Psychic Structure and Manifestations of Anxiety Within the Clinic

The aim of this paper is to explore the connection between the context within which anxiety is manifested in the clinic and the psychic structure of the analysand. It is usually held that the difference between the psychiatric and the psychoanalytic clinics is that the former is a clinic of symptoms, while the latter is a clinic of fantasy.[1] This implies that it is symptoms which provide the basis of a judgment of psychic structure in the case of the psychiatric clinic, while it is the nature of the fantasy which is the significant element in the circumstances of the psychoanalytic clinic.…