Anxiety and Phobia: Sign and Symptom?

In the course of his seminar on The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, Lacan, in answer to a question from the audience says that 'For analysis, anxiety is a crucial term of reference, because in effect anxiety is that which does not deceive. But anxiety may be lacking'.[1] There is perhaps no better way of unmasking the positive face of anxiety and its role as the purveyor of truth than by way of referring to a clinical case which begins with its marked absence.…