The
prototype of anxiety is the fearof separation from loved ones, initially from the mother, especially
in infancy, the period of absolute helplessness.
In the Freudian view, anxiety emerges in aloneness and darkness, only
because these two situations mean separation, and if it persists throughout
life, it becomes neurotic.
Regardless of the model of anxiety he adopts
(i.e., anxiety as a transformation of undischarged libido or anxiety as a
signal of a danger), Freud always associated anxiety with traumatic object
loss. He wrote (Freud, 1905/1953) that “anxiety in children is originally
nothing other than an expression of the fact that they are feeling the loss of
the person they love”, and in a later essay (Freud,
1926/1959a), “anxiety appears as the reaction to the felt loss of the object”. In the course of development, anxiety is
determined also by the threat of losing
the love of the object. Freud (1926/1959a) distinguished between anxiety as
a reaction to the danger of loss and the pain of mourning which
is the reaction to the actual loss of the object. Thus, loneliness may be
regarded as the painful
longing for the lost object or for the loss of the love of the
object.
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