Historical aspects of anxiety

“Anxiety” is a key term for behavioral, psychoanalytic, neuroendocrine, and psychopharmacological observations and theories. Commenting on its historical aspects is difficult, since history is properly a study of primary data. Unfortunately, much clinical anecdote does not correspond to factual records of a long time ago. Even reports of objective studies may suffer from allegiance effects. This essay therefore primarily reflects the personal impact of others' work against the background of my experiences, clinical and scientific. These lead me to question the assumption that “anxiety”, as it exists in syndromal disturbances, is simply the quantitative extreme of the normal “anxiety” that occurs during the anticipation of danger. An alternative view that emphasizes dysfunctions of distinct evolved adaptive alarm systems is presented.