Freud's first conception of anguish: a critical review. The paper analyses the first decade of Freud's theoretical production in order to define the first metapsychological concept of anguish. Anguish is related to a specific psychopathology, the neurosis of anguish, electing it as a paradigm of that first model. The mechanism that articulates energetic excess and lack of psychic working over is discussed, as well as the ambiguities in the theory of psychic representation theory. The purpose is to show that a counterpoint to the theory of psychic representation can be traced back to the origins of metapsychology, pointing to some unfolding for further investigations on the development of the Freudian thinking.
Metapsychology; anguish neurosis; automatic anguish; psychic working over