Introduction to Psychoanalysis

Chapter 47 Anxiety (1)
Gentlemen, I know that you must have thought my last lecture on general nervousness the least complete chapter.We all know that most neurotics often suffer from "anxiety," which they think is the worst thing that can happen to them.It is, however, perhaps most surprising to you that I have never mentioned the question of "anxiety" alone.In fact, anxiety or fear may be more serious than the most boring reasons for worrying.I hope we will not be half-hearted on this subject; I have therefore resolved to endeavor to bring up the matter of neurotic anxiety, and discuss it at length.

Anxiety or fear does not need to be described in detail, the feeling, or more precisely, the emotion, is experienced by anyone at one time or another.But I don't think we've had a serious discussion about the fact that neurotics are more prone to anxiety than other people.Perhaps we take them for granted. Sometimes "nervousness" and "anxiety" are used interchangeably, as if they mean the same thing, but they are not; Instead, there was no tendency to be anxious.

The fact that it is in no way indisputable is that anxiety is a central part of the most important problems, and that if we unravel this mystery, our whole psychic life will be understood.Although I do not think I can give you a complete explanation; nevertheless, you would expect psychoanalysis to take a different approach to the problem than academic medicine.Academic medicine is more concerned with the anatomical processes that cause anxiety.The medulla was stimulated, and the patient was informed that he was suffering from a psychosis due to stimulation of the vagus nerve.It is true that the medulla oblongata is a good object. I remember that I also spent a lot of time and energy in studying the medulla oblongata.Now, however, I must tell you that knowledge of the neural pathways through which stimuli travel is probably the most irrelevant thing if one is to understand the psychology of anxiety.

Maybe people talk about anxiety for a long time without thinking of it as neuroticism.I call this anxiety "true anxiety," to distinguish it from psychotic anxiety, and you'll see what I mean by now.Real anxieties or fears seem to us to be a most natural and normal thing; they may be called human perceptual responses to external danger or anticipated harm.It is combined with the escape reflex, or seen as one of the manifestations of the self-preservation instinct.The objects and situations that cause anxiety are mostly different according to the individual's perception of the outside world and the feeling of ability.Barbarians are afraid of artillery fire or eclipses of the sun and moon. Under the same circumstances, civilized people can fire artillery and predict celestial phenomena, so naturally they will not be afraid.Sometimes the possession of knowledge can predict the coming of danger, but knowledge can cause fear instead. For example, when a savage finds footprints in the jungle, he will avoid them because of fear, but a free man is indifferent when he sees them. He does not know that this means that the beast is approaching within easy reach.Again, an experienced navigator sees a small black cloud in the sky, and knows that a storm is coming, and is terrified; but to the passengers, it is really no surprise.

But the claim that genuine anxiety is legitimate and useful needs to be revised if it is studied in depth.When danger is imminent, the only advantage is to first keep a cool head, calculate and compare the forces at your disposal and the danger to come, and then decide that the most promising way is to escape, defend or attack.And fear itself is useless, without fear it can have a better effect.You should also know that excessive fear is the most harmful; it will make all actions benumbed, and even escape will be impossible.The response to danger often includes two components: the emotion of fear and the behavior of defense. Frightened animals are both frightened and flee. In fact, the part that is beneficial to survival is "fleeing" rather than "frightened".

Now, you must think that anxiety is really not good for survival; but perhaps we shall gain a better understanding of the matter when we analyze the situation of fear in more detail.The first thing we should pay attention to is the "anticipation" of danger. At this time, not only the perception is sharp and quick, but the muscles are also ready to go.Obviously, this "anticipation" preparation is beneficial to survival; if this preparation is missing, the consequences may be extremely serious.Accompanied by the psychological preparation for anticipation, there are the activities of the muscles, most of which are evasive actions, and the slightly more difficult ones are defensive actions; in addition, it is the feeling of anxiety or fear that we call.The shorter the duration of fear, even if it only acts as a signal for a moment, the easier it is for the psychological expectation of anxiety to become an action behavior, and the more conducive to the development of the whole incident is also conducive to personal safety.It seems to me, therefore, that in what we call anxiety or fear, the preparation of anxiety seems to be the salutary part, the development of which is undoubtedly the injurious part.

Whether the terms anxiety, fear, panic, etc. have the same meaning in common usage, I shall not discuss here.In my opinion, anxiety is for the situation and has nothing to do with the object; fear is completely focused on the object; and the meaning of panic seems to be special. For some situations, danger suddenly strikes, and anxiety has no time to act get ready.Therefore, we can say: "When there is anxiety, there will be no more trouble with fear."

You cannot avoid using the word "anxiety" as if it were vague and ambiguous.Generally speaking, "anxiety" is often used to express the subjective state caused by the perception of danger, which is called emotion.So what exactly is dynamic emotion?Of course its nature is very complex.It involves, first, the excitement and catharsis of a certain movement; secondly, it consists of the two senses, the perception of the action already performed, and the immediate introduction of the pleasure or pain which gives the mood its main tone.However, I definitely don't think that such a narrative has fully pointed out the substance of emotion.We seem to have a fairly deep understanding of some emotions, and understanding its extremely complex structure is nothing but the reproduction of some special past experiences.The origin of this kind of experience is very early, and it is owned by ordinary people. It is the property of the owner in the history of species development, not in the history of individual development.In order to increase your understanding, I may say that the structure of an emotional state is similar to that of hysteria, which is the sediment of memory.Therefore, when hysteria occurs, it can be similar to a newly formed individual emotion, so the normal emotion is the universal hysteria that has become hereditary.

You must not think that what I have just said about emotions is the general consensus of psychology.In fact, these concepts are only native products of psychoanalysis, and they all grew up in the fertile soil of psychoanalysis.Theories about emotions in psychology, in the eyes of us psychoanalysts, are meaningless at all, and there is no need to discuss them, such as James Langer's theory.However, we do not feel that our views on emotions are completely unquestionable, and it is only the first attempt of psychoanalysis in the field of emotions.We go on to say what we believe and know about the past impressions we rediscover in the mood of anxiety.I think it is the experience of birth, full of painful emotions, excitable discharges, bodily sensations, etc., enough to constitute the prototype of life's experience of imminent danger, and reproduced in situations of fear or anxiety.At birth, the anxiety-generating experience is that the supply of new blood has ceased, and the stimulus is intensified wildly, so that the first anxiety is caused by toxins. The meaning of "anxiety" can refer to narrow places and narrow roads, and here it means tense breathing. This kind of tense breathing is the result of specific situations such as the cervix. appear together repeatedly.Furthermore, the first anxiety was also caused by the separation from the mother, which is indeed intriguing.Naturally, we admit that the tendency to repeat the first anxiety has been ingrained in the organism through innumerable generations.Therefore, no one can avoid this kind of anxiety, even if he left the mother's womb prematurely and failed to experience the experience of birth like the legendary McDoff, he cannot escape.As to the archetypal nature of anxiety in non-mammalian animals, we can't just talk about it, and we don't know what kind of complex feeling it is, whether it is equivalent to the fear we feel.

Perhaps you are eager to know how I came to the idea that birth is the origin and archetype of anxious emotions.Of course, this is not a fantasy, but it is inspired by people's intuition.Years ago, there were many family doctors sitting around the dinner table, and I was one of them.An assistant from an obstetrics and gynecology hospital told us some interesting stories about the nurse exam.The examiner asked, what is the significance if there is baby excrement in the amniotic fluid at birth?One of the candidates immediately replied: "Because that child was frightened." As a result, she attracted ridicule from everyone, and she naturally failed the exam.But I sympathize with her, and I have doubts about this poor intuitive woman, whether she sees a very important relationship with her accurate intuition.

Now, let's go back to anxiety in psychosis.What are the special manifestations and states of anxiety in psychotic patients?We have a lot to discuss here.First of all, there is a universal worry in the anxiety of psychosis, the so-called "empty anxiety", which can easily attach to any thought, thereby affecting judgment, arousing desire, and waiting for an opportunity to justify itself.Such a state can be called "anticipatory panic" or "anxious expectation".People who suffer from this kind of anxiety are often anxious about various possible disasters, and interpret every accidental event or uncertain thing as an ominous omen.Although many people cannot be said to be pathological in other respects, they often have this kind of self-masochistic tendency of fear of disaster. They are called sentimental and pessimistic; There is this excessive anticipatory anxiety as a necessary attribute.

In addition, there is a second kind of anxiety on the contrary, which is often attached to certain objects and situations, and is more restricted in the heart.This is a different specific, phobic anxiety.The famous American psychologist Stander Hall recently named these phobias in Greek, making them sound like the ten plagues of Egypt: only there are far more than ten.Note that the objects or contents of phobias often include the following: darkness, sky, wilderness, cats, spiders, caterpillars, snakes, rats, swords, blood, closed places, crowds, being alone, crossing bridges, walking or sailing, etc. Wait.These messy phenomena may be grouped into three categories.Many of these phenomena and situations are scary even to ordinary people, and they are indeed dangerous; although the degree of these phobias may seem excessive, it is still understandable.For example, when we encounter a snake, most of us panic and avoid it.The phobia of snakes can be said to be shared by humans.Darwin once saw a snake rushing towards him behind a thick piece of glass and was horrified.Objects of the second category are also related to danger, but this category of danger is often ignored by us, and most situations belong to this category.We know that there are more dangers in a train than indoors, such as train collisions that sometimes happen; and we also know that a sinking ship is a disaster for passengers; but we often don't pay much attention to these dangers. We don’t have to worry about traveling by train or boat; for another example, if the bridge breaks suddenly when we cross the bridge, we are bound to fall into the water, but this kind of thing rarely happens, and its danger is not taken seriously.There are dangers in being alone, and there are many situations in which we do not want to be alone, but not all situations in which we do not want to be alone.In addition, such as crowds, closed places and thunderstorms are all the same.What puzzles us about these phobias is not so much their intensity as their intensity.The anxiety that accompanies a phobia is absolutely indescribable.In contrast, psychopaths have no real fear of what we are anxious about in certain situations, although they also call it scary.

There is also a third type, which is entirely beyond our comprehension.For example, how can we find a healthy adult who is afraid to walk through a street or a square in our city, or a healthy woman who screams when a cat passes by or a mouse runs across the house? What is the danger of discovering what these people are anxious about?Regarding "animal phobia", it is no longer a matter of increasing the intensity of general fear; however, there are also many people who just don't see the cat, and can't help touching it to attract its attention.Rats are animals that most women fear, but they like to use nicknames like "mouse", but they scream in horror when they see this little animal.Some people behave like children, afraid to cross bridges or squares.Children have been admonished by adults to understand the dangers of such situations, and space phobic patients are less anxious if they are guided through open spaces by a friend.

The first two anxieties, a so-called "empty" expectant fear, and a phobia of attachment to something, are independent and unrelated.The one is not the result of the development of the other, and they seldom merge into one, and when they do mix, they are most fortuitous.The strongest general apprehensions do not develop into phobias; it can also be said that people with lifelong space phobias are not always in the fear of pessimistic expectations.Many phobias are acquired after growing up, such as the fear of the wilderness and train rides, etc., and some phobias seem to be innate, such as fear of the dark, thunder and lightning, animals, etc.The former is a serious disease, the latter is a personal eccentricity; in either case, if there is one of the latter, it is suspected that he is suffering from other types of phobias.Here, I still want to make a statement: All phobias should belong to anxiety hysteria, or in other words, we all think that it is closely related to transformation hysteria.

As for the anxiety of the third psychosis, which is not necessarily related to danger, it is a mystery.It is either found in hysteria, or is accompanied by hysterical symptoms; or it occurs under conditions of different stimuli. We originally knew that some emotional manifestations would be produced under these conditions. Emotion; or it has nothing to do with any condition, just an anxiety disorder without a cause, we don't understand it, and the patient is equally inexplicable.Even if we study in many ways, it is difficult to find where the danger or the clues of danger are.In view of these spontaneous symptoms, there must be a multitude of elements in the conditions of what we call anxiety.The disease may also be replaced by a specially developed symptom, such as tremors, weakness, and palpitations of the heart, difficulty in breathing, etc., so that the general emotion we think of as anxiety disappears.These symptoms may be termed "anxiety equivalents," which are clinically and originally identical to anxiety itself.

Two questions will now arise, one is that real anxiety is a response to danger, and the other is that psychotic anxiety has little to do with danger; is there any possibility of a correlation between the two anxieties? ?And how to understand the anxiety of psychosis?For now, let us assume for a moment that wherever anxiety arises there must be something feared.

In clinical observation, there are many clues that can lead us to understand the anxiety of psychosis, which are discussed briefly below.

First, it is not difficult to find that anticipatory fear or general anxiety is closely related to some processes of sexual life or some methods used by libido.We may illustrate this by citing the simplest and most evocative examples of the experiences of those who have what is called a block of excitement.At this time, their strong sexual excitement cannot be fully vented, and the experience cannot be fully concluded.For example, after a man is engaged but before marriage; a woman hastily ends her sexual affairs because of her husband's lack of sexual ability or because of contraception.At this time, the excitement of libido disappears, but it is replaced by anxiety, or the symptoms of anticipatory fear and its equivalent are formed.Men's anxiety psychosis mostly originates from unsatisfactory intercourse, especially in women.Therefore, in diagnosing such symptoms, the doctor must first investigate the possibility of such causes.A large number of cases have proved that if sexual mistakes can be corrected, then anxiety psychosis can disappear.

(End of this chapter)