ABSTRACT
WHEN discussing the difference between fear and anxiety we found as onr first result that anxiety is a fear which essentially involves a subjective factor. What then is the nature of this subjective factor'
Let us start by describing the experience an individual undergoes during anxiety. He has the feeling of a powerful, inescapable danger against which he himself is entirely helpless. Whatever the manifestations of anxiety, whether it be a hypochondriac fear of cancer, anxiety concerning thunderstorms, a phobia about high places, or any comparable fear, the two factors of an overpowering danger and defenselessness against it are invariably present. Sometimes the dangerous force against which he feels helpless may be felt to come from ontside-thunderstorms, cancer, accidents and the like; sometimes the danger is felt to threaten him from his own ungovernable impulses-fear of having to jump down from a high place, or to cut someone with a knife; sometimes the danger is entirely vague and intangible, as it often is in an anxiety attack.
