Anxiety disorders can be viewed as representing different cognitive/affective structures filtered with both cognitions and affect. The presence of a relationship between certain situations and fear responses in simple phobics or obsessive compulsives indicates a disordered link among stimulus and response elements of their underlying fear structures. This difference in fear structure implies that for simple phobics the treatment focus is to promote activation and habituation of fear. For obsessivecompulsives, treatment encompasses variables that engage other mechanisms besides physiological activation and habituation, such as certain aspects of the meaning represented in that fear structure.