Integrando lo disociado: Del dominio del miedo al poder de la angustia. La angustia como una "presencia del sentimiento"

Abstract

The author addresses contemporary clinical practice, where we encounter individuals, seemingly incapable of getting in touch with their own existential dimension, who communicate their detachment, at times even total, from their feelings and fears, wilfully committed as they are to avoid experiencing the inevitable angst that may accompany them through life. This dissociation from the angst-producing emotion is revealed to the clinician through either detachment or a simple action. This feeling that generates both detachment and its opposite, perhaps a hypomanic reaction, proves to be “absent,” and is not perceived by the patient. In this way, angst can be avoided and indeed seems “absent,” but what is experienced is the complete range of raw emotions connected to it, such as fear, terror, panic, detachment, apathy, and anhedonia. The author sets out to clarify the terms “fear,” “anxiety,” and “angst” as they have been historically used in philosophy, psychoanalysis, psychiatry, and psychology. Ultimately, she explains her reason for her choice of the word “angst” instead of “anxiety” in her distinct and explicit handling of this subject matter.