Superficial descriptive diagnosis was to be replaced by therapeutically relevant dynamic understanding of unconscious depths. Freud Freud’s initial theory of anxiety was that accumulating libido, undischarged because of an unsatisfactory sexual life, as with abstinence or coitus interruptus, sufficed to cause an “actual” neurosis. ‘ITicreforc, simple changes in sexual practices

could cure anxiety. Freud’s original descriptions emphasized anxiety attacks. Freud then theorized that, in psychoneurosis, libido and aggressive drives were chronically undischarged because of persistent repression. The implicit, Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical assumption was that chronic anxiety, due to chronic repression, was the Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical expectable symptom. Attacks were the occasional quantitative extreme with no particular significance. Simply advising patients about appropriate sexual hygiene was ineffective because it. did not. deal with the repressing forces. Freud finally postulated a schema functionally identical with learning theory. Rising

instinctual impulses, if ungratified, flood the infant, with traumatic KU-55933 mouse excitation equivalent, to a US. The infant learns that certain situations, eg, the mother’s absence, regularly precede a painful lack of gratification. Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical Therefore, the mother’s absence becomes a CS that releases anxiety thus explaining separation anxiety. Signal anxiety develops in situations regularly associated with forthcoming traumatic excitation, thus exactly paralleling conditioned anxiety. In learning theory, the conditioned drive of anxiety leads to escape behavior. This also Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical has a parallel in Freudian theory, but the escape from internal excitation is into defense mechanisms. Rising libidinal and/or aggressive impulses press for discharge, ie, action, but are met. with threats Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical of parental punishment, (eg, castration), which arc especially effective due to the race’s past history. The threat

of punishment leads to “objective anxiety,” which seems definitionally indistinguishable from fear. The increasing drives, the regular antecedents of punishment threats, become enteroceptive CSs that release signal anxiety. Escape results when signal anxiety mobilizes the overwhelming power of the pleasure principle that enforces drive repression, produces from a fall in anxiety, thereby reinforcing repression. From repression causing anxiety, Freud moved to anxiety causing repression. This theory received wide acceptance on the basis of supposed clinical benefits, although data supporting the existence of either benefits or repressive mechanisms was slim. However, relieving sexual repression seemed a good idea to many, which facilitated .Freud’s blanket acceptance by them, but incited demonization by contrary ideologies.