PETER
LOEWENBERG
The Uses of Anxiety
Anxiety is the pervasive complaint in the modern world, but it is as an–
cient as the Bible. It is the most important fact in politics, both demo–
cratic and authoritarian, and yet it is the least understood component of
decision making. When President Franklin D. Roosevelt on March 4,
1933,
in his First Inaugural Address, told the Depression-battered Ameri–
can people that "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself," he was as–
suaging their anxiety and assuring them that he knew the danger and its
causes, and that he could master and control the anxiety-inducing situa–
tion. He offered certainty - a sure hand at the helm of the ship of state -
and hope for the future. His behavior exemplified the model of the crisis
leader.
In
1895,
Freud explained anxiety as transformed libido which was
dammed up and expressed as a neurotic symptom. The model is a deflec–
tion of somatic sexual excitation and its manifestation is anxiety:
Where one has grounds for regarding the neurosis as an
acquired
one,
upon careful examination directed to that end, one finds a series of
injuries and influences from
sexual life.
Freud never entirely abandoned his first theory of anxiety as
dammed up libido, and it became enshrined in the ideas of Wilhelm Re–
ich.
By
1926
Freud held that anxiety no longer was transformed libido
but a reaction to a signal of danger, unconscious in the adult, of a loss
of love, care, security. Anxiety is a signal of the threat of the occurrence
of a traumatic situation involving the distressing experiences of helpless–
ness, hopelessness, loss and separation. The danger is the painful recurrence
of
The longing for the beloved and wished-for person who is absent ..
. Anxiety appears as a reaction
to
the loss of the object ... It is evi–
dent ... that anxiety cannot be found to have any other function
than as a signal for the avoidance of a danger situation.
