The following discussions claim nothing but the value of a first tentative experiment, which judgment should not influence the acceptance of the facts mentioned above. The estimation of this "Theory of Anxiety Neurosis" is rendered still more difficult by the fact that it merely corresponds to a fragment of a more comprehensive representation of the neuroses.
The facts hitherto expressed concerning the anxiety neurosis already contain some starting points for an insight into the mechanism of this neurosis. In the first place it contains the assumption that we deal with an accumulation of excitement, and then the very important fact that the anxiety underlying the manifestations of the neurosis is not of psychic derivation. Such, for example, would exist if we found as a basis for the anxiety neurosis a justified fright happening once or repeatedly which has since supplied the source of the preparedness for the anxiety neurosis. But this is not the case; a former fright can perhaps cause a hysteria or a traumatic neurosis but never an anxiety neurosis. As the coitus interruptus is rendered so prominent among the causes of anxiety neurosis I have thought at first that the source of the continuous anxiety was perhaps the repeated fear during the sexual act lest the technique will fail and conception follow.
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