The Problem of Anxiety

Abstract

This is an English translation of Professor Freud's "Hemmung, Symptom und Angst" written about ten years ago. It is one of the most important of Freud's recent contributions to psychology and is a corner-stone to contemporary psychoanalysis. Critics and commentators outside the field of analysis have for the most part been ignorant of the recent work of Freud and have praised or attacked psychoanalysis on the basis of his early work. Now there can be no excuse for overlooking the modern trends in analysis. The translator has kept to Freud's style of writing to a large degree. Freud begins his book by differentiating inhibition from symptom. Inhibition is related to function but is not necessarily pathologic. It may be a symptom, but symptoms are always pathologic. Inhibitions are renunciations of functions that would give rise to anxiety if they were begun, as in hysteria. Inhibitions are functional limitations of the