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INHIBITIONS, SYMPTOMS AND ANXIETY

BY SIGMUND FREUD

VII

Let us return to the infantile zoöphobias, since these cases we
understand better than any others. In these, we have seen,
the ego must intervene against a libidinal object-
cathexis of the id (that of the positive or negative œdipus complex,
namely), because of the recognition that to yield to it would
entail the danger of castration. This we have already dis-
cussed, yet we may still take occasion to clarify a doubt which
remains over from this first discussion. Shall we assume in
the case of little Hans (and thus in the case of the positive
œdipus complex) that it is the tender impulse towards the
mother, or the aggressive towards the father, which provokes
measures of defense on the part of the ego? Practically speak-
ing, it would seem to be a matter of indifference, particularly
since each of the two impulses predicates the other; but a
theoretical interest attaches to the question, because only the
tender impulse towards the mother can be deemed a purely
erotic one. The aggressive impulse is essentially dependent
upon the instinct of destruction, and we have always believed
that in neurosis it is against the demands of the libido, not
against those of other instincts, that the ego defends itself. As
a matter of fact, we see that after the formation of the phobia
the tender bond with the mother is as though dissolved, it is
disposed of in thoroughgoing fashion through repression, while
symptom formation has taken place as a substitute for the
aggressive impulse. In the case of the “wolf man” the matter
is simpler; the repressed impulse is really an erotic one, namely,
the feminine attitude to the father, and it is around this
impulse that symptom formation has taken place.
It is almost disgraceful that after so much labor we should
still find difficulty in conceiving of the most fundamental mat-
ters, but it has been our resolve to simplify nothing and to
conceal nothing. If we cannot see clearly, at least we see the

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obscurities clearly. What stands in our way is evidently due
to the fact that our theory of instincts has developed unevenly.
In the beginning we had followed the various organizations of
the libido from the oral through the anal-sadistic to the genital
stage, and in so doing had equated the several components of
the sexual instinct with one another. Subsequently sadism
appeared to us to be the representative of another instinct, one
opposed to Eros. This new concept of the two classes of
instincts seems to disrupt the earlier formulation of the occur-
rence of successive stages in the organization of the libido. A
helpful way out of this difficulty we do not have to invent; it
has long been ready to hand, and is to the effect that we scarcely
ever have to do with instinctual impulses in pure form, but
invariably with alloys of the two instincts in which these are
present in varying proportions. The sadistic object-cathexis
is entitled as well, therefore, to be treated as a libidinal one;
the hypothesis of stages of organization of the libido does not
need to be revised; the aggressive impulse towards the father
is as much entitled to be the object of repression as the tender
impulse towards the mother. At all events we will put to one
side for later consideration the possibility that repression is a
process which has a special relationship to the genital organiza-
tion of the libido, and that the ego seizes upon other methods
of defense when it has to defend itself against the libido at
other stages of its organization. A case like that of little Hans
does not permit of any decision on this matter; here an aggres-
sive impulse was dealt with through repression, but only after
the genital stage has already been reached.

We do not want to lose sight at this point of the place that
anxiety occupies. We have said that as soon as the ego has
recognized the danger of castration, it gives the signal of
anxiety, and through the medium of the pleasure-pain mecha-
nism it inhibits, in a manner still obscure to us, the threatening
cathectic process in the id. Simultaneously with this the for-
mation of the phobia is accomplished. The castration anxiety
is given another object and a distorted expression–namely, that
of being bitten by a horse (or eaten by a wolf) instead of being

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castrated by the father. This substitute formation has two
patent advantages: first, that it avoids the conflict due to
ambivalence, for the father is an object who is at the same time
loved; and secondly, that it allows the ego to prevent any
further development of anxiety. For the anxiety of the phobia
is a facultative anxiety: it makes its appearance only when its
object is actually perceived. This is what one might expect;
for it is only then that the danger situation is present. Simi-
larly, at the hands of a father who is absent castration need not
be feared. Now one cannot do away with one’s father; he
comes and goes as he pleases. But if he is replaced by some
animal, then it is only necessary to avoid the sight of that
animal, that is, its presence, to be free from danger and anxiety.
Little Hans therefore imposes a restriction upon his ego; he
evolves the inhibition against going out in order not to
encounter horses. It is even more convenient for the little
Russian; it scarcely constitutes a renunciation on his part not
to have anything more to do with a certain picture book. The
naughty sister need only desist from showing him the picture
in that book of the wolf that stood on its hind legs, and he
could feel perfectly safe from his anxiety.

On a previous occasion I ascribed to phobias the character
of a projection, since they substitute for an internal instinctual
danger an external perceptual one. Such a process has the
advantage that from an external danger protection may be
gained through flight and the avoidance of the perception of
it, whereas against a danger from within, flight is of no avail.
This statement of mine is not in itself incorrect, but superficial. For
the instinctual demand is not in itself a danger, but is so only
because it entails a true external danger, that of castration.
So that fundamentally we have in the phobias, after all, merely
the substituting of one external danger for another. The fact
that in phobias the ego is able to escape anxiety through a
process of avoidance or by means of an inhibition is in com-
plete accord with the concept that this anxiety is simply an
affective signal, and that with regard to the economic situation
involved nothing has been altered.

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The anxiety in zoöphobia is thus an affective reaction of the
ego to danger, the danger which is in this case warned against
being that of castration. There is no difference between this
anxiety and the reality fear normally manifested by the ego in
situations of danger, other than the fact that the content of the
former remains unconscious and enters consciousness only in
distorted form.

This same concept will prove to hold good, I believe, for the
phobias of adults also, even though here the material which the
neurosis elaborates is far more complex, and even though a
number of other factors which go to the forming of symptoms
are superadded. Fundamentally the situation is the same.
The sufferer from agoraphobia imposes a restriction upon his
ego in order to escape an instinctual danger. The instinctual
danger in question is the temptation to yield to his erotic
desires; and to yield to them would be to reincarnate once
again, as in childhood, the spectre of the danger of castration
or of an analogous danger. As an example I may refer to the
case of a young man who became agoraphobic because he was
afraid of yielding to the allurements of prostitutes and of
acquiring syphilis as a punishment.

I am well aware that many cases have a more complicated
structure, and that many other repressed instinctual impulses
may have their issue in a phobia, but these are merely auxiliary
and have as a rule become attached subsequently to the nuclear
material of the neurosis. The symptomatology of agoraphobia
is complicated by the fact that the ego is not content with
renouncing something; in addition to this, it takes steps to
deprive the situation of its danger. This additional measure
is usually a regression to childhood (in extreme cases, to the
uterus, to a period when one was protected against the dangers
which threaten today); the regression constitutes the condition
under which the renunciation need not be made. Thus the
agoraphobic may go on the street provided that, like a small
child, he is accompanied by a person in whom he has full con-
fidence. A similar caution may also permit him to go out
alone, provided that he does not go more than a certain dis-

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tance away from home, that he does not enter localities which
he does not know well and where the people do not know him.
In the choice of these specifications there becomes manifest the
influence of the infantile motives which govern him by means
of his neurosis. Of quite unequivocal meaning, even without
infantile regression of this sort, is the morbid fear of being
alone, which would avoid the temptation to solitary masturba-
tion. Infantile regression is, of course, conditional upon the
individual’s being chronologically no longer a child.

The phobia is produced, as a rule, subsequent to an initial
attack of anxiety which was experienced under certain circum-
stances—on the street, on a railroad train, or on an occasion of
being alone, for example. For the moment the anxiety is
stilled, only to reappear on every occasion on which the con-
ditions that assure protection cannot be met. The phobic
mechanism works very well as a means of defense and exhibits
a considerable measure of stability. A continuation of the
defensive struggle, now directed against the symptom, fre-
quently but not necessarily takes place.

What we have learned about anxiety in the phobias is
applicable also to compulsion neurosis. It is not difficult to
reduce the situation of the compulsion neurosis to that of the
phobia. The motive force behind all later symptom formation
is here clearly the ego’s fear of its superego. The hostility of
the superego is the danger situation which the ego must avoid.
Here any semblance of projection is lacking; the danger is
wholly internalized. But when we ask what it is that the ego
fears at the hands of the superego, the conclusion is forced upon
us that the punishment meted out by the superego is an exten-
sion of the punishment of castration. Just as the superego is
the father become impersonalized, so the dread of the castra-
tion which he threatened has become converted into indefinite
social anxiety or dread of conscience. But this anxiety is
insured against; the ego escapes it by carrying out obediently
the commands, the preventive measures and the penances
imposed upon it. If it is impeded in doing this, there imme-
diately ensues an extremely distressing sense of discomfort in

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which we may perceive the equivalent of anxiety and which
the patient himself equates with anxiety. What we have
arrived at is therefore the following: Anxiety is the reaction to
a situation of danger; and it is circumvented by the ego’s doing
something to avoid the situation or retreat from it. One might
say, then, that symptoms are created in order to avoid the
development of anxiety, but such a formulation does not go
below the surface. It is more accurate to say that symptoms
are created in order to avoid the danger situation of which
anxiety sounds the alarm. In the cases so far considered this
danger was castration or a derivative of it.

If anxiety is the reaction of the ego to danger, then it would
be the obvious thing to regard the traumatic neuroses, which
are so often the sequel to exposure to danger to life, as the
direct result of life-
or death-
anxiety, with the exclusion of any
dependence, in its ætiology, upon the ego and castration. This
is what was done by the majority of observers in the case
of the traumatic neuroses of the last war, and it has been
triumphantly claimed that proof is now at hand that jeopardy
to the instinct of self-
preservation is capable of giving rise to a
neurosis without the participation of sexuality at all, and with-
out regard to the complicated hypotheses of psychoanalysis. It
is, as a matter of fact, extremely to be regretted that not a single
reliable analysis of a case of traumatic neurosis exists. It is to
be regretted, not on account of the objection against the ætio-
logical significance of sexuality, for this objection has long since
been met through the introduction of the concept of narcissism,
which brings the libidinal cathexis of the ego into line with
object cathexes and emphasizes the libidinal nature of the
instinct of self-
preservation-
it is to be regretted not on this
account, but rather because through the lack of such analyses
we have missed the most precious opportunity to obtain infor-
mation of crucial importance regarding the relationship
between anxiety and symptom formation. According to all
that we know of the structure of the simpler neuroses of every-
day life, it is very improbable that a neurosis should come
about only by reason of the objective fact of exposure to danger

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without the participation of the deeper unconscious strata of
the mental apparatus. In the unconscious, however, there is
nothing to give content to our conception of the destruction of
life. Castration becomes as it were imaginable through the
daily experience of parting with the contents of the bowel and
through the loss of the mother’s breast which is experienced in
weaning; but nothing similar to death has ever been experi-
enced, or if it has been, it has left, like fainting, no demon-
strable trace. I therefore maintain that the fear of death is
to be regarded as an analogue of the fear of castration, and that
the situation to which the ego reacts is the state of being for-
saken or deserted by the protecting superego—by the powers
of destiny—which puts an end to security against every danger.
It is also to be taken into account that in the experiences which
result in traumatic neurosis the external protective mechanism
against stimuli of excessive strength is broken down and exces-
sive quanta of excitation gain access to the mental apparatus,
so that here the second possibility exists that anxiety is not only
employed as an affective signal but is also newly created in
response to the economic demands of the situation.
With the above formulation—namely, that through regularly
repeated losses of objects the ego has been prepared for castra-
tion—we have arrived at a new conception of anxiety. If we
have thus far considered it as an affective signal of danger, it
now appears to us, since it is so frequently a matter of the
danger of castration, as the reaction to a loss, to a separation.
Though various considerations which immediately occur to
one seem also to tell against this conclusion, we must neverthe-
less be struck by a phenomenon which is in very remarkable
agreement with it. The first anxiety experience, of the human
being at least, is birth; and this means, objectively, separation
from the mother, and could be likened to a castration of the
mother (in accordance with the equation: child=penis). Now
it would be very satisfactory if anxiety as the symbol of a
separation were to be repeated on the occasion of every subse-
quent separation, but unfortunately the applicability of the
agreement I have just spoken of is discounted by the fact that,

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subjectively, birth is not at all experienced as a separation from
the mother, since the mother, in the rôle of object, is entirely
unknown to the completely narcissistic fœtus. Another con-
sideration that would apply is that affective reactions to a sepa-
ration are known to us, and that we experience them as grief
and mourning, not as anxiety. We recall, to be sure, that in
our discussion of mourning we were also unable to understand
why mourning is so painful.

VIII

It is time to take stock. What we are seeking, it is apparent,
is an insight which shall reveal the nature of anxiety, an
“either–or” which shall distinguish truth from error in regard
to it. But this is difficult of attainment; anxiety is not a simple
thing to grasp. Thus far we have arrived at nothing but con-
tradictions, from among which no unbiased choice was possible.
I now propose to order it otherwise; we will bring together
in unprejudiced manner everything that can be said about
anxiety, while renouncing at the same time the expectation of
achieving an immediate synthesis of the problem.

Anxiety, then, is in the first place something felt. We call
it an affective state, although we are equally ignorant of what
an affect is. As a feeling it is of most obviously unpleasurable
character, but this is not by any means a complete description
of its quality; not every state of unpleasure (Unlust) may we
call anxiety. There are other feelings of unpleasurable char-
acter (mental tension, sorrow, grief), and anxiety must have
other characteristics besides this quality of unpleasure. Shall
we ever succeed, one cannot help asking, in understanding the
differences between these various affects of unpleasure?

Of the feeling of anxiety we can after all learn something.
Its character of unpleasure seems to possess a particular note
of its own—a thing difficult to demonstrate but none the less
probable, nor would it be at all surprising if it were so. But
in addition to this special characteristic so difficult to define, we
perceive more definite physical sensations, which we refer to