Dental anxiety--etiologic considerations.

Dental disease is frequently accompanied by anxiety and fear of the treatment and of dentists. The etiology of any anxiety is sought in early conditioning life experiences; here it may be related to infants' responses to first teething. The universality of dental anxiety makes it a paradigm of psychosomatic disorders. These are conceptualized as pathologic exaggerated reactions to early traumatizing events, a causality not unlike that of conversive-hysteric symptoms or "normal" bodily characteristics. Psychiatric-etiologic considerations of dental anxiety are not to be found in the literature. Recalling the cheerful manner in which children's loss of their first tooth is greeted, one gathers that repressed ambivalence is involved. A clarification of the etiology is here attempted and the dynamics compared with those of other psychosomatic diseases.