The author uses the existence of varying degrees of anxiety as a stepping stone to propose that psychotic anxiety is associated with the predominance of non-conflictive opposition between disruptive drive-related psychic forces and binding narcissistic elements which are transformed into tyrannical and deformed demands of the superego. Some ideas of Jean Laplanche related to the exclusiveness of unbinding forces in the unconscious are analyzed. A discussion follows about repression and the role of psychic conflict as a determining factor in differentiating between neuroses and psychoses.
Anxiety; psychose; superego; conflict