Anxiety: Theories

Sigmund Freud recognized anxiety as a “signal of danger” and a cause of “defensive behavior”. He believed we acquire anxious feelings through classical conditioning and traumatic experiences.

We maintain anxiety through operant conditioning; when we see or encounter something associated with a previous traumatic experience, anxious feelings resurface. We feel temporarily relieved when we avoid/remove ourselves from situations which make us anxious/fearful, known as ‘negative-reinforcement’, but this only increases anxious feelings the next time we are in the same position, and we will want to escape the situation again and therefore will not make any progress against the anxiety, only intensifying the emotions or ‘fear.’ Phobias can be developed this way, as well as cured using the opposite ‘positive-reinforcement’ whereby instead of removal from the anxiety causing situation (which acts as a ‘reward’ [negative-reinforcement]) something positive can be added to the situation instead to act as a reward, like actually facing your fear and coming away from it safely. This is known as positive reinforcement of a negative situation.

Related posts

• Sigmund Freud: Biography (0)
• Psychosexual development (0)
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