In psychoanalysis, does anxiety (angst) have a logic?

Introducing a modal logical reading of anxiety into treatment direction

Abstract

Starting from the hypothesis that the relationship with anxiety (angst) changes as an analysis progresses, in this article we propose to follow, in an introductory way, the logical developments of anxiety into treatment direction based on Lacan’s elaborations on the modal logic. When reviewing the place of anxiety in the theories of Freud and Lacan, the consideration of its central role in the subjective constitution allows us to attribute to anxiety the logical status of the necessary, not only in the formation of the subject, but in the direction of an analysis too. However, the dismantling of fantasy would be homologous to another relationship with the drive field, which would imply a clinical and logical turn in the relationship with anxiety: from a necessary anxiety, to a possible one. The logical passage from necessary to possible, would require clinical consideration of the impossible inherent to non-whole phallic logic. Thus, it would be possible to sustain, at the end of an analytical treatment, a possible anxiety, which allows, in Freud’s terms, to love and to work, and, in Lacan’s terms, to desire and to enjoy.