ISSN:
1573-6709
Source:
Springer Online Journal Archives 1860-2000
Topics:
Medicine
Notes:
Summary and Conclusions Anxiety is conceptualized as a specific kind of fear-response or tendency to respond with fear to anticipated situations that are perceived as threats to an individual's self-esteem. The characteristic feature of neurotic anxiety is a tendency to apparent overresponse to such threats, particularly to those posed by novel adjustive situations. But in terms of the essential or predisposing cause of neurotic anxiety, an existing state of catastrophically impaired self-esteem, the response is not disproportionate to the degree of subjectively experienced threat. It is postulated that neurotic anxiety only occurs in persons who, as a result of not being accepted and intrinsically valued as children, do not enjoy an intrinsic sense of adequacy which is independent of their performance-ability and success in life. Such individuals are vulnerable to neurotic anxiety because their selfesteem is wholly a function of the realization of their compensatorily exalted and highly tenacious ambitions. The prognosis for complete cure of neurotic anxiety is regarded with pessimism, but several effective steps can be taken to prevent acute exacerbations of anxiety, that is, states of panic. Accurate diagnoses of neurotic anxiety can only be made by specially empathic clinicians with adequate theoretical and clinical training. Projective tests are useful diagnostic tools in the hands of such clinicians. The fact that these instruments require special skills of a subjective nature in order to be valid does not in any sense destroy their clinical usefulness.
Type of Medium:
Electronic Resource
URL:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF01564330
