Sigmund Freud's Understandings of Anxiety: A Conceptual Review

This conceptual study analysed Sigmund Freud's understandings of anxiety. The study adopted literature review as a methodology. The secondary data were analysed using content and thematic analyses methods. The results indicate that Freud held anxiety as; due to failure of the ego to mediate conflicts between the superego and id; emanating from a person transforming their accumulated tensions; a product of a person's libido through the repression process; and the actual foundation of a person's anxiety is their ego. The study recommends that psychologists in education and people with anxiety should understand that appreciating the inner stimuli as disturbing some basic and inherent equilibrium state in a person helps appreciate responses to anxiety stimuli.