ABSTRACT
The American tendency to prefer motor activity to the welling up of inner emotion is expressed in verbal formulations which translate feelings into motor terms. In normal maturation, with the acquisition of the capacity for foresight and for independent activity, anxiety increasingly assumes a signal function. That is, It is released in moderate amounts as a warning of oncoming danger, and serves to set off various adaptive actions so that overwhelming distress may be avoided. A Danger Situation carries the threat not only of damage and loss but of an overwhelming anxiety, which may be equally feared. A person’s feeling that he was not able to do much may reflect his inability to ward off anxiety and depression by his activities which may have been from an external point of view more useful than he thinks. In different cultures also different values may be commonly assigned to the control of fear, emotional expressiveness or restraint, independence or demands for help.
