Abstract
Biology is increasingly replacing psychology as the frame of reference for understanding human behavior. Where previously the schizophrenias and affective disorders attracted and vindicated biological explanation, now even psychodynamic explanations of the so-called neuroses are being replaced by biological understanding. This essay considers the potential loss entailed by perhaps premature biological reductionism. Anxiety has been a critical concept for psychological explanations of behavior. The move to biology resolves the mystery of anxiety by biochemically removing it. We trace what meaning anxiety had for three critical thinkers who used the term: Kierkegaard, Freud and Sartre. We argue that the loss of anxiety is a symptom of the loss of psychology and abdication on the part of psychiatry in contributing to the representation of human subjectivity for culture and law.
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