoidance, or symptom formation.

Freud distinguished three principal forms of anxiety:

Realistic anxiety

Fear in response to actual dangers in the external world

Neurotic anxiety

Fear that instinctual impulses from the id may overwhelm the ego and lead to punishment

Moral anxiety

Fear arising from conflict with the superego, often experienced as guilt or shame

In this structural model, anxiety functions as a warning signal that enables the ego to protect itself from psychic disintegration or traumatic excitation.

Melanie Klein

Melanie Klein expanded psychoanalytic understandings of anxiety by situating it within early development and object relations. For Klein, anxiety emerges in infancy and is central to the organisation of the psyche from its earliest stages. She linked anxiety to primitive unconscious phantasies involving destruction, annihilation, and the loss of internal and external objects.

In the paranoid‑schizoid position, anxiety takes the form of persecutory anxiety, characterised by fears of being attacked or annihilated by internalised “bad” objects. This anxiety is managed through defences such as splitting, projection, and projective identification. As development proceeds, the infant may enter the depressive position, in which anxiety shifts toward guilt, concern, and fear of harming loved objects, now perceived as whole rather than split.

Klein’s account emphasises anxiety as a driving force in psychic development, shaping internal object relations and moral life from infancy onward.

Jacques Lacan

Jacques Lacan reformulated anxiety within his structural re‑reading of Freud, situating it in relation to language, desire, and the symbolic order. Lacan devoted his Seminar X: Anxiety (1962–1963) entirely to the concept, proposing that anxiety is not merely a defensive signal but a structural affect.

Lacan famously asserted that “anxiety is not without an object” (l’angoisse n’est pas sans objet). Unlike fear, whose object is clearly identifiable, the object of anxiety is the objet petit a—the object‑cause of desire. Anxiety arises when the subject comes too close to this object, particularly when the symbolic coordinates that structure desire falter and the subject encounters the Real, that which resists symbolisation.

For Lacan, anxiety is closely linked to the desire of the Other. It emerges when the subject is positioned as the object of the Other’s desire, destabilising the subject’s sense of identity and lack. Rather than being eliminated, anxiety is viewed as a privileged indicator of subjective truth and a key moment in analytic work.

Anxiety and the Unconscious

Across psychoanalytic traditions, anxiety is understood as a marker of unconscious conflict. In Freud’s theory, it arises when repressed wishes threaten to enter consciousness. In Kleinian theory, it reflects conflicts among internal objects and destructive impulses. In Lacanian theory, anxiety signals a breakdown in symbolic mediation and an encounter with the Real. Anxiety may manifest indirectly through dreams, phobias, obsessional rituals, or conversion symptoms, all of which express unconscious conflict in disguised form.

Clinical Significance

In psychoanalytic practice, anxiety is not treated solely as a symptom to be removed. Instead, it is explored and interpreted as a guide to underlying unconscious structures and conflicts. Freud viewed anxiety as central to the formation of neurotic symptoms, while Klein understood it as fundamental to early psychic organisation. Lacan regarded anxiety as a crucial moment in analysis, indicating proximity to desire and subjective truth.

The analytic task is therefore not the eradication of anxiety, but the subject’s increased capacity to recognise, symbolise, and assume responsibility for the unconscious conflicts from which it arises.

Forms of Anxiety in Psychoanalysis

Psychoanalytic literature identifies several forms of anxiety, including:

Signal anxiety

An ego response that warns of impending danger (Freud)

Persecutory anxiety

Fear of annihilation by internal or external objects (Klein)

Depressive anxiety

Guilt and concern over harm to loved objects (Klein)

Structural anxiety

Anxiety arising from proximity to the object‑cause of desire and failure of symbolic mediation (Lacan)

See Also

• Unconscious
• Ego
• Superego
• Defense mechanisms
• Object relations theory
• Object a
• Desire (psychoanalysis)
• Real (Lacan)
• Neurosis