Freud - Complete Works (697 page)

   This does not imply that anxiety
occupies an exceptional position among the affective states. In my
opinion the other affects are also reproductions of very early,
perhaps even pre-individual, experiences of vital importance; and I
should be inclined to regard them as universal, typical and innate
hysterical attacks, as compared to the recently and individually
acquired attacks which occur in hysterical neuroses and whose
origin and significance as mnemic symbols have been revealed by
analysis. It would be very desirable, of course, to be able to
demonstrate the truth of this view in a number of such affects - a
thing which is still very far from being the case.

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   The view that anxiety goes back
to the event of birth raises immediate objections which have to be
met. It may be argued that anxiety is a reaction which, in all
probability, is common to every organism, certainly every organism
of a higher order, whereas birth is only experienced by the
mammals; and it is doubtful whether in all of them, even, birth has
the significance of a trauma. Therefore there can be anxiety
without the prototype of birth. But this objection takes us beyond
the barrier that divides psychology from biology. It may be that,
precisely because anxiety has an indispensable biological function
to fulfil as a reaction to a state of danger, it is differently
contrived in different organisms. We do not know, besides, whether
anxiety involves the same sensations and innervations in organisms
far removed from man as it does in man himself. Thus there is no
good argument here against the view that, in man, anxiety is
modelled upon the process of birth.

   If the structure and origin of
anxiety are as described, the next question is: what is the
function of anxiety and on what occasions is it reproduced? The
answer seems to be obvious and convincing: anxiety arose originally
as a reaction to a state of
danger
and it is reproduced
whenever a state of that kind recurs.

   This answer, however, raises
further considerations. The innervations involved in the original
state of anxiety probably had a meaning and purpose, in just the
same way as the muscular movements which accompany a first
hysterical attack. In order to understand a hysterical attack, all
one has to do is to look for the situation in which the movements
in question formed part of an appropriate and expedient action.
Thus at birth it is probable that the innervation, in being
directed to the respiratory organs, is preparing the way for the
activity of the lungs, and, in accelerating the heartbeat, is
helping to keep the blood free from toxic substances. Naturally,
when the anxiety-state is reproduced later as an affect it will be
lacking in any such expediency, just as are the repetitions of a
hysterical attack. When the individual is placed in a new situation
of danger it may well be quite inexpedient for him to respond with
an anxiety-state (which is a reaction to an earlier danger) instead
of initiating a reaction appropriate to the current danger. But his
behaviour may become expedient once more if the danger-situation is
recognized as it approaches and is signalled by an outbreak of
anxiety. In that case he can at once get rid of his anxiety by
having recourse to more suitable measures. Thus we see that there
are two ways in which anxiety can emerge: in an inexpedient way,
when a new situation of danger has occurred, or in an expedient way
in order to give a signal and prevent such a situation from
occurring.

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   But what is a
‘danger’? In the act of birth there is a real danger to
life. We know what this means objectively; but in a psychological
sense it says nothing at all to us. The danger of birth has as yet
no psychical content. We cannot possibly suppose that the foetus
has any sort of knowledge that there is a possibility of its life
being destroyed. It can only be aware of some vast disturbance in
the economy of its narcissistic libido. Large sums of excitation
crowd in upon it, giving rise to new kinds of feelings of
unpleasure, and some organs acquire an increased cathexis, thus
foreshadowing the object-cathexis which will soon set in. What
elements in all this will be made use of as the sign of a
‘danger-situation’?

   Unfortunately far too little is
known about the mental make-up of a new-born baby to make a direct
answer possible. I cannot even vouch for the validity of the
description I have just given. It is easy to say that the baby will
repeat its affect of anxiety in every situation which recalls the
event of birth. The important thing to know is what recalls the
event and what it is that is recalled.

   All we can do is to examine the
occasions on which infants in arms or somewhat older children show
readiness to produce anxiety. In his book on the trauma of birth,
Rank (1924) has made a determined attempt to establish a
relationship between the earliest phobias of children and the
impressions made on them by the event of birth. But I do not think
he has been successful. His theory is open to two objections. In
the first place, he assumes that the infant has received certain
sensory impressions, in particular of a visual kind, at the time of
birth, the renewal of which can recall to its memory the trauma of
birth and thus evoke a reaction of anxiety. This assumption is
quite unfounded and extremely improbable. It is not credible that a
child should retain any but tactile and general sensations relating
to the process of birth. If, later on, children show fear of small
animals that disappear into holes or emerge from them, this
reaction, according to Rank, is due to their perceiving an analogy.
But it is an analogy of which they cannot be aware. In the second
place, in considering these later anxiety-situations Rank dwells,
as suits him best, now on the child’s recollection of its
happy intra-uterine existence, now on its recollection of the
traumatic disturbance which interrupted that existence which leaves
the door wide open for arbitrary interpretation. There are,
moreover, certain examples of childhood anxiety which directly
traverse his theory. When, for instance, a child is left alone in
the dark one would expect it, according to his view, to welcome the
re-establishment of the intra-uterine situation; yet it is
precisely on such occasions that the child reacts with anxiety. And
if this is explained by saying that the child is being reminded of
the interruption which the event of birth made in its intra-uterine
happiness, it becomes impossible to shut one’s eyes any
longer to the far-fetched character of such explanations.

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   I am driven to the conclusion
that the earliest phobias of infancy cannot be directly traced back
to impressions of the act of birth and that so far they have not
been explained. A certain preparedness for anxiety is undoubtedly
present in the infant in arms. But this preparedness for anxiety,
instead of being at its maximum immediately after birth and then
slowly decreasing, does not emerge till later, as mental
development proceeds, and lasts over a certain period of childhood.
If these early phobias persist beyond that period one is inclined
to suspect the presence of a neurotic disturbance, although it is
not at all clear what their relation is to the undoubted neuroses
that appear later on in childhood.

   Only a few of the manifestations
of anxiety in children are comprehensible to us, and we must
confine our attention to them. They occur, for instance, when a
child is alone, or in the dark, or when it finds itself with an
unknown person instead of one to whom it is used - such as its
mother. These three instances can be reduced to a single condition
- namely, that of missing someone who is loved and longed for. But
here, I think, we have the key to an understanding of anxiety and
to a reconciliation of the contradictions that seem to beset
it.

   The child’s mnemic image of
the person longed for is no doubt intensely cathected, probably in
a hallucinatory way at first. But this has no effect; and now it
seems as though the longing turns into anxiety. This anxiety has
all the appearance of being an expression of the child’s
feeling at its wits’ end, as though in its still very
undeveloped state it did not know how better to cope with its
cathexis of longing. Here anxiety appears as a reaction to the felt
loss of the object; and we are at once reminded of the fact that
castration anxiety, too, is a fear of being separated from a highly
valued object, and that the earliest anxiety of all - the
‘primal anxiety’ of birth - is brought about on the
occasion of a separation from the mother.

   But a moment’s reflection
takes us beyond this question of loss of object. The reason why the
infant in arms wants to perceive the presence of its mother is only
because it already knows by experience that she satisfies all its
needs without delay. The situation, then, which it regards as a
‘danger’ and against which it wants to be safeguarded
is that of non-satisfaction, of a
growing tension due to
need
, against which it is helpless. I think that if we adopt
this view all the facts fall into place. The situation of
non-satisfaction in which the amounts of stimulation rise to an
unpleasurable height without its being possible for them to be
mastered psychically or discharged must for the infant be analogous
to the experience of being born - must be a repetition of the
situation of danger. What both situations have in common is the
economic disturbance caused by an accumulation of amounts of
stimulation which require to be disposed of. It is this factor,
then, which is the real essence of the ‘danger’. In
both cases the reaction of anxiety sets in. (This reaction is still
an expedient one in the infant in arms, for the discharge, being
directed into the respiratory and vocal muscular apparatus, now
calls its mother to it, just as it activated the lungs of the
new-born baby to get rid of the internal stimuli.) It is
unnecessary to suppose that the child carries anything more with it
from the time of its birth than this way of indicating the presence
of danger.

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   When the infant has found out by
experience that an external, perceptible object can put an end to
the dangerous situation which is reminiscent of birth, the content
of the danger it fears is displaced from the economic situation on
to the condition which determined that situation, viz., the loss of
object. It is the absence of the mother that is now the danger; and
as soon as that danger arises the infant gives the signal of
anxiety, before the dreaded economic situation has set in. This
change constitutes a first great step forward in the provision made
by the infant for its self-preservation, and at the same time
represents a transition from the automatic and involuntary fresh
appearance of anxiety to the intentional reproduction of anxiety as
a signal of danger.

   In these two aspects, as an
automatic phenomenon and as a rescuing signal, anxiety is seen to
be a product of the infant’s mental helplessness which is a
natural counterpart of its biological helplessness. The striking
coincidence by which the anxiety of the new-born baby and the
anxiety of the infant in arms are both conditioned by separation
from the mother does not need to be explained on psychological
lines. It can be accounted for simply enough biologically; for,
just as the mother originally satisfied all the needs of the foetus
through the apparatus of her own body, so now, after its birth, she
continues to do so, though partly by other means. There is much
more continuity between intra-uterine life and earliest infancy
than the impressive caesura of the act of birth would have us
believe. What happens is that the child’s biological
situation as a foetus is replaced for it by a psychical
object-relation to its mother. But we must not forget that during
its intra-uterine life the mother was not an object for the foetus,
and that at that time there were no objects at all. It is obvious
that in this scheme of things there is no place for the abreaction
of the birth trauma. We cannot find that anxiety has any function
other than that of being a signal for the avoidance of a danger
situation.

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   The significance of the loss of
object as a determinant of anxiety extends considerably further.
For the next transformation of anxiety, viz. the castration anxiety
belonging to the phallic phase, is also a fear of separation and is
thus attached to the same determinant. In this case the danger is
of being separated from one’s genitals. Ferenczi has traced,
quite correctly, I think, a clear line of connection between this
fear and the fears contained in the earlier situations of danger.
The high degree of narcissistic value which the penis possesses can
appeal to the fact that that organ is a guarantee to its owner that
he can be once more united to his mother - i.e. to a substitute for
her - in the act of copulation. Being deprived of it amounts to a
renewed separation from her, and this in its turn means being
helplessly exposed to an unpleasurable tension due to instinctual
need, as was the case at birth. But the need whose increase is
feared is now a specific one belonging to the genital libido and is
no longer an indeterminate one, as it was in the period of infancy.
It may be added that for a man who is impotent (that is, who is
inhibited by the threat of castration) the substitute for
copulation is a phantasy of returning into his mother’s womb.
Following Ferenczi’s line of thought, we might say that the
man in question, having tried to bring about his return into his
mother’s womb by using his genital organ to represent him, is
now replacing that organ regressively by his whole person.