ABSTRACT
I use the term "anxiety" to refer to a mental state concerned with the anticipation of danger. The familiar physiological features of anxiety —tachycardia, perspiration, and the like-have their origins in the basic flight-or-fight responses, and they occur because the anxious individual has made an estimation of a current situation and reached the conclusion that either pain or loss of pleasure is imminent. Such estimations are inevitably based on learning that is rooted in prior experience.
