Freud and the Three Anxieties

Abstract

Anxiety in Freud takes three basic forms over the course of his intellectual evolution. Initially it belies the interactions of neural energies and sexuality. From its mechanistic origins it gradually comes to denote the explicitly psychological situation of the subject caught in a conflict between its bodily drives and social norms. Finally, Freud traces the origin of angst in a surprisingly Schellingian way, with the trauma of birth. Against his brilliant colleague Otto Rank, he argues that anxiety is “there” before a mature ego has taken shape and is able to recollect its onset. Therefore anxiety in Freud precedes what we consider our subjecthood, our self or ego. As a symptom and defense response, anxiety echoes Nietzsche’s great intelligence of the Nietzschean body, and thereafter goes through a hermeneutic transformation as a sign of the human being caught between nature and culture.