Neurotic anguish and realistic anguish : Anguish is an affect that can be defined from two main characteristics. First, it is always unpleasant: nobody likes to be anguished; and second, it always has bodily manifestations: tachycardia, dyspnea, a sensation of tightness in the throat, sweating, and others. Within the framework of psychoanalytic theory, four types of anxiety are distinguished: realistic, neurotic, automatic, and signal distress (or signal distress).
Summary
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- 1 Realist anguish
- 2 Neurotic distress
- 3 Some useful definitions
- 4 Source
Realistic anguish
Realistic anxiety is a reaction to an external and known danger, and which is also proportionate or appropriate to the dangerousness of the situation. When one is distressed by a harmless ant, one is reacting to an external and known danger, but it is not realistic distress because the distress reaction is not in proportion to the danger, which is what happens when we are distressed by a loose tiger. The name “realistic” anxiety aims precisely to show that it is an emotional reaction to a real danger, not an imaginary one.
Now, in the face of a real danger, anxiety arises first, and second a motor reaction aimed at neutralizing the danger as a source of anxiety. This motor reaction can be carried out in four different ways: attack, flight, defense and paralysis. If we had to simplify these four situations, we would say that the attack is to go forward to meet the tiger (some have described it as a forward flight), the flight is to go back and climb a tree, and the defense is to stay still. , wait for the tiger to come and dodge its claws.
Paralysis also involves staying still, but doing absolutely nothing. Of course, the difference between attack and defense is sometimes not so clear, especially if we consider certain behaviors that are at the same time attack and defense.
Needless to say, the first three reactions are effective and adaptive because they preserve the life of the individual, while the fourth is clearly ineffective. Of course, it is not enough that any of the first three is effective, because it must also be efficient, that is to say: attack well, flee well, or defend well. Efficiency means adequate ends, and efficiency means adequate means to achieve an end.
Neurotic distress
The described model of realistic anguish is biological, that is, applicable to any living being. On the basis of this model, Freíd elaborated another in relation to what he called neurotic anxiety, and applied it specifically to human beings.
Of course, the boundary between both types of anxiety is not so clear, since for example we also find anxiety with some neurotic characteristics in animals that are not men, such as the case of Pavlov’s dog subjected to an experimental neurosis. We will not consider this point in this note, so we will limit ourselves below to trying to describe the parallelism that Freud established between realist and neurotic anxiety.
Unlike realistic anxiety, which erupts in the face of an external and known danger, neurotic anguish appears in the face of an internal and unknown danger: the internal danger is the imminence of the instinctual irruption, and it is unknown as long as the subject is not conscious that it is the drives – especially sexual – that motivate her anguish. He feels anguish and does not know why, since he cannot find any reason ‘logical’ or proportionate to his state.
Now it could well be assumed that the subject, faced with this neurotic anxiety, has the same four alternative paths that we had described for realistic anxiety: attack, flight, defense and paralysis.
Freud, however, will have to consider only the last two paths, but before describing them, let us state as hypotheses the reasons why drive danger could not be faced through attack or flight.
In order for drives to be “attacked” it is necessary to know them, and we have already said that drive danger is not identified or recognized as such by consciousness, for which it is an unknown danger. It’s like being in a jungle and attacking something that you don’t know what it is or where it is.
Just as we cannot attack them, we cannot “run away” from the drives, since they are internal dangers: no matter how much we run, our drives will always travel with us. It is like trying to run away from a bacterium that is making us sick with tuberculosis.
So, then, there are two possible paths: paralysis and defense, that is, to remain blocked before the excessive influx of instinctual excitations, or to defend oneself from those excitations when they appear.
When Freud develops his second theory of anxiety, he also refers to automatic anxiety and the signal of anxiety. Automatic anguish is one that appears causing paralysis or blockage: the psyche does not manage to do anything in the face of the massive and sudden influx of excitations, and the fact of not being able at that moment to defend itself against them seems to be due not so much to the magnitude of the danger , as well as the state of mental helplessness of the infant, since the creator of psychoanalysis refers this situation of automatic anguish to the trauma of birth. The situation is equivalent to the motor block of the person facing the tiger in realistic anguish, and, in general, in all that situation usually described as a “panic attack.”
The term automatic anxiety, it should be clarified, is equally applicable to realistic and neurotic anxiety, since this term “does not prejudge the internal or external origin of the traumatizing excitations.”
But, as the infant grows, his psychic apparatus develops and his ego begins to acquire a certain “skill” to implement defenses. So much so that when a new irruption of excitations appears threatening to produce automatic anguish, the ego immediately implements defensive measures to prevent the anguish from increasing to dangerous, traumatic levels, that is, to avoid what Freud called the “development of anguish”.
This means that the anguish does not continue to increase in intensity until it leads to an automatic anguish, but rather that the defenses stop this increase up to a certain point: that “small” amount of anguish that the defense avoids increasing is called a distress signal, precisely because that minimum amount is a signal that warns the self of an imminent danger, necessary and sufficient for it to develop defenses. In the case of neurotic anguish – where the danger is of instinctual origin – the basic defense implemented by the ego is repression.
In the case of realistic anguish we can also find a sign of anguish, and for the same reasons: it is the case of the hunter who, in front of the tiger, does not feel a massive anguish that prevents him from shooting, but just a “little” of anguish which operates as a signal to fire. This “little” of anguish is then not only better than a massive anguish, but also better than an absence of anguish: if the hunter was not afraid, the tiger would eat him.
We can compare the self skilled in instrumenting defenses with the hunter, also experienced in these libes, and Freud’s infant with a novice who has never been in front of a wild animal.
In short, it can be accepted that in both realistic and neurotic anxiety, it is possible to find a situation of automatic anxiety that cannot be controlled, and a signal anxiety that allows control of the situation. And just as in realistic anxiety the optimal situation is one where the defenses are effective but also efficient, so it is also in neurotic anxiety: defenses are always effective because they aim to prevent the development of anxiety, but they are not always efficient: a Failed defense will lead to neurosis, and a successful defense to health.
Some useful definitions
AUTOMATIC ANGUISH: Reaction of the individual each time he is in a traumatic situation, that is, subjected to an influx of excitations, of external or internal origin, which he is unable to control. Automatic anguish opposes, in Freíd’s opinion , the distress signal.
ANGUISH IN THE FACE OF A REAL DANGER: Term (Realangst) used by Freud in the framework of his second theory of anxiety: anxiety in the face of an external danger that constitutes a real threat to the individual.
ANGUISH SIGNAL: Term introduced by Freud in the restructuring of his theory of anxiety to designate a device put into action by the ego, in a dangerous situation, with a view to avoiding being overwhelmed by the influx of excitations. The distress signal reproduces in an attenuated form the anguish reaction experienced originally in a traumatic situation, which enables defensive operations to be launched.
