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Anxiety
In „Psychological medicine” by E. Klain et al. (1999) on the topic of anxiety, tension, one can find the following information:
Anxiety is affective (emotional) state that possesses a very unpleasant character and due to this it is similar to psychological tension, sorrow and grief. However, the unpleasantness caused by anxiety has a specific tone that is not easy to be defined. Anxiety is always associated with somatic sensations, especially from the side of certain organs.
In „A Comprehensive Dictionary of Psychological and Psychoanalytical Terms” (1972) H.B.English and A.C. English about anxiety evident the following notation: „When one term often becomes used in behavioral theory of learning, in psychoanalysis, and in almost every field of psychology, variety and blurring of the meaning among them become very troublesome. Anxiety must be read with high carefulness according to one author’s meaning, or more usual, according to more of his meanings”. In the same source on the topic of anxiety one can find the further information:
Anxiety: noun 1. an unpleasant emotional state marked by a present and continuous wish or drive that seem to fail reaching its goal 2. fusion of fear and anticipation of future evil 3. intense and continuous fear. 4. constant low intensity fear 5. feeling of threat, especially a horrible threat while a person is incapable of verbalizing what is it that threatens. 6. (behavioral theory) secondary drive whose established operation consists of gaining a specific avoidance response, and whose symptom is in the stimulation of anxious response which lowers amount of responses usual for that given situation and produces diverse behaviors that are not in accordance with the situation.
Normal and pathological neurotic anxiety
Statement that anxiety should be divided into normal and pathological is not of a newer date. Sigmund Freud back in 1926. described signal anxiety, marked as normal by later authors. Anxiety can be provoked by events brought to us from real threats. That is when we speak of it as a normal occurrence. However, it can be expression of bursting out of unsolved Oedipal complex activated in unconscious strata in a given moment. This is when anxiety possesses psychopathological meaning.
Normal anxiety
Pathological neurotic anxiety
Hypotheses about the genesis of anxiety disorders
Psychological hypotheses