Changes

Jump to: navigation, search

Anxiety

983 bytes added, 08:00, 24 August 2006
no edit summary
{{Top}}angoisse{{Bottom}}
==Psychiatry==
"[[Anxiety]]" has long been recognised in [[psychiatry]] as one of the most common [[symptom]]s of mental disorder.
[[Psychiatrist]]s 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>
--
==Sigmund Freud==
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]].
[[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 "[[anxiety|automatic anxiety]]," when the [[anxiety]] arises directly as a result of a [[trauma]]tic situation, and "[[anxiety|anxiety as signal]]," when the [[anxiety]] is actively reproduced by the [[ego]] as a warning of an anticipated situation of danger.  ---
==Jacques Lacan==
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 [[fantasy|fantasies]] of bodily dismemberment coalesce around the [[penis]], giving rise to [[castration]] [[anxiety]].<ref>Lacan, {{1938: }} p. 44</ref>
He also links [[anxiety]] with the [[fear]] of being engulfed by the devouring [[mother]].
--- ===Real===
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 with a two-sided relation on the point of fading away to be superseded by something else, something which the patient cannot face without vertigo."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>
===Imaginary===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>{{L}} "[[Works of Jacques Lacan|Fetishism: The Symbolic, the Imaginary and the Real]]" (with W. Granoff), 1956. M. Balint (ed.), ''Perversions: Psychodynamics and Therapy'', New York: Random House, London: Tavistock. pp. 272---3</ref>
<blockquote>"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>{{L}} "[[Works of Jacques Lacan|Fetishism: The Symbolic, the Imaginary and the Real]]" (with W. Granoff), 1956. M. Balint (ed.), ''Perversions: Psychodynamics and Therapy'', New York: Random House, London: Tavistock. p. 273</ref></blockquote>
==Phobia==
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 [[subject]]ive [[formation]]s 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 [[symbolic|symbolically]] worked-through).<ref>{{S4}} p.243-6</ref>
 --- ==Little Hans==In his analysis of the case of [[Little Hans]],<ref>{{F}} "[[Work of Sigmund Freud|Analysis of a Phobia in a Five-Year-Old Boy]]", 1909b. [[SE]] X, 3.</ref> [[Lacan]] argues that [[anxiety]] arises at that moment when the [[subject]] is poised between the [[imaginary]] [[preoedipal phase|preoedipal triangle]] and the [[Oedipal]] [[quaternary]].
It is at this junction that [[Little Hans|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>
[[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 [[separation|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]].
--- ==Desire==
In the [[seminar]] of 1960-1, [[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 He also argues that the source of [[analystanxiety]] must is not allow his own [[anxiety]] always internal to interfere with the [[treatmentsubject]], but can often come from another, just as it is transmitted from one animal to another in a requirement which he herd; "if anxiety is only able to meet because he maintains a [[desire]] of his ownsignal, the [[desire]] of the [[analyst]]it means it can come from another."<ref>{{S8}} p.430427</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>
==Truth==In the [[seminar]] of 1962-3, entitled simply '"[[Anxiety]]'", [[Lacan]] argues that [[anxiety]] is an [[affect]], not an [[affect|emotion]], and furthermore that it is the only [[affect]] which is beyond all doubt, which is not [[truth|deceptive]].<ref>{{S11}} p.41</ref>
==''Objet (petit) a''==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]].
--==Lack==
It is also in this [[seminar]] that [[Lacan]] links [[anxiety]] to the concept of [[lack]].
All [[desire]] arises from [[lack]], and [[anxiety]] arises when this [[lack]] is itself [[lack]]ing; [[anxiety]] is the [[lack]] of a [[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]].
 --- ==Mirror Stage==
[[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>  --
In this way, [[Lacan]] links [[anxiety]] to [[Freud]]'s concept of the ''[[uncanny]]''.<ref>{{F}} "[[The Uncanny]]", 1919h. [[SE]] XIV, 161.</ref>
==''Jouissance''==Whereas the [[seminar]] of 1962-3 is largely concerned with [[Freud]]'s second theory of [[anxiety]] ([[anxiety]] as [[sign]]al)), in the [[seminar]] of 1974-5 [[Lacan]] appears to return to the first [[Freud]]ian 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 [[phallus|phallic]] ''[[jouissance]]''.<ref>Lacan, 1974-5: [[seminar ]] of 17 December 1974</ref><ref>anxiety 41, 73 [[Seminar XI]]</ref>
==See Also==
{{See}}
* [[Absence]]
* [[Castration]]
* [[Desire]]
||
* [[Fragmented body]]
* ''[[Jouissance]]''
* [[Lack]]
||
* [[Mirror stage]]
* [[Mother]]
* [[Other]]
||
* [[Neurosis]]
* [[Phobia]]
* [[Structure]]
{{Also}}
== References ==
<references/>
[[Category:Psychoanalysis]]
[[Category:Jacques Lacan]]
[[Category:TermsPractice]][[Category:Treatment]]
[[Category:Dictionary]]
[[Category:Concepts]]
[[Category:PsychoanalysisTerms]]{{OK}} __NOTOC__
Root Admin, Bots, Bureaucrats, flow-bot, oversight, Administrators, Widget editors
24,654
edits

Navigation menu