title: [For a critical history of the concept of anxiety].
abstract: Anxiety, tension, anguish... These are words, but first of all, states of the self. Accepted since the dawn of time by human distress and by the effort to understand them, they were taken back in hand by Psychopathology, established as a little dark concepts, and as such have become today so sovereign in the most ordinary way that their "reality" seems to be obvious. This recent acknowledgement is however the result of a history. To attempt to restore the original bases enables to find in it the old and well-thought-out acknowledgement in a common nature, the unknown factors of which were considered for a long time with familiarity and distance by common people as well as by doctors. This unconventional look, that we suggest to have here over a long period of time, allows us to restore, in the outermost bounds of Psychosomatics, all the ambiguities of a present notion which was at first physiological before appearing in psychiatric Nosology. It also means to take a certain distance from the medicalization of affects which, whatever we think, naturally come from our mortal condition.
authors.affiliation: Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales. peter@ehess.fr
authors.forename: Jean-Pierre
authors.initials: JP
authors.lastname: Peter
mesh_terms: D001007:Anxiety / Q000266:history*; D005602:France; D049672:History, 19th Century; D006801:Humans; D011584:Psychology / Q000266:history; D013782:Textbooks as Topic